WOW! This comment from 2022:
“Two-thirds of Australian authors are women—our new research finds they earn just $18,000 from their writing”
Zwar, Throsby and Crosby, The Conversation 2022
You can’t even live off that! It’s below the poverty line, methinks.
And yet, digital writing for businesses is booming:
“Aussies with digital marketing skills in hot demand, up 34% in just six months.”
B&T.com.au, October 20, 2022
“Digital advertising contributes $94 billion to Australia’s GDP”
B&T. Nov 23rd 2022.
Our Masters class today looked at www.chat.openai.com and came away with many and varied thoughts. I was gloomy, because the pace of technology means AI will soon be able to do what it currently can’t—write with humour, nuance, compassion, emotion, creativity, a sense of history, a sense of the future, the ability to alliterate, to run sentences together to create a literary effect… and most importantly, to CONNECT with the reader.
AI is fabulous at handling and regurgitating facts. If you are conducting background research for an assignment, article, or brief, they are brilliant. But they are hopeless at all the things that separate man from machine.
Everyone thought the same.
‘Cept me.
I give it 18 months before the chatAI engines (there are seven of them at the moment, I am led to believe) replicate us in all our glory. For now, we can be part of the massive digital economy, but sooner (rather than later, I predict) we writers will be made redundant, and directors, producers, account managers, station heads and all the people who currently hire folks like us will put their dollars elsewhere.
Kelly Noble, I see a time when you will be able to jettison your inhouse writers and just keep the longer-form feature writers, the reviewers, the critics, the creatives. As long as the AI engines are kept up to date with what’s happening in your world, your business will continue to thrive.
“…most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution.”
Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
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