One of the first sentences I was ever paid to write was \u201cTry out lighter lip stick colors, like peach or coral.\u201d Fresh out of college in the mid 2010s, I\u2019d scored a copy job for a how-to website. An early task involved expanding upon an article titled \u201cHow to Get Rid of Dark Lips.\u201d For the next two years, I worked on articles with headlines such as \u201cHow to Speak Like a Stereotypical New Yorker (With Examples),\u201d \u201cHow to Eat an Insect or Arachnid,\u201d and \u201cHow to Acquire a Gun License in New Jersey.\u201d I didn\u2019t get rich or win literary awards, but I did learn how to write a clean sentence, convey information in a logical sequence, and modulate my tone for the intended audience\u2014skills that I use daily in my current work in screenwriting, film editing, and corporate communications. Just as important, the job paid my bills while I found my way in the entertainment industry.<\/p>\n
Artificial intelligence has rendered my first job obsolete. Today, if you want to learn\u00a0 \u201cHow to Become a Hip Hop Music Producer,\u201d you can just ask ChatGPT. AI is also displacing the humans doing many of my subsequent jobs: writing promotional copy for tourism boards, drafting questions for low-budget documentaries, offering script notes on student films. Today, a cursory search for writing jobs on LinkedIn pulls up a number of positions that involve not producing copy but training AI models to sound more human. When anyone can create a logo or marketing copy at the touch of a button, why hire a new graduate to do it?<\/p>\n