Creative-based professions are top of the list to be most affected by generative AI over the next 10 years. While my bias in this topic is obvious as both a professional communicator and personal storyteller, my assumed level of panic is not.
On the humorous side, one of the most comforting observations that creatives know instinctually and others thinking the inverse will come to realize range from the following meme:
Image Credit: Thierry Brunfaut via LinkedIn
to more philosophical, head-shaking and ‘for the love of God, everyone just calm down’ reflections I’ve had on this topic over the past year.
Enter: the personal anecdote. A friend recently shared with me that for their birthday, their partner read out a wonderfully written poem on the value of their relationship. My friend was very touched their partner had taken the time and effort to craft this poem.
When they revealed they had used ChatGPT to generate it, they of course shared a laugh. An amusing story, but it prompted my wondering of if that poem now meant less to their relationship knowing it was developed with AI.
The foundation of effective communication is in fact intention. We communicate out of intention to understand and to be understood. It’s a core principle of formulating and validating our self esteem, our preference towards certain relationships and our self-reflective positioning in the world. We communicate and form conclusions about people and pieces of information from more than just the context we’re immediately given.
We all rely on nonverbal cues, bias, intangible judgments, historical knowledge and observations of our audience based on what we both consciously input into context and subconsciously know or feel to be true. This process is constant, synchronous and non-linear. Great communication can be an unnatural, exhausting process to most people, which is why it means so much and benefits our professional and personal relationships when we take the time to do it well.
While technology has brought us closer together by democratizing our access to information and education, its service as a tool of manipulation and artificiality by those with misaligned incentives for profit versus wellbeing have surely widened the gap in genuine understanding and connection. The loneliness epidemic is real and being driven by it within younger generations.
I compare this revolution to my history in the tourism industry, where advancements in air travel and transit made long-distance travel more accessible to the middle class. The reaction to what is now over tourism in more and more destinations is to place a price premium on travel that is yes, reinvested into community sustainability, but that also makes those destinations and experiences less accessible to more people, namely those that just can’t afford it.
The result is less people and families being able to afford their annual vacations to somewhere new, therefore less interaction and understanding of different cultures, languages and people.
The average professional’s experimentation with AI has ranged from the originally cutesy disclaimers on LinkedIn posts about ChatGPT being generated by the tool itself; up to realizing how cold call emails have gotten even more annoying by using AI versus humans that don’t know your company. An incredible tool for efficiency in passive, iterative or administrative work; but a huge sacrifice in the innate intention we assume and value in communicating as humans-to-humans.
While AI (sometimes, hopefully) gives you exactly what you ask for, most of us bank on the professional communicators and storytellers in our lives to bring what we really mean and want to life. And, while most of us don’t like to hear it… sometimes we all have really bad ideas. For most companies, communications professionals are the master gatekeepers of questioning, spinning or saying ‘absolutely not’ to really bad communication.
AI won’t replace these values. It will absolutely raise the bar in better copywriting, research, experimentation and other benefits that free up time and mental capacity for all of us to do more important and imaginative things. Human-to-technology communication will become a valuable genre of soft skill development, just as we value and practice human-to-human communication.
As a professional communicator and storyteller, I’m not worried or threatened by this. As a manager of people and teams, I am. There’s constant risk in ignoring the responsibility we as employers and educators have in ensuring our teams are performing at their best. These next 10 years are just as substantial a period in management evolution as COVID-19 was to learning, equipping and supporting remote work practices. Managers and organizations that failed to do so missed strengthening corporate productivity and culture because they lost great employees to more supportive workplaces providing those opportunities.
Did my friend’s poem mean less because AI wrote it? Well, they’re not together anymore (for “unrelated” reasons).
Is it to the betterment of our work, relationships and society to sacrifice our intentions in good communication for better productivity? Probably not, for likely many more reasons than I give above.
Sydney Redpath was raised in Prince George, B.C. and attended the University of Northern B.C. for her Bachelor of Commerce as well as receiving a Public Leadership Credential from Harvard University. She has worked in senior roles for not-for-profit organisations in tourism, tech and innovation. She was recently named a Top Figure Under 40 by the Prince George Chamber of Commerce.
