This week I deployed ChatGPT in a way that genuinely impressed me. I typed in a series of largely incoherent bullet points, and, hey presto, it turned them into fluent, eminently readable prose.  Simple, but massively effective.

In case you’re unfamiliar, ChatGPT is an AI-based chatbot that can write scripts, stories, essays, articles and even computer programs, as well as play games, tell jokes, and engage in all manner of other useless but hilarious text-based pursuits.

To illustrate the latter, earlier today I used it to rewrite one of my articles in iambic pentameter. I probably won’t be sharing this with the client.

Anyway, ever since news of ChatGPT’s remarkable capabilities started hitting the headlines, I haven’t been able to go for more than a week without someone asking me whether, as a professional writer, I’ll still have a job in five years’ time. At first, I responded to this question thoughtfully – with curiosity, optimism, and all the necessary caution and caveats.

Several months later, my stock response is the rather more straightforward, “How the hell should I know?”

I recognise that more and more people within my network want to talk about the possibilities of AI. And judging from my LinkedIn feed, other writers most certainly want to share a positive vision of a future in which AI exists and so do they. Yet ‘how the hell should I know?’ is the more honest answer when addressing the question of what happens next.

You see, right now ChatGPT is amazing, but also limited. This won’t be the case for long. It might not be the case tomorrow; such is the bewildering pace of AI progress. When an AI algorithm designed for an entirely different purpose can nonchalantly teach itself to play chess and beat the most advanced chess-playing computer program ever made, you quickly realise that all bets are off, that predicting AI’s future potential is a mug’s game.

Will I still have a job in five years’ time? Probably.

Will it be the same job? Unlikely, based on what ChatGPT can already do today, coupled with the fact that 1000s of different generative AI vendors (including Microsoft and Google) are now engaged in an AI arms race.

Perhaps I ought to be more fearful, but this seems a waste of energy, given that the rise and dominance of AI is all but inevitable. Perhaps I should spend my spare time retraining as an AI programmer rather than dicking around in Shakespearean. And yet, if this bonkers technology is so advanced as to render the future entirely unpredictable, how can I (or anyone else) venture to determine a viable career path? 

Indeed, it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that iambic pentameter will make a comeback. Like I said, all bets are off.

Photo by Rock’n Roll Monkey on Unsplash