The ethics of AI vs. Writers, and how to fix it

Writers, let’s discuss the elephant in the room: the ethics of AI being a writer. This stings hard in two ways:

1. AI is now writing (lots of) things

For years we’ve enjoyed the auto-suggest feature in Google and our texting apps. How handy and convenient it was to start typing out your intent and some magic on the other end predicted what you’re about to say.

Well, the latest LLMs are similar, except their power of prediction is millions of times better than auto-suggest — so much that they can produce pages of intelligible content in mere seconds based on a simple prompt.

AI is indeed intelligent, and to many of us this threatening — because now it’s engaged in complete acts of thinking and writing that only humans could once perform.

For the true writer, writing is a sacred practice and AI feels…well, sacreligious.

2. AI is ruining livelihoods

Not gonna lie, the job market for content and writing jobs (among others) is terrible. Sure, hiring is slowing down and budgets are shrinking due to political and macroeconomic factors, but let’s be honest: AI has much to do with this.

For $20/month, the price of a Claude or ChatGPT subscription, you could in theory replace your entire content team. Surely many companies have done this already, good or bad results notwithstanding.

This level of wholesale downsizing has a triple corrosive effect of 1) dissolving the livelihoods of good writers everywhere, 2) driving down the quality of written content, and 3) driving down the perceived value of writers indefinitely.

Yes, it sucks. Get mad for a minute.

Now, accept this hard truth

If you sell your words, meaning if you get paid to write for a living, you’re part of the free market. And the same free market rules apply: Customers will go to your competitor if it’s cheaper and good enough.

In this case, that competitor is AI.

And mind you, AI is not going away, so you can’t sit this one out.

It’s easy to assume that because you’re a human writer (omg so weird to be saying that), you’ll always be “higher” than the AI writer, and maybe someday you might win.

You may win the moral battle but you won’t win the next contract — unless you pivot. And the pivot is the focus this entire Wordful newsletter.

“Writers: ‘AI steals our craft and our jobs.’”

This pseudo-headline feels wrong and yucky…but only if we let it.

The rules have completely changed so we need to change our rules as well.

Shift your mindset, learn the tools, and put yourself in control of AI. You still have time, but not much.

Only by doing this can you reverse this dystopian funk and rule the market.