Interviews on AI

To be creative is simultaneously one of the easiest and hardest things to be. It’s rewarding to pursue a passion that is part of your being. It’s easy because it’s natural – to work in the arts is to breathe in the first warm breeze of spring as the cold begins to retreat. However, it is also choking on that very same breath, unable to inhale the oxygen you need to survive. 

To work as a creative in a humanities field is often intimidating, invalidating, and exhausting. Much like Sisyphus pushing his rock up the hill, we must work relentlessly every day to feel secure and to hold that validation we so desperately crave. 

Humanities fields are becoming more and more competitive every year as society adapts to newer technologies. Many professionals in the humanities already feel threatened by the vast competition that is made up of their fellow creatives. Now there is an even greater competitor that they cannot see and have tried to fight against; one that works faster for a much lower salary, and as some might say, more efficiently.

Artificial intelligence, commonly abbreviated as AI, is a technology that has not only begun to affect our workplaces, but also our day-to-day lives. From social media algorithms, to the speech-to-text feature on our phones, or to chatting with a virtual customer service associate, we encounter and work with AI every day whether we realise it or not.

Because of this familiarity with AI that one may not be aware they retain, learning to work with AI in one's workplace is easier and more beneficial than we have been previously led to believe.

Nonetheless, the rise of AI software in the humanities has many wondering about their own job security and validity. According to IBM, “The release of ChatGPT seems to mark a turning point. The last time generative AI loomed this large, the breakthroughs were in computer vision, but now the leap forward is in natural language processing (NLP)” (IBM, 2024).

Professionals in these fields, who already have jobs and years of experience, are wondering what the future will look like for them. Students and young professionals new to the humanities have fears that run even deeper: are we needed anymore? Are there jobs for us to pursue? How do we secure a position in an industry that is rapidly modernising itself?

Not only are we still needed, but there is a vast variety of ways in which professionals in the humanities are learning to adapt and work with AI to enhance their work.

We as humans have always had an instilled fear of artificial intelligence. The popularity of films such as The Matrix and I, Robot, and TV shows like Westworld, this fear seems unavoidable. Humans have always feared what they do not understand; being raised during the rise of technology has led our generation to fear AI. One frequently hears in the media, or reads on the internet, that “machines are going to take over the world.” We are warned almost every day of the dangers of AI. However, what many don’t realise is that AI is far from replacing humans. In fact, it needs us to succeed in its own processes and jobs. 

To better understand how humanities industries have changed with the rise of AI, I interviewed two professionals currently working in humanities roles to find out the following: how have they seen their industry change? How do they think we can work with AI to improve it? How is the human touch evolving itself to remain vital in the humanities? What can we do to ensure our importance as creatives? 

Nick Dennis, the Deputy Head Academic at Kellett, the British International School in Hong Kong, spoke with me about his role as chair of the school’s Digital Strategy Group which focuses on AI and communication. He believes that not only are there ways to ensure employment, but also to ensure that we remain critical to the creative process. “Artificial intelligence can perform tasks, not jobs. There’s a difference there. That’s the direction things are moving in – any technological change will change the nature of the work that we do: we have to adapt,” he stated. He then used previous technological advances as a comparison: “Calculators changed accountancy; they allowed people to do their own calculations, but they didn’t eradicate our need for accountants.” 

This example is similar to the rise of AI in the humanities: artificial intelligence can take over or replicate certain tasks that some people do; the smaller things, for example, such as prompt generating or proofreading. What it cannot do is produce original, meaningful content. “A writer is more than producing content,” Dennis told me. “A writer edits, creates ideas, talks to people. That’s what makes a job. AI can be successful at doing some of those things, but not all of them – we need humans.” 

"It can be successful at doing some things, but not everything – we need one another."

As someone who works with and has seen the effects of AI firsthand, Dennis’ words are reassuring for those looking to turn their passion into their career. In fact, AI can become a creative assistant in many ways, helping us to improve our workflow and artistic capacity. Though the term “artificial intelligence” was coined almost fifty years ago (IBM, 2024), it has evolved and grown into something far more capable than it started off as. 

Dennis spoke on potential ideas in which AI can become useful for creatives rather than harmful. As AI adapts alongside us, he stated that it may soon be capable of more intricately enhancing our own work: “[If you were to] feed an AI prompter all of your drafts, and ask it to write something in your writing style, it could help the creative process by giving you the structure for a new piece. [To lay the groundwork for] creative work but not actually be the creative output itself, that can be a good thing.” This is just one example of how creative products could potentially progress and change because of the strengthening relationship between machine and human. By working with AI, we can nurture a previously overlooked partnership between humans and computer programmes. 

Yen Ooi, a postgraduate lecturer at the University of Westminster, PhD candidate, and published author of fiction, non-fiction, and video game writing, works as an annotator for a company that builds a large language module (LLM). “They’ve given all the writers a fancy title,” Ooi laughed as she explained exactly what her job entails. As the engineers and researchers decide what stage the LLM is in, they need a specific type of content to teach it – this is where Ooi comes in. “They tell the annotators, ‘Do fifty word summaries with this specific data,’ essentially teaching the model, training it,” she said. “If they like the training, they implement it into the model and give it an ‘update.’” 

Yen also spoke candidly about what kinds of jobs artificial intelligence is introducing within the writing business: “If you look around for writing jobs [right now], you see a lot of LLM work,” she explains. “I think what will happen in the future is companies or writers, or anything that needs writing, basically – people will go to AI for a first draft. That helps because then [the writer] can take that apart and rewrite it.” Working with AI as a writer is possible and more effective in many ways. Whether it be professionally or creatively, AI can save a writer precious time that would have been spent previously on smaller things, such as generating ideas It also allows them to maximise their time so they can focus on the more human side of things, such as narrative drives, the audience of the piece, and more. 

"Writers will have to use words, and use them well."

Yen also provided advice for postgraduate students hoping to begin working in the writing industry: “At the moment, I don't think we can fight it and I don't think we can ignore it. We need to grow with it. I think the skill that a writer has is how to manipulate words to get a sort of outcome. The future of writers will have to be [using] words and, [using] them well. Understanding grammar, understanding how to drive a narrative, [being aware of] different audiences, readers, how things affect people psychologically, et cetera.” To take this innate skill that writers have and learn how to coordinate with an AI programme can create innovative and original work. Going forward, it will be necessary for humans and machines to learn to work together.

Yen also spoke about the importance of the human touch: “You can spot really quickly if companies use just AI for their editing – it’s terrible. The thing about technologies nowadays is we can’t be totally reliant on them.” The humanity that we provide to a creative or professional project is imperative to the continued success of the writing business. She gives another example of an AI programme, UX writing. UX writing, by definition, is the “practice of creating text in a user experience” (The Interaction Design Foundation). Looking at a company as popular as McDonald’s, Yen used the example of their logo: “‘I’m lovin’ it’ versus ‘Loving it I am’ – that's the difference.” This is why writers are, and always will be, necessary. They can read an audience, comprehend what is trying to be said, and say it conversationally, originally, and in a way that informs and stays with the reader. 

The knowledge and insight Yen and Nick both provide is capable of turning our previous perception of AI on its head. It’s not something to fear; rather, it’s something to anticipate. Like all new technologies, it’s not eradicating our previous ways of life – it’s just changing the way we work. Of course, there are limits to such things. As Yen said, “We tend to swing like pendulums. We go too far and realise, ‘Oh, crap, that didn’t work, let’s pull things back [and try again].’” It’s a comforting and encouraging thing to hear Yen and Nick’s unwavering confidence in the stability of our jobs and positions. “At the end of the day, as with all the arts, we learn the rules so we can break them,” Yen reflected. Why should we be afraid of change? 

Artificial intelligence is adapting to work with us, just as we are adapting to work with it. Working with AI software is already a beneficial and collaborative process for humanities professionals in many different ways. We may find that there will be a lot of trial and error over the next few years, but ultimately it will enhance the nature of our work, not erase our work in its entirety.

References:

IBM (2024). What is artificial intelligence (AI)? Available at: https://www.ibm.com/topics/artificial-intelligence (Accessed 11 April 2024).

The Interaction Design Foundation. (n.d.). What is UX Writing? Available at: https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/topics/ux-writing# (Accessed 11 April 2024).