With the massive leaps in the AI text and image-generating space, there’s a growing concern about whether AI will take jobs in the near future.
Blogging, which is a heavily writing-dependent job, seems to be among the first career paths that AI will destroy. Or will it?
Today’s AI will not replace bloggers. This is mainly because the AI language models aren’t capable of adding value. They repeat things that are already said on the internet. Because of the lack of unique angles, original research, and expertise, there’s AI cannot outperform human bloggers. At least not yet.
In this post, I’ll talk about the main reasons why today’s AI cannot replace bloggers and what it would take for it to do so.
1. AI Cannot Think
AI is still far from being capable of thinking.
Today, AI language models like ChatGPT are merely mathematical models that take an input and return output.
When you ask AI a question, it predicts the output based on the training data it has seen.
One way to think of an AI like ChatGPT is that it’s a blurry image of the internet. It kind of remembers everything it has learned and knows how to put it in its own words.
But AI has no idea of whether it is right or wrong. It’s just a statistical coincidence that it gets facts right. If it makes a mistake, it does it in a convincing manner that’s hard to distinguish.
2. AI Doesn’t Provide Value
The most important aspect of writing blog posts that rank high is providing value.
A successful blog post is like a small business that solves a problem through unique angles, research, experience, and expertise.
This is what AI cannot do.
Let’s say you want to write a review of Photoshop that ranks high on Google.
Surely, anyone can do it in an hour or two given all the great resources there are. But by doing it this way you don’t bring anything new to the table. Instead, you repeat what’s already been told—this brings no value and won’t be successful in the long run.
Unfortunately, this is exactly what AI does. It repeats what it has learned but doesn’t “add to the internet”.
A truly valuable Photoshop review would be written by someone who has:
- Used the tool.
- Used alternative tools.
- Been in the industry.
But because AI is a mathematical model, it cannot use Photoshop or have experience in the industry. It has to rely on what others have said.
3. AI Cannot Adapt to Trends Well
Because AI doesn’t freely roam around like we humans do, it cannot adapt to trends as well as we do.
Before AI is aware of a trend, someone needs to teach it. In other words, there needs to be informed about that topic or trend before AI can put it in its own words.
Overnight trends come and go—today’s AI will always lag behind the curve.
4. AI Lacks Knowledge and Expertise
Because AI is not conscious, it cannot experience things the way humans do. AI doesn’t really know anything—it’s a model that predicts outputs.
AI cannot have opinions, knowledge, or expertise. It only relies on what people have told it. This gives a nice advantage to a human blogger.
5. AI Doesn’t Build Communities
AI is not a human and is thus not relatable. If AI was a blogger, it cannot build relationships or communities with its readers.
Surely, AI can answer questions, make up stories, and sound a lot like a human. But it cannot jump on calls, shoot videos of itself talking from experience, and so on.
6. Bloggers Teach AI
AI writing algorithms are trained by feeding billions of web pages into them. A large portion of these web pages is written by bloggers, journalists, and researchers.
If AI was to take over writing jobs, there would be no new information added to the internet. Thus, there would be no one to feed new information to the AI.
If this was the case, AI could only talk about past events and share learnings from the time before it took over.
But Don’t Celebrate Just Yet…
Even though today’s AI isn’t capable of replacing bloggers, no one knows what the future holds.
One thing is for sure: AI is taking baby steps and there will be massive developments in the next years or decades to come.
If humanity ever reaches AI that’s conscious, then there is much more to worry about than bloggers losing their jobs.
Thanks for reading. Happy blogging!