What AI can do for you (and what it sucks at)

By: Lee Wochner

I got my first job, at age 14, because I was already good at using two tools:  the telephone, and the IBM Selectric II — a typewriter.

Because I had already mastered those tools, having exactly that model of typewriter at home and conducting interviews over the phone there for the fan press while typing notes, I got hired by the Atlantic City Press to take classified ads Monday through Friday from 5 to 9 p.m. The workforce for that shift was five “middle-aged” ladies (they were probably in their 30s) and this 14-year-old high-school runt.

Those were tools, and Artificial Intelligence is a tool.

What I brought to those tools are the same things I bring to this new tool:  good grammatical skills and some human intelligence and personality.

I share this by way of saying:  AI is a useful tool but it’ll never replace Einstein, Edison, Curie, Tolstoy, or you.

Let’s look at writing.

Here’s what AI can do reasonably well:

  • Summaries
    • Books, articles, meeting notes, etc.
    • AI is great at condensing long info into something short and digestible
  • Product /service descriptions  and some elements of marketing
    • Short, catchy content with specific goals.
    • E.g., e-commerce blurbs, ad headlines, social media captions.
  • Technical Documentation
    • Code documentation, how-to guides, manuals.
    • Super consistent and can pull from lots of examples.
  • Emails (if they’re templates)
    • Outreach, follow-ups, customer service, etc.
    • Formal or casual, depending on tone.
  • Blog posts  and articles (first drafts)
    • Especially when the topic is well-defined.
    • You can use AI to create a structure, fill in ideas, and rewrite. (But you’ll have to rewrite.)
  • Scripts (for YouTube, podcasts, training videos)
    • Structured and informative or entertaining formats.
    • You’ll need to tweak it for tone and length.
  • Code (and explanations)
    • Writing functions, debugging, or even entire scripts.
    • It’s helpful for learning and building quickly.

I think of most of this as, say, framing a house, which is the sort of thing almost anyone can do under proper supervision. But if you want a design for the house, you want an architect. The architect is an expert.

Here are the things AI cannot really do:

  • Have real emotions or consciousness
    • It doesn’t feel anything. It can describe emotions, mimic emotional tone, or say “I understand,” but it’s lying — because it doesn’t actually understand or care.
    • Real writing? That involves transmitting actual understanding and caring. Stephen King might give you the shivers or Maya Angelou might lift you up — AI can at best try to mimic those sensations.
  • Have lived human experience — or strategic expertise
    • Without memories, physical senses, or lived culture, AI fails at anything that relies on personal insight, cultural context, or real-life moments. Reading AI attempts at personality is like eating the cardboard cereal box instead of the cereal.
  • Think abstractly like a human
    • What separates humans from animals is our ability to dream and to extrapolate. Animals have emotions, but cannot extrapolate. AI doesn’t even have emotions.
    • Abstract concepts drive intellectual pursuits. AI will never match Picasso, or Clay Christensen, who developed the concept of disruptive innovation. Descartes’ observation that “I think, therefore I am” would be impossible for a machine.

AI will also never…

  • Be mortally or ethically aware — and that’s important
  • Understand context fully. Sarcasm, subtle implications, shifts in tone or hidden meaning… these things are important, no?
  • Create completely original ideas.

And AI will never be…

  • You.

AI will never replace your voice, your taste, your quirks, your intuition, your weird ideas, your brilliant insights, your passion, your dedication, or anything else that truly makes you you.

So:  How best to use AI?

Use it to lay groundwork, to help you think about structure, to perform research. Use it like an assistant, because that’s what it is:  an assistant. It can save you time and spur your thinking. (Which is exactly how I used it in writing this article.)

But the actual genius being assisted? That’s you.

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