AI and The Terrible, Sterile, Toothless Life of a Professional Writer

Was the old woman right?

I got fired from my first job.

I was 16 and gardening three hours a week for an old woman who lived up the street. The money wasn’t great, but at least the labour was backbreaking.

One afternoon, she watched me struggle to move a giant stone plant holder before casually remarking, “A girl moved that the other day”. I’d like to meet that She-Hulk. She who has the strength to move mountains. I hope wherever she is, she’s defending the planet alongside Earth’s mightiest Avengers.

My boss (see: old woman) called one afternoon asking if I could come early to rake leaves. She likely felt a thin wooden handle connected to a plastic rake head was more aligned with my strength. Unfortunately, my mum didn’t pass on that message because she wanted me to stay home and have dinner first.

I’d gone AWOL, so I was not asked to return. I don’t know if the leaves were raked or if the stone plant holder budged. That immovable object was the end of my gardening career.

Twenty years later, I feel a growing sense of uncertainty about my career as a writer.

I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember

In the fourth grade, I wrote a story for a class project that began with, “It was a dark and stormy night”.

A keen-eyed editor (see: Mum) told me this was known as a cliché and that I should avoid it in my writing. I told her I was using the introduction subversively. From there to my 244-day cancer diary, a decade as a copywriter, and 44+ million online content views later, writing has linked every era of my life like a human centipede.

My early attempts at writing were clumsy, like a drunk trying to fit a set of keys in someone else’s front door. Decades later, I’m still learning the craft. On a good day, I’m still fumbling to get the key in the lock, but at least I’m standing at my own door now.

That’s partly why the feeling of inertia brought on by the advent of AI is so unsettling. To channel a subversive 4th-grade writer, it’s the dark and stormy night of the soul.

The joy I get from moving thoughts from some ethereal, ill-defined place to a page (or screen) reminds me of why I was never cut out to be a gardener. From my personal writing to the professional career I’ve carved out, there’s no way I could still be raking leaves in that old woman’s garden, and not just because she’s probably long dead.

Writing is a reflection of qualities valuable to me. The search for knowledge requires intent and discipline, slowing down instead of speeding up, and spending time finding ways to deliver value, not volume. Nowadays, that formula feels like it’s being flipped violently on its head.

Dramatic recreation of my first job, based on my night terrors

18 months ago, I was thriving in my professional role

Working with a long-time client, I led a small team of writers publishing articles on everything from real estate to synthetic grass. Together, we had a process for researching and content creation, with an editing process — led by me — designed to get the best out of each article and each other.

One day, the company's CEO emailed me about a new project. He wanted to test an AI tool to reduce costs. The less he spent on writers, the wider his profit margin. Sound logic, by any measure. Soon after, this AI tool generated every article from start to finish, and all team members were let go. As the senior and only remaining writer, my job was distilled down to one task: editing AI output to make it sound human.

Each day, I’d open an AI-written Google Doc to fix repetitive, clunky, and formulaic mistakes. Hours of work became a strict 15-minute limit to “humanise” an article that once took at least two hours to research and write from scratch.

If you’ve ever encountered AI text, you already know how repetitive and stiff it can be. Instead of leaning on any form of creativity to birth something new, I was making the same edits over and over. The more work AI generated for me to edit, the more it felt like I was the robot.

Value was out, volume was in.

Snapshot of a LinkedIn message with a writer

This isn’t an anti-AI sentiment

I don’t know if AI will come for any of our jobs. I’m the spaghetti-armed gardener who couldn’t move a stone plant holder, remember? Asking me for advice is like asking my mum to pass on a phone message before dinner (hint: it doesn’t end well).

This isn’t an op-ed about what we should do in the face of changing technology. And it’s not a whiny rant from someone mad the world is changing. It’s more like a eulogy for what’s already been lost.

As someone who’s found comfort and community in writing, it’s clear we’re at a crossroads. Whether technology becomes sufficiently advanced to eliminate human input entirely or remains marginally below acceptable standards doesn’t matter. Both outcomes erase the intrinsic qualities that make writing — and any art form — meaningful.

Without getting too spiritual, there’s a soul in work carefully crafted through passion or love. Until now, that process — creating something that resonates with people — has helped businesses make money. But when profit no longer depends on the process, the former can still exist without the latter.

I’m not saying we should go back to typewriters and telegrams and slapping your love rival with a single white glove. Like I said, this isn’t a rallying cry against AI, and I don’t think innovation should stop. I don’t think it can stop. But I sometimes wonder if we’re ignoring what’s being lost in the haste to celebrate what we’ve found.

What next?

“Fast and convenient” ChatGPT describes the service of a plumber who once required 20+ hours of my time each month. “Immediate results”, the AI tool spits out as I wait for more AI-generated Google Docs and peer out my home office door, seeing convenience and speed throughout my apartment.

A meal delivery box on my kitchen counter. Streaming services pepper my TV’s home screen. A table purchased from Facebook Marketplace — all perfectly practical and shaped by my desire to streamline the most economical and efficient existence. It’s the comfort of modernity; life bent to our collective benefit through the sheer force of technological will.

At times, it feels like a sterile prison of my own making.

Again, this isn’t an attack on AI. It’s an exhale. An acknowledgement that what’s to come might destroy what’s come before. Maybe it already has. AI is simply an enabler. It’s another tool to advance the deal we collectively made — time-saving convenience and simplicity in all aspects of our lives. They sold it to us as freedom, but sometimes it feels so constricting.

I’m not so naive to think AI — and the advancements like it — aren’t a welcome convenience for some. Maybe many. In the words of the guy who wrote Jurassic Park, “To a canary, a cat is a monster.”

And so, we go on. There’s no going back now. Change is constant and I’ll find a way forward. I always have. The garden must be raked around the heavy stone plant holder whether or not you resent the tree for dropping leaves.

I’m just not sure what this new immovable object is trying to tell me.

With love,

New World Porter

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