This is an early morning hot take with more questions than answers. It’s a response to a LinkedIn piece I read over the weekend — Why Technical Writing Needs Its Next DOCX Moment. I don’t agree with a lot of it, though it’s not my intent to call out or criticize the author. I just wanted to push back against an overly rosy “I drank the Kool-Aid” view of AI, especially as it relates to tech comm.
As technical writers, we are not required to jump on bandwagons or cheerlead for every emerging technology. It’s okay to hang back behind the marching band and the baton twirlers. Healthy skepticism and asking questions are part of the job.
Some of my questions are:
- Is AI a “revolutionary game changer” or a glorified automation tool?
- If it’s the latter, if AI is merely a next gen automation tool, what’s wrong with that? Why does every technological advancement need to be “revolutionary”?
- Why aren’t incremental changes or enhancements good enough, as long as they’re beneficial to end users?
Despite the fact that the AI bubble burst earlier this year, the big tech firms are racing to outdo each other to build gargantuan data centers plus dedicated nuclear power plants to keep them going, as they continue to make false promises about the technology. That sounds utterly insane to me.
I am not opposed to AI or any other new technology per se. I just think we need cooler heads to prevail over the more mercenary impulses of the tech industry. Technical writers (in our advocacy for users) and tech journalists (who help shape the larger discourse) can and should inject a healthy dose of critical thinking into the mix.