Use AI in your business writing, just not on me?

29 Sept

We’re collecting ideas about the use of AI. More specifically, it seems that everyone wants to use AI in their business writing, but no-one wants it used on them. Are we creating writing that no-one wants to read?

Here’s three ideas we’ve come across about why it’s not working well (yet).

#1 It creates workslop and transfers effort to the person who receives it.

#2 Effort is a proxy for value. If there’s no effort, why are we reading?

#3 It’s still dull.

#1 It creates workslop and transfers effort to the person who receives it.

Harvard Business Review calls this ‘workslop’. Using AI to generate an email, summarise a study, or write up an idea, so it sounds plausible, but lacks substance. HBR says: ‘The insidious effect of workslop is that it shifts the burden of the work downstream, requiring the receiver to interpret, correct, or redo the work. In other words, it transfers the effort from creator to receiver’.

This, apparently, has an effect on productivity and collaborative spirit. Your time-saving tool means more work for the receiver, which makes them resentful and reduces the, usually positive, effects of working together. It ‘exacts a toll on the organization’ says HBR.

We need to re-position AI in business writing. Leaders (for it is they who read HBR) need to frame AI as a collaborative tool, not a short cut. For HBR, this means ‘using AI to accelerate specific outcomes with specific usage’. So it’s about standards. We need to ‘uphold the same standards of excellence for work done by bionic human-AI duos as by humans alone’.

Is this possible? How can we, in practice, use AI successfully, so that it isn’t a make-work for our colleagues?

#2 Effort is a proxy for value. If you’ve made no effort, why are we reading?

The last question at a conference on using AI tools in learning was very revealing. A lecturer asked some students; ‘would you mind if your essays were marked using AI’? They were aghast. They had previously discussed how they use AI to help with their essays; to find research, to summarise long papers, to help with a sentence. But not to actually write, of course. The lecturer was thinking about using AI to check for certain facts in an essay, to identify key points or arguments. A human would also mark it, but after the AI tool.

Both sides thought that AI was very useful. But neither wanted it to think it had been used on them. Why not? If this is such a useful tool, why are people so suspicious of others using it?

This sounds like an effort issue. Learning and understanding an idea requires effort, which needs time and thought. If you think no time or thought has gone into something, why would you read an essay? Or value the marking process? As Jeff Bullas said, ‘we used to believe that effort was a proxy for value. That a piece of writing meant someone had thought deeply’. Now, we’ve no idea, and we feel hoodwinked.

Attitudes towards AI in business writing may change with use of course. We used to be suspicious of writers using Google and Wikipedia. Now googling is so accepted, it’s become part of our vernacular. Not just a company name, but a common verb. There are also some technical solutions coming from the cyber security sector: content credentials. These would create ‘set of “tamper-evident”, cryptographically signed metadata attached to a piece of content at the time of capture, editing or directly before publishing’.

Would you pay for an Insight paper that used AI? Maybe you wouldn’t know… But as Piers Tomlinson asks; “why would you bother to read something from a company that hasn’t bothered to write it properly, or even think about it properly?” (FT Longitude).

#3 It’s still dull.

AI solved a problem. Business writing was boring and slow. Now it’s boring and quick. Win? One of the amazing things about AI writing tools is their speed. We’re impressed that it can churn out something plausible so quickly. So we forget to think about whether it’s useful, interesting or effective.

It’s still dull because AI tools are scraping the internet, where business-speak dominates. So, we end up sounding like any other plausible, but ineffective, corporate blowhards.

Writing at work is about having an effect. Having an effect means getting a decision made, building your reputation (showing your expertise), solving a problem, explaining an idea, winning new business. To do this, rather than just writing to word count, or getting something off your desk, it needs to be interesting.

One way to be more interesting, is to sound like you. Be proud of your own style, use familiar words where possible, think about your reader before you write. It seems as if AI writing tools have tapped into a deep concern that our writing isn’t good enough. At Word Savvy we know AI is quick, but we think you’re better.

You’re better because you already know how to communicate (you do it all the time). You understand context and tone, you know your subject and you have a style. AI makes it quicker, but we’re not yet sure it makes business writing better. That people don’t like it used on them is telling. It shows they want something more from writing. They want to know there is thought and effort behind it.

That said, it’s clear people also feel uncertain about the quality of their business writing. Uncertain enough to want the reinforcement of a tool that seems to provide us with the right words, quickly. The skill is to combine this with your own thought and style. We’d like everyone to feel confident in their business writing. So they can tell their best story, with ease. Then, maybe, you can use AI in your business writing on anyone?

If you’d like to sound more like you and understand writing processes better, give us a call.