Ask: How will it affect me?
To go deeper, read this essay by the British journalist Sean Thomas. A sampling:
Putting on my pointy hat of pessimism, here’s how I think it will pan out. The machines will come for much academic work first — essays, PhDs, boring scholarly texts (unsurprisingly it can churn these out right now). Fanfic is instantly doomed, as are self-published novels. Next will be low-level journalism, copywriting, marketing, legalese, tech writing; then high-level journalism will go, along with genre fiction, history, biography, screenplays, TV drama, drama, until eventually a computer will be able to write something like Ulysses, only better. The only prompt will be “write a long amazing novel on whatever.”
For [us writers], the verdict is bad, sad and terminal. Five thousand years of the written human word, and 500 years of people making a life, a career and even fame out of those same human words, are quite abruptly coming to an end.
For [us writers], the verdict is bad, sad and terminal. Five thousand years of the written human word, and 500 years of people making a life, a career and even fame out of those same human words, are quite abruptly coming to an end.
Guess I can get some real work done now.