Nows and Forevers

We’ve been worried as journalists and writers what artificial intelligence was going to do our jobs that we might be missing another way AI could alter our profession.Meet the AI editor.

I did as I went to post on my blog. Somewhere along the way, WordPress began offering an AI Assistant. I don’t remember seeing it on the iPhone app, where I do a lot of my writing and posting. But it was there as I went through the steps to post on Tuesday afternoon.

AI assistant? Sure, I’ll give it a try.
It’s been a while since I hit up ChatGPT, both because I’m wary and because I would rather spend the time writing instead of playing with the latest shiny metal object. A few months ago, as I chronicled here, I had ChatGPT help me write SEO headlines. The results were, uh, mixed.

I hadn’t thought as much about AI editors as I had about the existential threat posed by AI writers. I’ve already seen algorithms write quarterly earnings and stock stories just as well and more quicker than the average financial journalist like myself. I’ve even come to terms with that happening much more often in the future, which will theoretically free me to do higher-functioning and better journalism.

But it was this week where I realized I had missed how generative AI could transform editing. Instead of asking AI to write like Hemingway or Garcia Marquez, what about asking it to edit like Ben Bradlee or Maxwell Perkins? Now that would be something.

I should say right here that I’ve worked with editors for almost my entire life, and been one for a decade or so myself. My first editor was my mother, a journalist and English teacher, who would take a red pen to my essays and term papers before I submitted them until somewhere in high school I stopped letting her read them. (A fourth-grader should not know proofreading symbols, as I did.) My journalist father tutored me on the skills of being a reporter, but only rarely edited my work.

Get into journalism, as I did as at 18 years old, and you realize quickly the road to newspapering goes through editors. They hire you, they can fire you, and they are your first readers. Some are good and some are great. A handful, in my experience, have been horrible. I’ve been fortunate enough to work with several great journalists, all the way through my career. There’s only been one or two that I haven’t enjoyed.

Some journalists are fine with editors. Others chafe through every sentence and paragraph. I’ve tended toward being the former, especially when I was young and had lots to learn. I went in with my eyes open and a willing heart in my first two professional jobs, one as a copy editor and the other as a reporter. I had technical skills already, thanks to a few journalism courses in college and time on the my college newspaper, the Connecticut Daily Campus. But these men and women tutored me in the finer points of journalism, how to exercise news judgment, and how to be a journalist.

(I’ve thanked some of them but not others. To those editors and reporters, living and dead, who helped shape me: Thank you. I wouldn’t have gotten as far as I did in this business — and I got pretty far — without your guidance.)
I also have tried not to calcify as the decades passed in a career that is just as fun now as it was when I started. What do they call it? Beginner’s mind. While I know more than I ever did, I’ve tried to always make sure that I learn something every day, practice and improve on my craft, and be open to the experiences. (Most days, I succeed.)

Can AI be a good editor? Probably not now. We’ve had spell checkers for a long time, and they’ve saved me plenty of times. There are grammar checkers, both in software and in the cloud, which I haven’t used as much. I’m not too impressed from what I’ve seen. And I’ve avoided letting generative AI take a look at 99% of my writing, because I am skeptical of what it will provide. But I was willing to give it a try.

Here’s what I wrote:

What happened to sriracha?
Wouldn’t you know that when I was getting low on my supply, that rooster-adorned bottle in my fridge, is when the shelves ran dry.
Again. There was a shortage in 2020 due to the pandemic. Now the shortage is back.
I’m not a sriracha addict. But I’ve enjoyed it ever since I saw it a Minnesota noodle bar and gave it a try, back in 2008. I took a mental note to try to find it when I got back to Queens, and I’ve rarely been without it ever since. I even had enough during the pandemic, because in my case, a little sriracha goes a long way.
It wasn’t until I needed it that I found out there was no sriracha to be found, at least not at a reasonable price. The Huy Fong brand, with its distinctive rooster smack dab in the middle of the bottle, runs about $20 where it had been under $5 last year. I like my sriracha, but not that much.
So when I was a Trader Joe’s today, I passed by its version. And dropped it into my cart. What really could be the difference between Huy Fong’s and any others?
Turns out, a lot. I ended up having a veggie dog or two for lunch, dolloping my sriracha along with the mustard. It wasn’t bad. It wasn’t Huy Fong, either. That’s a disappointment for my taste buds. But it’s also very much a first-world problem.

I ran it through the WordPress AI assistant. I was surprised what it came up with.

The post talks about the recent shortage of sriracha and the author’s disappointment in not being able to find their preferred brand. Here are some actions to improve the content:

Include more information about the reasons behind the shortage in 2020 and the current shortage.

Add details about the popularity of sriracha and its impact on consumers.

Provide alternative brands or options to satisfy the craving for sriracha.

Share personal experiences or anecdotes related to sriracha to make the content more engaging.

Consider including some suggestions on how to enjoy sriracha in different recipes or dishes. Remember to source and link relevant articles or resources to support the information provided

Wow, AI, that stings.

Well, not really. I wrote the post in about 5 minutes, first draft and done. That’s what some blog posts are, unlike this one, where it’s taken me the better part of a half hour to draft and redraft and edit. A lot of these suggestions I wouldn’t take just because of the structure of the blog post. I don’t need to explain why the shortage happened; I linked to two stories, without AI telling me. (That’s one of my favorite things to do in writing for the web, linking.) Nor is it my place to talk about sriracha’s impact on consumers, nor alternatives for your Huy Fong fix while the supplies are short. Nor are you going to get recipes from me.

OK, No. 4 does hurt a bit: “Share personal experiences or anecdotes related to sriracha to make the content more engaging.
That’s what I did. So AI either glossed over the anecdote or worse, didn’t think it was engaging enough.

I can’t see, at the moment, how AI is going to replace the workaday editor. There are too few of them now, sadly. But I for one enjoy the interplay between writer and editor, the gut feelings and first-reader views they take, the inspiration or consternation I’ve gotten from the best editors. I think AI is a long way from that.

Don’t you?