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Comment by lacrimacida | Hacker News Reader

When it comes to content generation I think chatGpt is a gamechanger, more and more publications will convert most of their stuff into LLMs. It’s quite terrible for the consumer in the long term. For example I was reading news a few days about National Geographic gutting their writer staff. Get ready for a lot of mindless content sometimes vetted by humans, sometimes not..

This will affect us all, in tech or outside tech.

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Just as companies use layoffs at other companies as a smokescreen to do their own layoffs, "we're using AI" has become an excuse to cut back on expensive writers.

In fact, I'd bet that the opposite will happen WRT AI-generated content: individual writers with personality will become even more in-demand. ChatGPT isn't going to fake a "personality" anytime soon.

Yeah, as a professional writer that is somewhat acclaimed (my domain has a lot of karma here) I'm not worried about ChatGPT. It's going to be a rough transition, but I feel that my genuinely having the skills not only means I can use the tools better (ex: I have a conversation snippet character that is a container for LLM generated stuff), but also use them for the really important things: LinkedIn post writing. It works so well at LinkedIn posts, which is really sad. https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7080465...

The expectation on what you produce will change though, there will be pressure to create more for less. Not saying all content creators will lose their jobs, but many will and the remaining will have to do more work. Oh well, with the provided tools, but still…

> individual writers with personality will become even more in-demand.

The demand may be there, but discoverability will be very difficult with so many people already in that arena. The Awl and Splinter News was an online publication made up of ex-Gawker people, exactly the kind of independent voice you'd think people would want to read. And they did, just not in enough volume for those sites to ever make money. And now they're both dead.

I'm not sure why ex-Gawker people are "exactly the kind of independent voice you'd think people would want to read." I certainly wouldn't describe them that way.

I was thinking more along the lines of Substack, but with a larger dose of "influencer" personality-driven brands.

Ex-Gawker meaning people who were tiring of trying to write proper articles while also toeing the gossip blog line. The concept is no different than any other person that writes for a publication but wants editorial independence.

I feel like most content generation has been going toward lowest common denominator for a while.

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