> It’s pretty clear that LLMs have improved rapidly and have successfully become better writers than the majority of people alive
But that doesn't help much, because for the majority of our writing that's not the issue. LLMs might out do professional writers some day, but without imagination and the desire to sent a message I doubt it will happen any time soon.
Where LLMs are useful is in professional communication, because you're right, an LLM can technically write better than most. The issue is that you need to tell the LLM what message you want to convey, and that's where most people fall down. You also need to be able to critically read back your text, place yourself in the position of the receiver of your text, LLM generated or not. Most people, even those in professional communication can't do that.
I believe the author is on to something, ChatGPT (and others) are perfectly good tools, and can replace most if not all of the shitty communication and writing, including journalism, present in the world. What it can't do is replace the few really good communicators. Communication is hard, not a lot of people can do it and no LLM is going to help you if you can't formulate your message clearly on your own.
There is a darker side of this argument. If something can be killed of by an LLM, is it even worth having? This argument throws a great number of "professionals" under the bus, instantly reducing the value of their jobs to zero. I have family members who do communication for the city, they spend an exorbitant amount of time on flyers, newsletters, Facebook posts and so on, detailing city work, future plan, past events, all that stuff. I doubt anyone really reads it, most of it could probably be written by an LLM, because it always excludes the "why are we doing this", "why should you care" or even "this is expected to impact you in this way". I get a million update from the school about restructuring, hiring of administrators, org-reshuffling... it could all be done by an LLM, but the fact is: No one gives a shit. They just want regular updates from the teachers, and the LLM can't do that.
Communication is hard, and LLMs don't change that, they can only help you write out your message, you have to come up with that yourself, and that's the hard part.