#PublishingReinvented 154 How Humans Go Beyond AI & The End Of Our Prompt Problems
Prompt engineering, giving instructions to AI bots, is being hailed as the future of work.
That, like most other predictions, is likely to be overtaken by events.
AI tools are becoming increasingly capable. We won’t need to structure our dialogue with AI in arcane ways to get it to follow instructions. AI is learning to understand how we speak and what we want.
But we do need a skill that AI so far has shown little appetite for.
A human skill, linked to our deepest wells of creativity, familiar to writers, which is unrelated to regurgitating what’s already available.
AI can help us write better prompts.
But it won’t help us ask what it doesn’t know, and what no one knows we need to know.
The ability to articulate such problems, to identify, analyze and delineate them, is an overlooked and underdeveloped skill. Problem solving is a much praised skill, exemplified in the adage, “Don’t bring me problems, bring me solutions.”
But diagnosing problems is a higher level skill. It requires asking why, then asking it again and as often as needed. It doesn’t suggest superficial cookie cutter solutions.
It requires intuition, creative leaps and imagination.
The exact processes used to create good literature.
What do you think distinguishes writers from bots?
Don’t hang up your hat
Writers will be needed for a long time. People who don’t focus on repeating the same tired formulas, familiar tropes and well worn solutions, will provide something interesting for us to enjoy, for a long time to come.
Until the robots come to take us away.
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