Shel Israel writes : 🔗 How ChatGPT Will Change the World, Lower My Fees and Raise My Revenue

I get what he is saying - except I don’t.

His argument centers on his unit price dropping - but he will write more.

Back of an envelope calculations. Let’s say he increases his output ten fold and reduces his price by EIGHTY PERCENT.

This would double his revenue. All good nay … all great!

But if this works - he isn’t the only writer that will do this.

And if that changes broadly across the writing industry, that 80% will likely have to fall further - unless there is substantial differentiation.

The differentiation will vary - but will become essential. (It’s essential now - but that’s a different story.)

People that write ‘content’ have a problem.

The problem is that if you write content - how do you differentiate?

I’ve written about it before here and here and here and here and … well - you get the picture.

This is why for the longest time I keep repeating (sorry - I am going to have to quote myself) … though Will Arnett at least has caught on and so has Chris Lockhead

Content is a horrible, generic, cheap, anything will do kind of word. Which is why ‘content has no value. It is in the best interests of buyers of our sweat, labour, thought and time to keep price down. But our costs are not kept down. So our earnings suffer. And they are suffering badly.

Job One - Stop making content.

Job Two - Start writing blogs, articles, white papers, posts, scripts, essays …

That’s how bad it is getting .. and not just in New Zealand.

Bernard Hickey reporting that New Zealand has declared a 🔗 National emergency for Gabrielle. The massive storm and floods two weeks ago where 4 people died did NOT have the same focus. In fact, it’s only been enabled twice before. Though in fairness, the Hawke’s Bay earthquake in 1931 would have resulted in it being declared a National Emergency had there been such an organization and in later years, with other earthquakes, it was the Department of Civil Defence that was called into action.

That all said, these challenges do seem to be accelerating.

“Cole needed a letter of recommendation recently so he turned to an old family friend who, in turn, used ChatGPT to generate the letter, which he thought was remarkably good.”

🔗 … which in turn prompted Bob Cringely to write this article.. It has all the usual caveats we see in article after article, although this time talking about how ChatGPT was used to generate that letter of recommendation. In Bob’s opinion it lacked the important personal touch. All good, not wrong.

He then writes .. without irony that I can see

“Even if ChatGPT was allowed access to my old friend’s email boxes, it would only learn about his style and almost nothing about Cole, with whom he’s communicated, I think, twice.”

He doesn’t explain how someone without AI help could write a food personal recommendation for someone they have communicated with twice.