Substack Co-Founder Says AI Will Never Replace Writers
If the computer is a bicycle for the mind, AI will be a jumbo jet, says Substack, the American online platform that provides publishing, payment, analytics, and design infrastructure to support subscription newsletters.
In response to the growing anxiety of writers, challenged by new technology like AI, co-founder of Substack Hamish McKenzie, has authored an article on how he views AI titled “The AI revolution is an opportunity for writers (the human kind).”
In it, he notes that indeed AI has become a powerful tool, with ChatGPT authoring essays that would take professionals several days to write in just several minutes.
“Given this set of conditions, writers—and all other culture makers whose livelihoods will in some way be touched by AI—are entitled to feel worried and perhaps even a little pissed. After all, these new machines are trained on a vast corpus of work produced by humans,” he writes. Even more so since many humans have never managed to properly monetize their work which makes it all the more frustrating.
Yet, does all this spell doom and gloom?
Substack’s co-founder says no.
“While AI will take over the rote and the replaceable, it will give superpowers to people doing original work, while at the same time increasing the value of that work,” he claims.
McKenzie adds that its service already offers image generation and audio transcription tools we’ve already built, to a future where a single writer can make a feature film, and beyond.
Now, according to him, the time has come to make sure that human users benefit from the power of AI. In his view, the surge in AI-led content production will lead to a “tremendous” need for cultural connection, i..e human interaction.
“These relationships help us make sense of the world, and to know where to direct our attention. Their value will dramatically increase. Culture will become the most important and fastest-growing slice of our global domestic product,” he says.
In support of his thesis,McKenzie notes that this is not the first time a major development like this takes place, referring to the 19th century industrial revolution. Before it, over two-thirds of a country’s labor force had to work in agriculture. After the domain was subject to automation, that share fell to less than 5%.
“And yet we have abundant food and more jobs to do than ever. Today, many people have the kind of work and prosperity that their great-grandparents could only have imagined,” he notes, adding that AI will never be able to replace the dynamic that is most central to Substack: human-to-human relationships.
Do you agree with McKenzie?
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