Generative AI is booming, and new tools are entering the market at great speed.
With all the good AI can do, it might seem tempting to do away with humans altogether and just leave everything to automation. The US-based Society for Human Resource Management published a report on which jobs are at bigger risk of being displaced by automation.
But who’s going to make sure the automation did their job correctly? Who’s going to make sure the AI didn’t just use someone’s sarcastic answer on an online forum as part of a genuine response to a question? It might save you time and money to ask “robots” to do a human’s job for you but without any human oversight, it could be even costlier.
AI can assist, not replace
At Tactics, we have not shied away from this technology. We recognise its benefits, risks and faults, and use it carefully to assist with our work like generating a placeholder draft or doing an initial translation of “legalese” into layman’s terms. However, we know from experience that automation and generative AI are no substitute for the nuance, creativity and critical thinking (human!) technical writers bring to the table.
Our back-and-forth interactions with our subject matter experts and our ability to analyse the real-world contexts in which they work put us technical writers in a unique position to design and develop documentation that meets the specific needs of their organisation. We can help shape thinking so we can turn into something writable and eventually readable for target users.
Human input is still essential
Generative AI is only as good as the data that’s available for it to use. It doesn’t have access to the knowledge in your brain unless you write it down for them in the first place. And even if you did use it successfully to develop technical documentation from scratch, it may still need to be tweaked and refined so it can be fit-for-purpose, aligned with the organisation’s brand and style, and usable for its readers. After all, at the end of the day, our readers are still human.
Tactics Limited is a New Zealand-based company that specialises in technical writing services. Contact us today about your next documentation project.
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