As artificial intelligence (AI) has revolutionized industries and taken over jobs, writers the world over (including yours truly) have taken solace in the fact that writing is about more than raw science. Writing is a skill that takes a more nuanced understanding of communication and human thought. As a result, many writers have felt their jobs were relatively safe.
It appears that the writers at Cards Against Humanity (CAH) are putting that theory to the test. CAH is a tongue-in-cheek card game where players fill-in-the-blank with politically incorrect, risqué or offensive statements to complete the sentence. As its latest Black Friday stunt, CAH has pitted its writers against a true, neural network AI borrowed from OpenAI.
According to the CAH website, “over the next 16 hours, our writers will battle this powerful card-writing algorithm to see who can write the most popular new pack of cards. If the writers win, they’ll get a $5,000 holiday bonus. If the A.I. wins, we’ll fire the writers.”
No one really believes CAH will fire its writers if they lose. Nonetheless, it’s probably a good thing that at the time of writing the human writers were winning by roughly $1,100 indicating that, perhaps, AI taking over writing jobs is still a long way off. Although, to be fair, CAH believes the shift is inevitable.
One of the questions in their FAQ is: “Do I need to worry about AI taking my job?”
Their answer: “Basically if you do anything other than hoard capital, you’re going to end up plugged into the Matrix and the robots will harvest your body’s electricity.”
Guess it’s time for this writer to start looking for cool Neo-inspired sunglasses and trench coat.
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