Some early-adopters are using ChatGPT, GPT-3, and other text generators to write business emails, understand class material, find creative inspiration, and more
What makes the pattern durable rather than a curiosity is the measurement that followed: a mid-2023 study found [[a:842109|ChatGPT helped writers complete press releases and reports 40% faster, with quality scored 18% higher]]. Benedict Evans framed the moment as a step change in AI use cases, with open questions about content generation and tolerance for error — questions this article's classroom and inbox anecdotes put in human terms.
First-order effects
Individual workers — business-email writers, students trying to understand class material, creatives seeking inspiration — gain a free-form drafting partner that sits outside any single workflow, using it ad hoc rather than through employer-provided software.
Second-order effects
Employers watching employees experiment on their own (the WSJ's executives-and-engineers cohort) face pressure to formalize usage policies or sanctioned tools, and SaaS vendors feel GPT-3-style APIs reshaping what their products are expected to integrate.
Third-order effects
If the 40%-faster/18%-better results generalize, written knowledge work reorganizes around an assistant as the default first draft — shifting competitive advantage from raw writing output to judgment over AI-generated content, and raising the error-tolerance questions Evans flagged as unresolved.
The trend: Generative text assistants are moving from novelty experiments by individuals to embedded, measured components of everyday knowledge work.
I spent the weekend playing with ChatGPT, MidJourney, and other AI tools... and by combining all of them, published a children's book co-written and illustrated by AI! Here's how! 🧵 https://twitter.com/...
This is SO wrong. My sister recently illustrated a children's novel for a big publisher for just around $3000. 70 illustrations + cover art. What do you think this technology will do to human artists working in this field who are already super underpaid and overworked? https://tw…
ChatGPT, and many other automation tools, might not go mainstream anytime soon. But for sure, they will start making a marked difference in employee performance at work. The new divide will be among those who smartly augment their capabilities with tech and those that don't!
ChatGPT and generative AI are already changing people's lives. We talked to some of them. They're also misleading people, repackaging others' work as their own, and spewing society's worst stereotypes as fact. Our new dive into tech's next big thing: https://www.washingtonpost.co…
As a children's author/illustrator, it is saddening to see these books bc, apart from the ethics of AI and stolen artwork, kids deserve better!!! I'm tired of people who see kidlit as an easy get-rich-quick scheme and putting in the absolute minimal effort into their books https:…
A silver lining of LLMs like #ChatGPT: More than mere “stochastic parrots,” they enable people with disabilities to communicate more accurately. https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ...
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New: Stumbling with their words, some people let AI do the talking. ChatGPT is saying all the things people wish they could say to their clients, landlords, girlfriends and kids. It's also a great cheating tool, secretly racist and often deceptively wrong https://www.washingtonpo…