“Ultimately, AIs will dematerialize, demonetize and democratize all … services, dramatically improving the quality of life for 8 billion people, pushing us closer towards a world of abundance.” – Peter Diamandis

Well, wouldn’t that be nice?

We’re all talking about AI right now, and how these tools could affect our classrooms, student’s work, and our materials. Generally speaking, it seems that people either adopt a ‘stop it all costs’ or a ‘it’s coming whether we like it or not, so we might as well embrace it’ stance. You might notice that I haven’t included a ‘I love it!’ stance because I don’t see a lot of that from users on the ground in our field, only from enthusiasts like Diamandis.

The main risk, from a materials writer’s point of view, seems to be that we will no longer be required to craft materials. Instead a prompt engineer at the publishing company will be able to quickly create adequate lessons for a fraction of the price. It won’t just be the writers who are the victims of this, and the editors, illustrators, graphic designers and photographers who are part of the creation of these materials will also be replaceable through this process, presumably by the same custom GPT, designed by the publisher with this express purpose of coming up with the whole package. I think that this is highly likely to happen, sadly. I think that Diamandis could be right, it’s entirely possible for AI tools to lift workers out of the drudgery and liberate us (my work is not drudgery, but let’s be honest, for the vast majority of people, it is), but right now in 2024, it seems endemic in our ‘what the market wants, the market gets’ era. 

But while this is unavoidable, in my view there is another, concurrent reality that could emerge. I can also see a reality where materials writers are no longer reliant on publishers to market and distribute our lessons. The fact that we, the specialists, have created them is in itself a marketing device that would be attractive to many teachers and students. “These lessons were written by a real teacher for your students! Not AI generated! Authentic, expert, human made materials!” Self-publishing is already increasingly popular and I can only see that getting easier. We could use the tools that could have been turned against us to do the things that we currently rely on publishers for, such as marketing plans and materials, distribution, as well as graphic design, illustration, photography and editing.

Now, and I want to make this very clear, I do not see this as a desirable situation. I’m not arguing that this should happen. I like working for publishing companies and I do not want to put editors, graphic designers, photographers and illustrators out of work. I like working with a team of people and how that leads to diverse viewpoints. I don’t want to work alone. 

If AI is going to replace us as I believe it will to some extent, then we have to be ready to use AI to our advantage too. Passively waiting for the inevitable is only going to speed up our demise.