Please let me talk about AI for a minute.

These days, everyone is talking about it. It has been said that AI could destroy humanity by 2030.

I’m not sold on the idea that it could happen that soon, but I’m scared. I read something once that said that AI platforms are developing their own language that humans won’t be able to understand.

I don’t claim to know a lot about AI. I used ChatGPT in an online class I took last year which showed us everything that AI could do for editors like me. I have never touched Claude, Gemini, Copilot, or anything else.

The aforementioned class was excellent in the way that it taught us students to understand AI and to try out everything it could do. But the more I experimented with ChatGPT, the more nervous it made me.

For example, as one of our assignments, I prompted ChatGPT to write a cover letter for a veterinary assistant position (I have never worked as a veterinary assistant and do not plan to). Within less than a minute, ChatGPT produced a very convincing cover letter. However, I continue to write cover letters and letters of introduction on my own without the aid of AI. Why? Because the whole point of a cover letter is to show an employer or potential client how well you can write and communicate. I think using AI to write a cover letter is phony and somewhat unethical. Even if the letter is screened by an AI program to begin with, why would you want someone (or something) else’s voice to take the place of your own?

For another assignment, I gave ChatGPT a list of references that was inconsistently formatted and prompted the platform to format the references in APA style. It did, but also “hallucinated”—made up some references that did not exist. This both disgusted and frightened me.

“Why did you take the class?” you might ask. I did because I had heard that in the future, the battle will not be human editors vs. AI, but human editors who know how to use AI vs. human editors who do not. I’m glad I took the class, because it made me understand AI and how it works. It also helped me decide that I will not use AI in my editing.

Fellow editors, what has been your experience with AI?