Something I'd never seen in my 65 years: a job listing for creative writers. On LinkedIn, hidden among the postings for SEO content creators and B2B strategists, this listing solicited writers of short stories, creative nonfiction, and screenplays, as well as novelists, playwrights, and poets. There was a catch, though. The employer was an AI company, and applicants needed to be award-winning authors or MFA graduates with credits in magazines like The New Yorker or The Atlantic.
For $50 an hour? Absolutely. I accepted the position immediately when a recruiter reached out. Within days, as part of a team of over 400 writers, I was an AI tutor teaching an LLM owned by an infamous billionaire to mimic human creativity.
The work was oddly exhilarating. I threw out ideas for novels that the platform turned into 22-chapter outlines. I wrote an obituary for my 1986 Honda Prelude, Jolly, murdered by a speeding Range Rover on the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. The other writers shared my delight. Similarly graying, experienced, and ambivalent about helping AI drive creative workers toward extinction, they blew up our #tutors Slack channel with self-congratulatory glee over this opportunity to be paid creative writers.
By my second contract, I'd become the factory foreperson. Promoted to lead editor (with an accompanying raise to $65 an hour), my job was to review the work of a constantly growing team. If they rated lower than a four out of five on a second task, I had a decision to make. I could authorize a third try. Or I could have them off-boarded.
Within two weeks, I'd become ruthless, and not only when their work was subpar. If they DM'd me too often on Slack, I would put them on my hit list. If they complained I was taking too long to evaluate them, off with their jobs. On Zoom, their faces, creased with worry lines, and their sycophantic appreciation of the gig, did nothing to spark my compassion.
I quit one week into my third contract. Ghosting seemed more in line with the ethos. While the current zeitgeist is obsessed with AI churning out novels and journalism that replace works written by humans, I left AI work with a more nuanced perspective. AI will never know the awe of watching a Himalayan sunrise, the bliss of falling in love, the fear of impending death.
Yes, it's harder than ever to earn a living writing without entering the AI economy in some form. And while the machines may keep learning to imitate us, I'm more worried about the reverse. I experienced firsthand how easily a time clock, an overwhelming tide of Slack messages, and the rare chance to be paid as a creative eroded my willingness to prioritize people. I watched myself become less humane in a matter of weeks. That unsettles me far more than anything AI might write.