On the 24th February this year, hundreds of excited children queued up waiting to see a spectacularly advertised ‘Willy Wonka Experience’ in Glasgow, Scotland. Their parents had paid the princely sum of £35 per ticket and all were expecting great things!
The reality however was that the website promoting the “immersive experience” had been largely generated by AI. The resulting chaos shows us how AI can be misused and even be used to deceive.
Why attend a business writing course, when AI will do the writing for you?
Recent AI mistakes show that planning, drafting and editing your documents, still needs the human touch to ensure clarity of message:
- “Horrifying Willy Wonka experience captures the planet’s attention – the AI-generated images used to advertise the experience were littered with spelling mistakes.”
- “Academics apologize after AI makes false accusations – a team of academics from Australia apologize after Google’s Bard AI chatbot makes a number of damaging accusations about the Big Four consulting firms…”
And more… Source: https://tech.co/news/list-ai-failures-mistakes-errors
While AI can enhance and assist the writing process, the human element of writing – creativity, critical thinking, personal expression and emotional intelligence – remains irreplaceable.
Learning to write well, equips you with a toolkit of skills that are valuable across all areas of life, ensuring that you don’t just become a consumer of AI-generated content – you become informed, critical and creative participants in a rapidly evolving digital world.
So what does AI miss?
Learning how to write, despite the advances in AI, remains a fundamental skill for several reasons:
- Critical thinking and creativity: writing fosters critical thinking and creativity. It’s not just about stringing words together; it’s about organising your thoughts, articulating arguments and crafting narratives.Using a proven writing process, like Writing Dynamics™, ensures you’ll think critically about your message, audience and objectives. It helps you plan your documents with your audience in mind by teaching you clustering, a practical planning tool that ensures all ideas are captured effectively, on one page. Through exercises and discussions, it teaches how to analyse complex situations, anticipate challenges and devise effective communication strategies – skills that go beyond mere text generation.
- Clarity, brevity and impact: effective writing is crucial for clear communication, at work, in education and at home. The ability to convey ideas clearly and persuasively is invaluable, AI tools can assist in the process, but they cannot fully understand or capture the nuances of human communication.
- Personal expression: writing is a deeply personal mode of expression. It enables individuals to convey their unique perspectives, emotions and experiences – this is what speaks to your audience, making your document more memorable. While AI can generate content, it lacks the personal touch, context and depth that come from human experience.
- Adaptability and versatility: writing skills are transferable and adaptable to various contexts and technologies. As AI evolves, the ability to guide, edit and enhance AI-generated content with human insight and expertise remains essential.
- Emotional intelligence and empathy: writing nurtures empathy and emotional intelligence. It requires considering different perspectives and connecting with readers on an emotional level – capabilities that AI currently cannot replicate fully.Writing Dynamics™ uses a proven system, developed by award-winning writers – it ensures you increase the impact of your writing on the reader: by selecting an appropriate writing strategy, by maintaining the reader’s attention, and by using techniques that highlight the benefits of the subject to the reader.
But AI is quick, saves me time (and headcount)
While AI can be a valuable tool in various aspects of writing a draft document, there are several reasons why combining the Writing Dynamics™ process with using AI can be beneficial:
- Customisation and contextual understanding: AI may generate generic content based on input, but it lacks the ability to understand the specific context, tone and audience requirements – essential in business communication. Writing Dynamics™ ensures you think ‘audience’ and allows you to tailor your writing to specific situations, ensuring messages are clear, concise and appropriate.
- Feedback and Improvement: when you attend Writing Dynamics™ you’ll receive personalised feedback from instructors, implementing the process on a document you’ve written and one you are planning to write. You’ll apply the process, learning how to effectively use it across various formats, from emails and reports to presentations and social media posts, ensuring versatility in your writing skills. This feedback loop fosters continuous learning and refinement of your writing skills, which AI-generated content does not provide.
- Digital literacy and ethical use: understanding how to write and create a document is essential for critically evaluating and ethically using AI-generated content. While AI can assist in drafting content, humans are responsible for ensuring the accuracy, integrity and ethical standards of the final output. As AI becomes more integrated into our lives, being able to discern the quality, bias and accuracy of AI-generated texts is crucial. Remember your brand and your reputation is on the line.
- Team collaboration and cohesion: Writing Dynamics™ provides an opportunity for team members to collaborate, align their messaging and maintain consistency in communication across the organisation – by all using the same writing process. This collaborative process fosters cohesion, teamwork and a shared understanding of organisational goals and values.
There is no disputing, AI can be a valuable tool for generating draft content – but it performs poorly when planning and editing the document.
Writing Dynamics™ is different to other writing training
Instead of doing everything at once, you’ll learn tools to separately:
- PLAN using creative and structured thinking.
- DRAFT quickly and effectively.
- EDIT for impact!
Writing Dynamics™ is delivered worldwide – online or face-to-face as:
- Public workshops in major UK cities. View the full Writing Dynamics™ public calendar.
- In-house training for groups and teams. Enquire here.
- Trainer accreditation, for when you’ve got a lot of people to train. Find out more.
Find out more at www.indigobusiness.co.uk/wdyn
