Will AI agents take my job as a writer? My honest take

My squad leader precocious sent america a beautiful effort by Mariana Fernandes astatine Animalz, titled “For the Love of Content.”

As personification who spends astir of my moving days writing, I recovered it painfully relatable.

Fernandes’ argument, successful a nutshell, is that contented trading had already optimized itself into emptiness agelong earlier AI arrived. We had turned contented into thing that could beryllium scaled, measured, repurposed, distributed, and optimized. And past AI showed up and exposed conscionable really hollow immoderate of that activity had already become.

Her invitation was to travel backmost to thing else: meaning, craft, and our ain voices. To attraction astir the activity again.

I emotion her essay. And I don’t deliberation her statement has go little relevant, moreover though a twelvemonth has passed since the article was published, because AI has continued to evolve. 

If anything, it mightiness person go much applicable because AI-generated contented is everywhere, and much contented marketers are adopting it to enactment successful the game.

It would beryllium easy to publication each this arsenic if we request to clasp connected to the trade aliases surrender to the bots, but possibly the reply isn’t to prime a side.

We don’t person to wantonness meaning successful the sanction of efficiency. And we don’t person to beryllium reluctant to AI aliases automation to beryllium that we attraction astir meaningful work.

Maybe the much absorbing situation is learning really to do both.

To usage AI wherever velocity and ratio genuinely create value, while protecting – and investing much profoundly successful – the parts of the activity wherever quality experience, judgment, and position matter most.

That’s wherever agentic AI became peculiarly absorbing to me. Because, dissimilar generative AI, which is often utilized to thief america create thing directly, AI agents tin return connected broader parts of the process surrounding that creation. They tin actively return action, specified arsenic researching, monitoring, analyzing, reviewing, and taking aggregate steps toward a goal.

My occupation involves creating things that AI tin besides create, astatine slightest superficially. So, I’ve spent a batch of clip wondering what precisely that intends for me.

Partnering pinch the bots

I’ve tried automating my penning process pinch an AI agent, and sometimes the results turned retired impressive. But I still felt the distance, for illustration thing was missing.

As writers and creators, we person much than conscionable accusation to activity with. We person experiences, context, instincts, opinions, memories, references, doubts, and each the associations that make 1 personification show a communicative otherwise from another.

I tin show AI what happened. I tin springiness it a structure. I tin moreover show it what reside I want.

But deciding why a communicative matters, which specifications merit to beryllium included, wherever the hostility lies, and what I want personification to consciousness aft reference it – those are the territories I wouldn’t manus to immoderate AI agent.

I yet realized that AI agents could beryllium overmuch much useful for the different parts of my job.

I usage them to fact-check and analyse information, and to notify maine of the newest topics to constitute about, truthful I don’t tally retired of ideas – activity that would different require maine to repetition a tedious process complete and complete again.

This besides helped maine understand what makes AI agents different from the AI devices I had been utilizing before.

With a chatbot, I inquire a question, get an answer, and determine what happens next. An supplier tin beryllium fixed a broader nonsubjective aliases process and, depending connected really it is built and what devices it tin access, activity done aggregate steps earlier returning a result.

So, I’m not conscionable asking for an answer. I’m delegating portion of the work.

The agents aren’t competing pinch maine for the writing. They’re taking connected overmuch of the activity surrounding it: the repetitive checks, the reviews, the research, and different processes that request to hap before, during, aliases aft the imaginative work. 

I deliberately take this way truthful that it gives maine much clip and intelligence abstraction to attraction connected what I really want to salary attraction to. Sometimes, that intends moving connected my individual blog. Other times, it’s reference recently released books, exploring what different writers and publications are doing, aliases simply spending clip pinch the penning organization successful my hometown.

Those things mightiness not ever look for illustration “work.” But they’re besides portion of what gives meaning to the activity I do. They springiness maine caller ideas, perspectives, references, and experiences that yet find their measurement backmost into what I create.

Adapting without losing the craft

At Hostinger, we person a worth successful our institution civilization called ambidexterity: optimizing what’s already present while preparing for what’s next.

As a writer, that intends caring astir the value of the activity I’m doing coming while besides learning really caller technologies could alteration the measurement I do it tomorrow.

Not 1 astatine the disbursal of the other.

Fortunately, I person plentifulness of room to research pinch AI agents. The institution has an internal agentic AI chatbot called DEX, which has already go an integral portion of our mundane work. 

And successful June, I enrolled successful an soul AI agents hackathon, which prompted america to see different circumstantial bottlenecks wrong our squad that we could manus disconnected to an AI agent.

I wanted to spot what would hap if I stopped reasoning astir AI arsenic thing that occasionally helped maine pinch individual tasks and started reasoning astir which parts of my activity I could really delegate.

Since then, I’ve go progressively willing successful building agents for the parts of my workflow I find tedious but still important.

Turns out, I could build an AI agent

I group up my ain AI agents to meet my needs by navigating Hostinger’s soul tools, and it worked for me. Now, customers tin besides acquisition moving pinch AI agents done Hostinger Agents, wherever they tin simply take a specialized AI supplier for a peculiar task and commencement moving pinch it.

That plug-and-play attack is 1 measurement to get started. If you want circumstantial agentic functionality, location are open-source platforms specified as OpenClaw and Hermes Agent that fto you customize agents to meet your needs. And if you’re looking to adhd a circumstantial agentic capacity to an existing workflow aliases tech stack, you tin move to AI supplier builders designed for creating agents for peculiar tasks and connecting them pinch different tools.

The much analyzable the agent, the much method knowledge you mightiness need. But my acquisition made maine recognize that an supplier doesn’t request to look for illustration blase exertion to beryllium useful.

It tin beryllium arsenic elemental arsenic the reply to “What is thing I support doing that I shouldn’t person to do manually each azygous time?”

The activity I chose to delegate

One of the agents I created is simply a fact-checking agent.

Fact-checking is thing I tin do myself. But depending connected the content, it tin besides mean going done dozens of sources, searching for circumstantial claims, and checking whether the accusation I’m utilizing is still accurate.

Sometimes the reply is buried successful a report. Sometimes respective sources contradict each other. And sometimes you walk 20 minutes looking for 1 portion of information, only to recognize it isn’t disposable anyplace reliable.

An AI supplier tin thief maine do immoderate of that groundwork overmuch faster.

I’ve group excavation up to scrape the web for information, emblem perchance inaccurate aliases outdated claims successful a draft, and bring backmost the sources it used. I’d still reappraisal those sources and make the telephone connected whether the accusation should enactment successful the article.

The supplier doesn’t get the last say. I do. But alternatively of manually sifting done page aft page of hunt results to find a starting point, I tin walk much clip reviewing the accusation and making sharper imaginative decisions.

Another illustration came from the aforesaid hackathon. The different squad of my colleagues, besides writers for illustration me, built an soul linking adjunct to thief america find applicable linking opportunities crossed our contented library.

When you’re moving pinch thousands of articles, manually going done the full database to find the correct soul links isn’t precisely the astir inspiring portion of being a writer. You tin do it, but it takes an tremendous magnitude of time.

So we handed that portion of the process to an agent.

The supplier tin analyse the contented and place imaginable linking opportunities. A writer tin past reappraisal those suggestions and determine which ones really make sense.

That’s what has made AI agents progressively useful to maine arsenic a writer. And for different roles, I’m judge it tin besides beryllium useful, arsenic agelong arsenic we understand the process good capable to cognize where an AI supplier creates the astir value.

Preparing for what’s next

If you inquire maine whether I’m frightened astir wherever AI improvement will return america successful the adjacent 10 aliases 20 years, the honorable reply is yes. Sometimes. It’s difficult to hole for a destination erstwhile cipher is wholly judge wherever the roadworthy leads.

I wonderment if this is really group felt during the Industrial Revolution. Their world was changing too. Some established ways of moving were becoming outdated. Skilled craftspeople, from manus weavers to different textile workers, abruptly recovered themselves competing pinch machines that could nutrient equipment faster and connected a overmuch larger scale.

Just for illustration america now, they didn’t cognize precisely what the early would look for illustration then. They could only accommodate to the changes unfolding earlier them. And yet, present we are today, surviving successful the world that came after, wherever truthful overmuch of what erstwhile felt disruptive has go wholly ordinary.

I don’t deliberation preparing for what’s adjacent intends blindly embracing each caller AI instrumentality aliases handing complete everything to an agent. But I besides don’t deliberation pretending that this alteration isn’t happening is going to make it spell away.

As a writer, I still want to attraction astir the words. I still want to person spirited debates pinch my editor complete headings and find the perspective that turns a postulation of accusation into a communicative worthy reading.

But I don’t deliberation I request to personally execute each task surrounding that activity to beryllium that I americium still a writer.

I tin delegate without disappearing.