Writers are willing to take a 28 per cent pay cut when allowed to use AI to assist with their work. This is seen as a trade-off for saved labour, but it suggests AI tools will reduce the value of creative writing as a profession, say researchers.
鈥淲e were curious about how generative AI can contribute to the creation process, and if it can make work easier for the worker,鈥� says at the University of Connecticut. 鈥淎nd if that鈥檚 the case, how will that affect the workers鈥� valuation of generative AI?鈥�
Liang and her colleagues asked 379 people on the Prolific online research platform, which sets paid tasks, to produce a piece of writing around half the length of this article within 45 minutes. Some were asked to write an essay-style piece, arguing in favour of a subject, while others were asked to continue a fictional story based on a prompt.
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Participants were given the chance of completing tasks in one of three modes: independently, without any AI assistance; human-primary, where ChatGPT could assist them in editing and polishing their own work; or AI-primary, where ChatGPT would write the first draft and the person would then edit it.
Some were given the choice between human-primary and independent writing, while others were given the choice of AI-primary or independent writing. Those who worked independently were always given $3 for completing their task. AI-assisted tasks were offered to workers with a random amount between $1.50 and $4.50, at $0.25 intervals.
鈥淲e were able to tell, everything else being equal, how much money they were willing to give up in order to get this AI system,鈥� says team member at Purdue University in Indiana.
They found that participants were willing to forgo around $0.85, or 28 per cent of the total amount they would have been paid for a job, in order to have a first draft written by AI 鈥� far more than the $0.10 pay cut deemed acceptable to have AI check your work.
Liang says the pay cut reflects how much the workers valued the help AI provided them in completing the task, rather than their perception of how much less their finished work ought to cost due to diminished quality. The researchers also asked participants to rate the quality of the work they produced with and without AI assistance and found little meaningful difference.
鈥淭he finding is worrisome because it supports a key business case for LLMs, which is that employers will be able to save money on human labour costs by incorporating this technology into the workplace,鈥� says at the Turing Institute in London. 鈥淚f so, that could be great for employers, but of highly questionable value for paid writers.鈥�
Katell says the findings have concerning implications for writers. 鈥淭he basic unsubtle message here is that LLMs can make creative writing less specialised and thereby less valuable overall, and that will drive down the demand power for any writer, regardless of whether they use an LLM,鈥� he says.
CHI '24: Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
