AI is killing the art of speechwriting |
‘Where are the snows of yesteryear?’ lamented the French poet François Villon. Professional writers around the world are devising their own variation on this refrain: ‘Where has the money I used to make from speechwriting gone?’ Is it the economy? Yes. Is it because our business leaders have all the charisma and moral courage of East German politicians circa 1987? Yes. Is it because of AI? Well, that isn’t helping at all, either.
Speechwriters like me are having to face three harsh possibilities: the craft we have practised over decades will cease to be a marketable skill; that AI will eliminate the need for the last creative and sensitive person left at the top of corporate and political ladder; and that all of us will be replaced, as one mild-mannered speechwriter put it, with a ‘sociopathic plagiarism machine that’s prone to flattery, racism, and delusions, weakens critical thinking, and is an environmental disaster’.
The leaders of the top organisations don’t care about how good the writing is
But the root of the problem actually long pre-dates AI. The graduate class has massively expanded. The system trains them to write in an abstract and colourless style. They don’t understand the concept of persuasive speech.
They emerge into the outside world and see themselves as leaders by election, not grace. They want the........