To Be or Not To Be an AI Bot Coach?

The enticing invitation read: “Seeking experienced freelance writers to be an AI coach of sorts by teaching AI models what excellent writing looks like.” Who could resist an offer like that, especially with pay “up to $15 per hour”?

I tried to imagine what an AI model tutorial would be like. I assume it would be like a Zoom meeting without faces or sounds. The AI model would post something it composed and the “coach” would critique it. Then what, I wondered?

Large model artificial intelligence systems typically feast on huge data sets, which doesn’t require table manners. So, if the AI model spit out, “The owl warbled”, and I corrected with, “Owls hoot”, would the AI model say “Thank you” or just perform its version of “harrumph” and move on?

I also wondered whether an AI bot would understand it’s supposed to create great writing when most of humankind can’t agree on what constitutes great writing.

Getting Advice on Bots from Bots
To answer such questions, I instinctively consulted the bots at Google Search. The first advice teed up came from clickworker, which recommended a three-step process to AI model testing. Step One: Feed data into system. Step Two: Validation. Step Three: Testing.

The most applicable step to ensure great writing involved “validation testing”. “A validation test is used to evaluate how well a trained model performs on unseen data, which can help determine if training needs to be continued or modified in some way.”

The bottom line, according to clickwork, is data quality. “The data being used to train your algorithm must be accurate and relevant. The greater the accuracy of the data being input, the faster the training and validation process will be.”

That advice might apply to training an AI model on how to provide online customer service, but not so much to showing a bot how to write great prose.

AI Model Training Challenges
Oracle, which offers AI training services, posted a blog explaining the challenges of AI model training. Unfortunately, it didn’t single out training an AI model to produce great writing. Under the heading of “Misaligned Expectations”, the blog said: “Popular culture has set lofty expectations about what AI can do. Bringing those expectations down to earth requires effective communication from team leads about the AI project’s purpose, goals and capabilities. Without these, users may not understand the project’s practicalities or limitations.”

On cue, an  Oracle chatbot contacted me to offer its/their help.

What exactly would I be training an AI bot to write –
a student term paper, a ghostwritten op-ed, a brilliant novel?

Writing Like Shakespeare
I stumbled across a promotional blog with this fetching offer: “Teach an AI Model to Write Like Shakespeare – For Free”. To get started, I would need to take an MIT extension course on databases to understand the steps required to examine data for text generation.

As an English literature major who graduated in the pre-Copernican age of computers, I skipped to the section about a dataset with 40,000 lines of Shakespeare text, which is available, by coincidence, under a license from MIT. All you need from there, according to the pitch, is a “training script” to produce “Shakespearean text”.

“With one command and within just a few minutes, we taught an AI model to write like Shakespeare. The resulting model can be downloaded and used anywhere we like.”

As fond as I am of Shakespeare’s writing, it isn’t a writing style that translates well into contemporary best-sellers, executive speeches or student essays. I decided to ask Google bots to track down the elements of great writing.

Elements of Great Writing
I was directed to a webpage on which Hunter College listed the “five qualities of good writing for essays – focus, development, unity, coherence and correctness.” A footnote added, “One additional quality, not part of this list, but nevertheless very important, is creativity. The best writing carries some of the personality and individuality of its author. Follow the above guidelines, but always work to make your writing uniquely your own.”

The footnote complicates the challenge of training an AI model to produce great writing that will never be “uniquely its own”. The job of an AI coach is to help an AI model fake it.

Skills of Good Writers
Another blog described the skills of good writers as research, planning, outlining, editing, revising, spelling, grammar and  organization. Interesting, but an AI model will be using an algorithm to check spelling, correct grammar and possibly plagiarize great writing.

Malcolm Gladwell, the engaging author of Blink and The Tipping Point, offers an online class on “compelling writing”. His lessons cover structuring a narrative, holding reader attention and developing a story. He also has lessons on jargon, tone, voice, humor and emotions. Gladwell is known for his deft perception of popular trends. He would be great at writing about AI models, but it’s unclear whether an AI model could match Gladwell’s unique perspective.

AI Coaching Duties
The invitation to become an AI coach described the work as “assessing the quality of AI-generated writing, reviewing the work of fellow writers and crafting original responses to prompts.” Not sure how the work of “fellow writers” snuck into the conversation.

Job requirements seem simple enough – “passing our screening process and meeting our proficiency criteria and you are ready to begin!” No interview is required! Benefits include working remotely on your own schedule, a quick start-up and getting paid! I didn’t have the killer instinct to reply that great writing rarely uses exclamation points.

The invitation doesn’t mention what the AI model, when coached up, will be used for. Will the coaching tune up AI-authored student writing assignments, polish content for publication or provide editing to a budding novelist? I have my suspicions.

What would the expectations be if an AI model and its coach were asked to replicate the style of gonzo journalism created by Hunter S. Thompson or the jazz-infused poetry written by Langston Hughes? Would everything an AI model replicates read like the parsed phrasing of an Ernest Hemingway novel? How would a bot replicate a book like Steve Martin’s Born Standing Up that critics acclaimed as “lean, incisive, funny, sad and beautifully written”?

Even though the promise of rubbing elbows with a bot and getting a few bucks is tempting – the price of Starbucks isn’t cheap, I’m passing up the offer to apply. It’s hard enough making my own writing better. Teaching a bot how to generate great writing is over my pay grade.