Artificial Intelligence (AI) & my work

Given the combination of both language and academic skills that I apply to my editing, artificial intelligence cannot provide more than a very limited substitute for my work. Achieving the same quantity and quality of my editing, would still require, beyond a round of AI, another round human checking and editing. Furthermore, my covering emails & correspondence and/or discussions with authors cannot be done by a computer at all. The same applies even more to my presentation training sessions. They entail fundamentally human interaction in a three-dimensional manner and again, a computer could only replace a small part of this.

More detail:

This is an issue which has recently risen to prominence and on which I have substantial related and relevant experience, after years of high-level work in the field of Academic English. Many non-native speaking academics seem to believe that they no longer need a real person to edit their work. Journals too seem to accept this argument. Such perceptions are certainly common, but may have more to do with unrealistic expectations and hype than the realities of the situation.

The issue is by no means as simple as frequently perceived, given a variety of factors. Indeed, ensuring that academic papers are really written clearly and correctly at the appropriate level and using the right style, is a complex and sophisticated challenge. Certain aspects are beyond the range of AI at present, and it may remain so for the foreseeable future.

Firstly, many articles need both comprehensive linguistic and academic editing. The latter can be done only partly by a computer, given that such software has clear limitations. For example, some word choices are extremely subtle and relate not just to the narrow context of the article, but also to the broader usage of a particular word in the field.

Good academic editing requires all sorts of corrections and improvements that entail not only linguistic skill and subject-related understanding, but also serious thinking and careful consideration. It also often involves multifaceted and interdisciplinary approaches to the text, such as knowledge of both marketing theory and statistical English. Many changes that a good editor makes are linguistic refinements in the interest of clarity, rather than correcting actual English errors.

Such sophisticated brainwork in the truest sense is simply beyond the capabilities of computers, given that they are still not capable of “productive thought”. These include the use of commas for academic clarity, the logical order of certain phrases and clauses in sentences, the appropriate phrasing of hypotheses and other vital elements of academic work, such as in questionnaires. This phrase, “since the beginning of marketing research”, is not really wrong, but “since the early days….” is more elegant. I cannot imagine KI figuring out this kind of subtle improvement.

The difference between “strong” and “weak” AI is also fundamental. Although AI is already very advanced compared to previous years, it still remains “weak” in the sense that it cannot think, it is still just software, even if it learns constantly. But what does it learn from? Many published academic articles are not particularly well written for a variety of reasons that I will not consider here. So the software, just like other academics, often learn poor English or academic errors. My students often tell me that they saw some clumsy English “in a major book” or top-ranking journal, or heard it from a non-native-speaking professor. The software cannot therefore learn sufficiently and reliably from other work in the area, also because there are so many different contexts, and one cannot count on published work to be correct or consistently well written.

The practical consequence is that texts that are translated by state-of-the-art software, still need proofing, correction and a good knowledge of the source language. I often use AI to translate emails into German, as it is quicker and easier that writing them immediately in German, but this only works because I can check the result for errors, and they are common. These include blatantly wrong word choices, commas in the wrong places, wrong form of address (too formal), and a completely incorrect style for the context. Indeed, one reads and hears constantly of poor and incorrect machine translations.

People with good brains, qualifications, and experience will continue to prove their worth.

Finally, my journalistic article on the same subject was published here:
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/opinion/ai-wont-remove-need-human-academic-editing-any-time-soon