Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

To use AI to write reports requires a person who can write well.

Let’s use AI to write our reports or essays or deep research or whatever AI will write for us now. That’s not cheating, that’s using good tools … some disagree violently with that statement.

The AI tools are quite capable. Write a prompt and viola’ out comes the words. Oops. We have to write a good prompt to produce good words. Wait a minute: we have to write well to have the AI write for us. There is something wrong here or so it seems.

We have to be able to write to have AI write. No one told us this. We have to learn to write well before the tool writes. Well, if we can write well, why use the tool? Something must have been lost in translation.

Back in the summer of 1976 (yes, I am that old), during my one and only college English class, the composition professor told us everyday: precise, concrete, specific. Over and over and over again without fail. Five days a week. We had to write in journals seven days a week. One essay a day. Precise. Concrete. Specific.

Almost fifty years later. To have AI produce usable words we have to prompt with precise, concrete, and specific words. RATS! And I thought this would be easier. We still have to do better.