Hi everyone.
A few months back, I asked for volunteers to take part in a study I was doing with some other doctoral students on how AI is changing editing. I'm sharing the results here for anyone who's interested.
It was a small qualitative study where we interviewed three editors (it was for a class) and we only had one volunteer with substantial experience, but they and the other two editors we interviewed still had interesting things to say about AI in the editing community. A lot of what we found was pretty obvious, but some still might be of interest.
We identified three key themes in the study:
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AI is very controversial in the editing profession
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AI is a very polarizing topic in the professional editing community. Some quotes:
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"I just went to a conference and I was just like, whoa, it's so polarizing."
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"I think a lot of editors themselves have very strong opinions about the ethics of AI."
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"There's a lot of opinions. And honestly, it's very controversial, even within [a US editing organization]. We have 400 members, and it's quite controversial. I mean, every three months, a new argument breaks out on the email thread."
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Interviewees feel like AI use is inevitable:
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One of the editors in particular was frustrated by anti-AI sentiment, indicating that people sometimes focus on the wrong things when discussing it.
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AI is changing how editing is done
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AI is not replacing professional copy editors right now. Instead, it is reshaping how editors do their work and saving time and money. Some quotes:
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"I created a chat GPT and I put it in there and it spit out all the sources with perfect, perfectly formatted. ... So that took something that would have taken me, I don't know, six hours, 5 hours ... took me 20 minutes."
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"we didn't want to spend the time and the resources to do it. So [the LLM] was a quick solution."
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One editor recalls the first time they saw what AI could do and recognized that this was going to radically change the profession.
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All interviewees do believe that AI will lead to some job loss.
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"The ... copy editor proofreader role, I think it's going to go away ... proofreading, I don't think any, that's not going to be a career that exists anymore."
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Editors aim for ethical use of AI
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Professional editors use professional judgment informed by both their own ethical views and the views of the larger editing community when selecting AI tools to use while maintaining full transparency with clients.
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Editors pay a lot of attention to their peers' views on AI, even when they don't always agree.
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"other editors near where I'm from in the [US region]. Um, yeah, they have a big impact on how I think and feel."
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"I haven't really landed exactly where I am because I'm also paying attention to the discussion in the editing community to kind of see where that takes me."
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Editors have to use their professional judgment and ethical standards when deciding to use an AI tool.
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"I realized that I, um, had to make a judgment call of, you know, is this going to be credible or realistic information."
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"I don't think it's wrong to use an LLM if you do so properly ... As long as you're not copying anything from there, as long as you are confirming every single thing you find"
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We found a strongly held belief in the editing community that it is crucial that editors are transparent about their use of AI with both their current and prospective clients. Additionally, the community holds that an editor should use AI only if a client is okay with it, and they must follow the client's boundaries if they have them.
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"My client is aware that I used AI. And, yeah, I think it's important that we are very, very clear with our clients when we're going to do it."
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"If ... the client doesn't want me to use it, I don't use it."
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"the specifics can be discussed before contract is signed"
There were clear limitations in the study. The main one was the tiny number of interviewees (three). We also only talked to editors who have willingly used AI tools in their editing to some degree, so their views will differ greatly from many other editors.
My group is planning to do another full study to go deeper on views of AI in the editing community (focusing on a variety of opinions and perspectives), and we'll be looking for volunteers later. This will be with IRB approval at Purdue University. I hope you'll consider volunteering because we want as many perspectives represented as possible. We expect to have some funding to pay interviewees for their time.
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Kelly Vincent (they/them)
Editor @ http://kvedits.com, kelly@kvedits.com
Writer, Data Scientist, & Doctoral Student @ Purdue University
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