I’m the editor in chief of Every, and for the last two years, my boss has been trying to automate my job.
The goal was to never do a copyedit again. Every six months or so, whenever a significant new model dropped, my potential replacement would arrive. I would test the tool, but it wouldn’t be there yet. Each time, we learned that writing was harder to codify than either of us had expected. Code either works or it doesn't, but in writing, the right answer depends on the context, the piece, and the person. He thought he could automate part of me away, but three years later, he still hasn’t.
We're close, though. The latest models have taken 30,000 of my past copyedits and turned them into rules. We call it KatePass, and we test it against KateBench, a benchmark of my editorial judgment. Early on, I reviewed what the tool suggested and answered yes or no, and each answer went back in as guidance. I don't have to do that anymore. Now it's graded on how often it makes the same edit I made. My judgment is still what's training it.
This wasn’t a cost-cutting mandate for us. It came from curiosity: Could you automate me if you tried? KatePass can’t quite do my job, but it does give me more time for the important things. I'd much rather spend my time thinking about what’s next for Every than cutting spaces around em dashes. (No one should put a space around an em dash.)
I think this is the direction knowledge work is going in. Jobs will be replaced one task at a time rather than wholesale. But good news for the knowledge workers: The people best placed to automate each task are the ones doing it now. They know where the edge cases are. They know why the third draft came back worse than the second. They know which rules are worth breaking, and when. Systems trained without people like us will be cheaper to build, but they won't be good. Systems trained with us will be.
That changes what our jobs look like. Less of it will be doing each piece of work yourself, and more of it will be setting up the systems that do the work to your standard, then overseeing them. The people who step forward to teach those systems won't be replaced by them—they'll be the ones running them. Because without Kate, KatePass can’t exist.
