Podcast: How AI is changing the role of technical writers to context curators and content directors

In this conversational podcast, Fabrizio Ferri Benedetti (Passo.uno) and I talk about the impact of AI on the technical writing profession. We tackle the anxiety, seen and felt almost everywhere, but especially on Reddit, within the community about job security and analyze the evolution of the technical writer's role into a more strategic context curator or content director. We also cover practical applications of AI, such as using agents markdown files to guide language models (with style overrides or API reference contexts), and the role documentation plays in improving AI's outputs (Fabri's phrase AI must RTFM). Read more »

Two strategies to succeed when AI seems to be eroding jobs around you

This past year in the tech comm community, there's been a lot of angst about job security with AI. In this post, I argue that our roles are shifting from writers to content directors. In this new role, the skills we need for success are two-fold. I propose that we focus on developing (1) deep subject matter expertise and (2) tools expertise. I also share my optimistic view about why technical writers will remain essential in a future with ever-expanding technology. The tldr is that even as AI might remove some jobs, the exponential growth of tech will create more opportunities and needs for documentation. Additionally, AI tools need good docs for accuracy. Read more »

Book review of 'Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI' by Karen Hao

In my AI Book Club, we recently read Empire of AI: Dreams and nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI, by Karen Hao. In this post, I'll briefly share some of my reactions to the book. The main focus in my review is to analyze Hao's treatment of the mission-driven ideology around AGI that explains many of the motivations for the workers at OpenAI and similar AI companies. Read more »

Recording of AI Book Club discussion of Karen Hao's Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI

This is a recording of the AI Book Club discussion about Karen Hao's Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI. The discussion is an informal, casual discussion with about half a dozen people online through Google Meet. You can also read a transcript and other details about the book here. Read more »

Defining bug zero and two obstacles: Reducing review time and gathering context

In my previous post about achieving bug zero, I introduced the goal and some motivations for it, but I didn't fully articulate the whole connection to AI. I also didn't explain much of what a doc bug queue is in my context, or why it even matters. In this post, I'll define doc bugs in more depth and explore two major obstacles to accelerating documentation work: review time and context gathering. Read more »

Recording of AI Book Club discussion about Kai-fu Lee's AI Superpowers

This is a recording of our AI Book Club session discussing Kai-Fu Lee's AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order. There are 4 people in this book club discussion, and our conversation focuses on the emerging AI duopoly between the US and China. We share our own US-centric blind spots and weigh the political and cultural implications of China potentially winning the AI race. We also talk about Kai-Fu Lee's prediction of mass job displacement and his proposed social investment stipend, questioning both its feasibility and its potential drawbacks. The discussion also explores how our own professional roles, particularly in tech comm, might evolve to manage and direct AI rather than be replaced by it, and how surprisingly relevant the book feels today despite being published in 2018. Read more »

Why getting to bug zero is so hard

In the pursuit of bug zero, it helps to identify different types of bugs and the right strategies for dealing with each of them. In this post, I explore four common types of complex bugs I've encountered: Russian-doll bugs, scope-creep bugs, non-actionable bugs, and wrong-owner bugs. Read more »

Recording of Coffee and Content episode: What's wrong with AI-generated docs?

I recently appeared on the Coffee and Content episode, hosted by Scott Abel, with another guest, Fabrizio Ferri Benedetti, who writes a blog at Passo (passo.uno). The episode theme comes from a post Fabrizio wrote titled What's wrong with AI-generated docs, but the episode didn't focus exclusively on AI's problems and gotchas so much as AI strategies with documentation in general. This post provides a recording and transcript of the episode. Read more »