Communication in the age of ChatGPT

I'm going to deviate from my typical content to dedicate a bit of time to do some lighthearted opining on an often underrated topic within engineering: communication. 

What spurred this you might ask? Well, a couple of things. The first is either witnessing (or committing) several grammatical or communication faux-pas within the last few weeks. The second is observing broader societal trends. 

Specifically the hubbub around generative A.I. If you're reading this post some time in the future, generative A.I. is having a moment right now. When OpenAI dropped ChatGPT, it spawned an entire field of popular interest almost (literally) overnight and cast many long-held ideas about work and how we interact with technology into disarray. Specifically in the area of communication, ChatGPT is being heralded as a total gamechanger, with the technologically optimistic claiming that it will do most of the heavy lifting of our written communication in the days to come. 

For those of that persuasion, I can understand the reasoning that goes, "With these superhuman tools at our disposal, why on earth would we need to spend more time on the minutiae of improving our communication abilities?". 

If that thought appeals to you, allow me to make an earnest attempt to convince you otherwise. Namely, we still live in the real world. Despite the increasing amount of our communication that is mediated by technology, especially since remote-work became a norm, you will eventually have to talk to people in real life. Yes, real world communication. No spell check. No sentence completion suggestions. No helpful thesaurus to beef up your vocab. I know - it's terrifying. 

Still skeptical? Let's say you become a generative A.I. wizard, to the point that the majority of your day-to-day communication is drafted by ChatGPT et al. You save tons of time and get to focus on the stuff that matters to you. Your boss notices your 10x abilities and decides that you should share your expertise with the organization and invites you to do a lunch-and-learn for the engineers in the company. You get up to deliver your talk, but as you stand at the head of the table in the conference room without all your helpful tools, you uneasily realize that there might be some gaps in your communication abilities. Weaknesses that have only further atrophied since you offloaded them to your automated buddies. On your 15th time of saying "case and point" you notice your boss wincing with the same painful expression that accompanies disappointing realizations like finding out your favorite athlete has actually just been using steroids all along. Your credibility damaged, you slink back to your home office ne'er to return.

"But Caleb", you retort, "I've read some of your other posts and they are absolutely rife with spelling and grammatical errors." To that I say that we're all learning and I'm preaching just as much to myself here. In spite of my 11th grade silver medal on the National Latin exam, I am probably unqualified to be giving advice in this area - so if nothing else use the opportunity to prove me wrong and maybe we'll all learn a little something in the process.  So without further ado here are five common mistakes I've either seen or made in the recent past:

Per se: So there's the obvious one here of the fact that it's not spelled "per say". More than that though, I only (embarrassingly) recently learned that this phrase essentially means "intrinsically". I've often used it in place of a phrase like "as it were" or even "as they say" which is incorrect. If you're debating whether or not it's appropriate to use, try substituting the word "intrinsically" and see how it plays. 

Pseudo vs. Quasi: At least within my sphere of communication, I've noticed that pseudo is often used where "quasi" is more appropriate. Pseudo literally means "false" so it should be used when there is an element of the topic that is fake, deceitful, or deceptive in some way. "Quasi" on the other hand literally means "as if", denoting an element of "close but not quite". This doesn't fully encompass the use cases, but next time you think about slapping "pseudo" in front of a word, ask yourself if "false" is a reasonable way to describe it or if "almost" makes sense. If so, quasi is likely a better choice. 

i.e. vs. e.g.: Another great one of Latin origin here. If you can't tell already, I'm big on using the literal meaning to divine appropriate usage. I.e. is id est, or "that is". It's used to denote a specific meaning or example. E.g. (short for exempli grati) on the other hand means "for example'. You would use this abbreviation when you're giving a general example. 

Loath vs. loathe: This one isn't terribly common but I made it the other day, Loathe is the verb (and probably the one you are used to using) whereas loath is the adjective. Next time you get asked to take an on-call shift, let your supervisor know you are loath to do it. 

vis-a-vis: This one is a little challenging because it can be used as either a preposition or a noun. In most cases I've heard, it's used as a preposition and means "with regard to". As a noun, it means either a counterpart (someone in a similar position elsewhere) or meeting face-to-face. 

Finally, you might be wondering why I chose the uninspired clip art in the header. Well, that is the output of DALL-E when I gave it the prompt, "An image of a dictionary entry that says "Communication: something we no longer need to learn because of generative A.I.". Granted, I probably could have manipulated the prompt a little bit better but hopefully this just drives home the point even further.