Thanks for swinging by my blog again! I’m excited to share more about my journey in tech communication.
AI in Tech Comm
I learned how big artificial intelligence (AI) is in the tech comm industry. I was surprised when my professor gave us a video about the different ways ChatGPT 4.0 can analyze questions or documents we give to it. For example, I gave it a document with a paragraph and asked it what tone of voice it conveys. ChatGPT gave me the answer and reasoning behind its answer.
The only issue with this method is the AI will give different answers almost every time. This influenced the way I approach my work in this class by asking ChatGPT the same questions 2-3 times to find similar answers between each result. What I’ve learned from this error is this process is like asking two or three people the same question. They will all give slightly different answers and it’s up to me to form a conclusion from the answers.
This is meaningful to my career goals because I struggle to find peers to analyze my documents for qualities I am looking for. Now I can ask ChatGPT to do this for me.
Plain Language is Hard
English is hard. What surprised me is that writing in an English course is not the best way to write in tech comm. What I learned from this class is plain language is needed in tech comm. I try to write to someone who has a PhD in English when I should be writing to a 4th grader. Plain language is trying to write content that is easy, quick, and complete for the reader. My professor linked a LinkedIn Learning course that taught the basics of plain language.
This sounds simple, but I auto-type in a more “elevated professional” language. Even now I’m trying to write this post in plain language and it’s difficult. With the video, I now approach editing differently. I first type content how I think fits. Afterwards, I’d read my content, applying plain language along the way. This resulted in reviewed content that applies plain language.
This is meaningful to my career goals because I need to adapt my writing style to plain language. I will fall behind in this field if I can’t write in a way that everyone can understand.
Thanks for reading my update. Can’t wait to write to you all again.