The Rise of the House of Chat GPT

Chat GPT Signals A Golden Age for White Collar Work

Chapter 2: The Rise of the House of Chat GPT

Press releases today are the white bread of the communications world: generic, largely forgettable, produced from templates with small adjustments for dates, names, and quotes.?These documents communicate more by their form than by their substance; they are designed to be skimmed, not read. But even though press releases resemble loaves of Wonderbread coming off the assembly line, they are produced one by one by the skilled bakers of the public relations world, often with a level of care and detail that is wasted on the intended audience. English majors who once dreamed of writing novels now lovingly (read: grudgingly) knead together press copy day after day. The same can be said for 85% of social media, blog posts, and content marketing generally. [1]

Change is coming. I asked Chat GPT to write a press release about the launch of Commonweal Ventures, my venture capital firm. The output wasn’t perfect, but it was a strong first draft. Instead of spending 3 hours writing from scratch, the project took 20 minutes of revision.

The introduction of artificial intelligence to producing press releases follows a familiar historic pattern. We have a group of artisans (the English majors) who are employed to produce goods (press releases) by hand, a time-consuming procedure. Chat GPT is a factory that will produce a lower cost but functionally similar good for 10% of the cost (assuming you still need a human to review and refine the first draft). What does this mean for all those PR professionals?

To answer that question, I turn to an important economic revolution, now largely forgotten to history: the transition in housing construction from heavy timber framing to balloon framing between roughly 1840 and 1860.

Up through the 1830s, nearly every house was built to speck by skilled carpenters, much like press releases are carefully crafted today. There was no running down to the Home Depot to pick up some 2x4s; timber was largely cut by hand, or at best by water-powered saw-mills, and no two pieces of lumber were exactly the same size. Nails were produced in small batches at costs that limited their use to specialty trades. Carpenters relied on traditional heavy timber framing, in which wood posts were carved to slot into one another, using mortise and tenon joints. The resulting products were, in a sense, overbuilt; they were works of art, made to last centuries. But most families just wanted a roof over their heads, and the hand-carved, joisted timber homes were out of reach.

All of that changed in the 1830s and 1840s. Steam powered saw-mills began producing lumber in standardized lengths and widths at a fraction of the cost. New transportation networks, like canals and railroads, made it far cheaper to ship lumber long distances. ?At the same time, new techniques for producing “cut nails” made nails cheaper, stronger, and more reliable.

In 1833, George Washington Snow invented a new construction method that to simplify home building. Snow’s method involves “joining pre-cut standardized lumber with nails to construct a skeleton frame of a building, and then fastening the rest of the components of the building to the standing frame.”[2]

Consumers embraced the new approach. Architects like Samuel Sloan and William Bell started publishing designs and how-to guides that enabled families to put up their own homes, without relying on specialized contractors. The price of home construction dropped by as much as 65%. Within a few decades, balloon-framed homes dominated the urban landscape.

Carpenters at the time protested. They dubbed the new design “balloon framing”, arguing that the homes would float away. [3] Cities like Chicago tried banning the construction of balloon framed homes in certain neighborhoods. Underlying the critique was concern that, if would-be home owners could build their own houses, the demand for skilled carpenters would decline.

The fears of carpenters were misplaced. By reducing the cost of inputs and simplifying assembly, the combination of standardized lumber, mass-produced nails, and balloon framing dramatically expanded the housing market. True, some Americans built their own homes. But lots more Americans could now afford homes and wanted carpenters to build them. Meanwhile, the higher end of the market still preferred traditional heavy timber framing. Soon there were more homes, of more varieties, putting more people to work. As Sigfried Gideon wrote, “The balloon frame marks the point at which industrialization began to penetrate housing.”[4]

Like timber and nails for a home, Chat GPT simplifies the production of press releases (and many other types of documents). That could put PR professionals out of work. But my guess is it will be just the opposite. Within a couple of years, every small business in America will be pushing out (more) press releases. They will turn to consultants who are able to combine AI and some light editorial oversight to produce such content at scale.

The same will happen in content marketing. The flood of content will also put pressure on the higher end of the market to get creative, since they still want to reach consumers. Instead of “10 tips for selling your home” blog posts, we’ll see more creative video content, live events, and digital art. Like the housing boom of the late 19th century, Chat GPT and its many AI cousins will create enough demand for content that the total number of relevant jobs will increase. A rising tide…

I am indebted to Wyatt Sluga, who wrote about the history of balloon framing for his seminar paper in my undergraduate class at Yale this past year, and on whose research I relied for this essay.

[1] I apologize in advance for grouping together public relations, advertising, and content marketing specialists, who in fairness have distinct jobs and roles.

[2] Wyatt Sluga, Balloon Framing and Its Float to Popularity

[3] Balloon framed homes did not blow away, but they did have one major drawback: because the studs ran the full height of a home, fire would spread rapidly. In the early 20th century, platform framing, in which studs run only the height of a single floor, replaced balloon framing as the most common construction technique.

[4] Sigfried Gideon, Space, Time and Architecture