COOKED
The core deliverable — drafting prose to a brief, on deadline, in a specified voice — is the single task current language models perform most competently and most cheaply, and the commodity end of the market (SEO copy, product descriptions, ghostwritten business books, content marketing, corporate scripts) is where most of the paid work actually sits. What survives is not writing skill in the abstract but authorship: a name readers seek out, original reporting or lived access nobody can synthesize, and being the person a client trusts to own the message. Score reflects the modal working writer, not the bylined novelist or the staff feature writer; the profession is splitting into a small identity-driven tier and a shrinking, price-crushed production tier.
Core tasks are already automatable. At 4, the day-to-day — turning a content brief, style guide and word count into finished copy, then revising to editorial notes — is exactly the generate-and-revise loop models do at near-zero marginal cost; the points that remain reflect the minority of assignments requiring an interview, a site visit, or reading a 300-page source nobody has digitized.
Fully desk- and screen-based. A 2 acknowledges the laptop-and-deadline reality of the job: apart from occasional travel to interview a subject or attend an event, nothing in drafting, researching, or delivering a manuscript requires your body in a particular place.
No licence, no signature requirement. There is no licence, no board, no continuing-education requirement to call yourself a writer; a publisher's indemnity clause pushes libel and plagiarism exposure back onto you but grants no monopoly, which is why this sits at 1 rather than 0 — you carry risk without the credential that would restrict who competes for the work.
Some relationship component. An 8 reflects the split: repeat clients hire a specific writer because they know your turnaround and your ear for their voice, but the byline usually belongs to the brand or the ghostwritten client, so the relationship is with the editor who commissions you rather than with readers who would notice your absence.
Executes defined procedures on defined inputs. At 6, the consequential calls — what the piece argues, whether it runs, what gets cut for legal — are made by an editor, publisher or client, and your discretion is real but bounded to structure, framing and sentence-level choices within an approved brief.
Actors EXPOSED
Has AI actually changed your work?