The Human Task

AI isn't coming for your job.

It's coming for the tasks that make up your job.

This isn’t a new story.

If you’ve ever read a James Bond novel, you’ll remember the typing pool. Highly trained typists who could type super-fast and send confidential reports to the four corners of the world to stymie the latest villain. You don’t see too many typing tools any more. When the typewriter arrived, the typing pool as we knew vanished.

Likewise, when telephone systems improved, the job of the manual switchboard operator (‘I’ll put you through now’) disappeared.

These innovations were far from painless for those who lost their jobs.

Change is rarely clean.

So, what impact will AI have on those who work in technical documentation?

One way of approaching this is to consider the difference between ‘jobs’ and ‘tasks’.

AI Impact Matrix for Technical Writers

As mentioned above, technology doesn't replace people; it replaces tasks. And today, the tasks being replaced are cognitive.

So, tor those in tech docs, this means taking stock of human work v mechanical work.

To make this actionable, I've created a matrix to identify the human tasks which will be hard (or harder) for AI to replicate.

Task Category	Example Tasks	AI Impact Score	Human Value-Add	Your Strategic Action
Content Development	Drafts, generic text, summaries.	High	Context, tone, and brand voice.	Automate & Refine: Use AI for drafts, then add your domain expertise.
Research	Reviewing specs, feedback, code.	High	Synthesizing data and strategic insights.	Collaborate with AI: Let AI handle the data, you focus on the "why."
Formatting & Editing	Style guides, grammar, converting docs.	High	Audience understanding and narrative flow.	Automate: Use tools to automate workflows so you can focus on more specialist areas.
User Interaction	Interviews, feedback sessions, human connections.	Low	Empathy, active listening, and trust.	Lean into these human interactions. Refine them to become the essential link between the Dev, Product and Users.
Planning	Content strategy, information architecture.	Low	Creative problem-solving and long-term vision.	Develop your vision of how the docs should be structured, planned, improved. AI can assist, but not lead.
Stakeholder Management	Presenting plans, negotiating, resolving conflicts.	Very Low	Communication, persuasion, EQ.	The human touch is impossible for AI to replicate.

Instead of: "Will AI take my job?"

Ask: "Which parts of my job are human, and which are mechanical?"

I feel we’re now at an inflection point where technical writers no longer need to write everything but need to pivot and own the more human tasks.