Suriving the robot apocalypse: How technical writers can (and should) embrace automation
summary
Argues that automation won’t replace tech writers but shifts the role toward providing quality training and test data, designing models and supervising actions; demonstrates documentation augmentation by converting a 30–40 step OpenStack backup/restore into Ansible playbooks that cut backup to 30 seconds and restore to ~4–5 minutes, reducing errors and enabling CI/QE tests; cites real ML use cases (Google Smart Compose, DoNotPay) and failures to show why writers must keep conceptual guides while building reproducible, automatable procedures.
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chapters (12)
- 0:00Introduction
- 0:30What is robot apocalypse
- 2:28Will robots replace tech writers
- 4:25Main questions
- 4:48Machine learning
- 6:25Example
- 7:25Realworld examples
- 11:23Opportunities for technical writers
- 14:10How can you prepare
- 24:53Traditional documentation
- 25:45Automation for documentation
- 26:16Questions
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