Classifying Artificial Intelligence, Rearticulating Professional Identity: The Terms of Authorship, Judgment, and Expertise

Under specified conditions in the Writers Guild of America’s agreement, a writer who rewrites a company-furnished, machine-generated screenplay is treated as the first writer: the generated text comes first, yet its contractual treatment gives the human the originating position. This article asks how professional communities rearticulate their public self-definitions through the treatment of artificial intelligence (AI) contributions. A theory-building comparison of the Guild, the counselling and psychotherapy profession publicly constituted by the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy, and Korean professional Go combines directly analyzed public documents with findings reported by prior studies. A counterpart configuration links how an AI contribution is treated to the conditions under which members claim authorship, accountable judgment, or expertise. The comparison distinguishes permission to use AI from how its contribution counts toward professional standing. Generated text can be excluded from the prior material that determines a writer’s contractual position; advice can be admitted under duties of evaluation and non-deferral; learning from superior engines can support expertise while in-game assistance invalidates unassisted performance. Professional organizations give these distinctions force through negotiated entitlements, published ethical obligations, and competition rules; learning, interpretation, and advocacy are documented alongside those prescriptions. For research on professions and organization, the article shows how collective instruments specify what members may claim and what they must answer for, while established names and commitments endure. Governing AI use means organizing the rights, responsibilities, and recognition attached to professional work.