Using Chat GPT for work reports?

[AfricanJacana]

Do any of you use chat gpt for work reports?
I do a role in which I have to format rough notes in bullet points into flowing reports which follow set headings and topics but the content is individualised, if that makes any sense.
Think house survey type thing (it's not exactly that).
Could chat gpt work for that, and how would I go about learning how to do it?
Thanks

Yeah, you just drop the bullet points into chat GPT and ask it to write a report, it’s as quick as that.

When I’ve used it I’ve found you do need to sense check it and the wording can be a bit clunky but it’s a good way of creating a first draft.

Yes this is the functionality I use AI for in my role. It allows me to turn my detailed but very rough style bullet pointed notes into any prescribed format of report, then just edit to check accuracy (it can misconstrue) and tone - to make it sound more like I would have written. Once you learn to prompt and iterate well, it's excellent and a huge time saver. It's saved me so much time, despite my initial scepticism.

However - my company have created an in-house AI system. We are not allowed to input work data into chatGPT etc. You should check your employer's policy on this regarding feeding confidential info or intellectual property into a system that will save and reuse it.

There are steps you can take to minimise any risk (depends on context but eg never inputting real names of people/companies and replacing them at editing stage) but you should definitely confirm in writing with your line manager that using AI is acceptable under your company policy. Don't think they won't know, even with editing AI has a recognisable style, especially when used by newbies!

Like @mollycassie says, be careful using free versions of AI for this kind of thing: subscription versions or in-house bespoke versions of AI are safer as the inputs and outputs stay within the model. When you write the prompt, if you tell it in detail the role you are asking it to play, the audience it's for, the tone, how long you want the report to be etc. and even upload a sample report, you'll get much better results than giving a less detailed prompt, and you can refine the prompt if there are problems with the first attempts as well as asking it to try again (it doesn't get fed up or irritated by having to redo work tasks like a person would!) Personally, I find Claude a bit better for writing tasks than ChatGPT as it sounds more human, but both ChatGPT and Claude make mistakes so you do need to carefully check and edit any outputs,

It makes you wonder how many jobs are in danger because of Chat GPT, or similar.

Many reports can be written automatically by a single command.

Jobs like data analysis, input, finance, etc are just numbers in and numbers out. That can all be automated.

Consultants are often just pulling facts from books or the Internet, all of which are accessible by ai.

Coding, Excel stuff, most things techy can be automated.

I wouldn't be surprised if most management, project management, admin etc could simply be replaced by someone with a flow diagram and a training eLearning thingy.

It's not great at the moment, I've tried it and I get lots of mistakes, but it won't be long before it catches up.

Check your work ICT policies. There may be restrictions on what you can paste into chatgpt if its confidential information as an example. We would not allow our company information to be pasted into chatgpt like this

@bifurCAT I think those jobs won't go completely for a long while because the AI needs oversight to catch errors, but all of us will be working on more and more projects if the routine and repetitive stuff is being done by AI. My worry is that it's the routine and repetitive stuff you do in an entry level role that gives you some of the understanding that trains you to oversee stuff and spot issues at a more senior level, so we are potentially deskilling the younger generation. However, other folk tell me that rather than deskilling, they will be learning new skills that didn't exist before. There may be a bit of both. But AI is not going anywhere, so we all need to get confident with using it or risk being left behind and less employable.

It can do that, of you upload a layout you want it to follow and ask it to use that to layout the new information

Thanks everyone, this is all really useful information. I'm not going to do anything with it for my actual job until I've spoken with my senior re company policy on this. But I work in a dinosaur of an organisation who will probably take years to adopt anything useful from AI.
In the meantime I will practice and learn a bit in my own time with non work stuff.