AIBU to wish people would stop writing professional emails with Chat GPT?

[4pmfireworks]

One of my managers writes absolutely everything with Chat GPT and as a result, all her emails are oddly formal and often get people's backs up. The tone is all wrong. I don't think she realises how badly she is coming across - and most of the team don't realise that the reason her communication is so lacking warmth and human touch is because she's telling AI what she wants to say.

She even once sent an email to me to let me know that "Marie Jones (your team leader) will advise you on this matter separately." Oh, THAT Marie Jones?! My team leader?! The one who I share an office with?! Thank God you included her surname and clarified her role or I would not have had a clue which Marie (the only one who works with us) you were talking about.

I've just had a general class update from my child's teacher that has been written with Chat GPT - I guess it saves time and I don't really blame him, but I do find it cringy. Once you spot it, it's so obvious. I would be embarrassed to send it.

I should add that I'm not always entirely sure why it's obviously written by AI. The adjectives are a bit off I think. And the sentence structure is recognisably formulaic and always rather longer than a human tends to write.

If you do this at work, you should know that some of the recipients know exactly what you're doing, and it doesn't look great.

I go easy on SPAG fluffs online. It's not a court submission and all these spellcheckers and their friends can mangle plaintext quite magnificently.

Even in formal documents. I recently had a letter from a solicitor with 7 mistakes (2 of fact) in 2 paragraphs. I hope they aren't wondering why I didn't reply.

Nought wrong with getting to the point.

Pretty sure if I were a bloke it wouldn't even be labelled 'brisk' - as it is it's described as such by people not liking what I have to tell them!

Yes - they are bizarrely literal minded because I am a lecturer and PhD student in English Lit and creative writing, with multiple degrees in the subject. Am sorry you don’t agree with me, but being abusive is unnecessary.

Indeed - I was originally responding to someone being pedantic.

You're all quite right. Fortunately I'm a very part time pedant.

In a meeting I once complained about an email I got from the manager that I didn’t like because it was so formal and came across as unfriendly. She was in the meeting but I didn’t know she was the manager

This. You need to check it for accuracy and content, and you need to tell it what tone of voice you want. Using it without doing this is obviously going to result in some of the issues raised in this thread.

I hate it! Currently I have a ongoing issue with one of my energy providers and am sure they use it. Every one starts "I hope this letter finds you well, thank you for your email". Then it becomes a hotch potch of formal (the correct tone in this situation) and an over familiar chatty style. If they are not using it they need to go back to school!

Its great for summarising long meetings but the issue I am seeing is people not reading the AI summary and just sending it out... and it being wrong. AI is great for certain things but everything still needs a human touch. Its also really obvious when it's used!

So I used it recently for an application. My application had a character limit and I was struggling to condense what I wanted to say. So I wrote my application and then put it through chat gp asking it to condense to my character limit and making sure certain themes were kept. I re sent it through itself a few times changing bits and adding bits. I sent it to a head of department to read over for me before submitting and he was very positive about it and suggested only a couple of tweaks - he wasn’t specific but I re edited with his comments in mind. I’m yet to hear back from my application as they don’t shortlist too after Christmas but I did find the whole process quite interesting.

I’ve also seen it being recommend for explaining some wordy job descriptions. Haven’t tried that.

I suspect most teachers aren’t specifically using chatgp. There are many specific educational AI programmes which have been fed information from the DFE to help with lesson planning and content creation. Also as far as school reports. Teachers have been using comment banks for years so this isn’t anything new. When I used to teach 20 years ago I had a bank of comments typed up for lower, middle and higher ability students for each subject and then copied the relevant one per student. Sometimes tweaked slightly if I wanted to comments something I personally recalled. But when 30 kids have done the same lesson there are only so many ways you can write up 30 reports.

How do you tell it to correct the tone?

What do you do with the 'time saved'? Read great literature? If not, then why........?

Why don't 9 year olds require accuracy? Surely you are just propagating misinformation?

Yes, agree, I buy and sell on ebay. AI always begins 'elevate your wardrobe' which is meaningless, and describes every item as 'perfect for any occasion', whether it's a vintage 30's gown, or a pair of synthetic leggings. Sure; we wear ballgowns to the supermarket, and leggings to the opera. Describe it, for heaven's sake!

My son was distance interviewing a candidate for a job: After a while he realised that the chap was using Chat GPT to answer his questions, which accounted for the over-long pause between the question being asked and the candidate answering (and the verbose garbage the interviewee was spouting). Needless to say, he didn't get the job.

Someone else I know swears by ChatGPT and they suggested that we visit the castle in LargeCity when we were in the area: except LargeCity hasn't had a castle anytime in the last 150 years. Now whenever they mention how wonderful ChatGPT is I remind them that there is no castle in LargeCity.

I don't get it.

I've got questions.

If you use AI, aren't you taking responsibility for any errors within it by submitting it as your own work.

What if the recipient can't spot AI, isn't there a chance they will spot something weird or innacurate and conclude you're a fucking moron.

What about continuity. Few jobs or projects involve single exchanges and job done. If you didn't write things yourself and barely bothered to read it or edit it, how are you referring back to it. Is it not harder to remember if it's not from your brain.

If it's all just AI talking to itself with little human interaction and it makes errors that become ingrained, isn't that potentially very dangerous.

When human beings get dumber as a result of not having to do the work, how will they spot the errors. Isn't that super dangerous or at least very undesirable.

I might well be talking out my arse here because I'm not super familiar but lately I'm finding myself reading threads that seem really weird and I can't work out if the poster is poorly educated, typing so fast that spellchecker is making it garbled, doesn't have English as a first language so phrases things in a way that sounds a bit off to me or is AI attempting to perform the Turing Testing in writing on lots of people at once.

Got to say, I'm not keen. If a piece of writing didn't come from a human brain, is it really communication or is it just random words on a page devoid of meaning.

Edited because spellchecker changed errors to arrors. 🙄

I have around 20 direct reports and did their appraisals via ChatGPT. I just typed their strengths and weaknesses in shorthand and it came up with a constructive way of putting things. I then tweaked it and added examples. It may well be obvious but it cut the time it took me to do it all in half.

It wouldn’t even occur to me to use ChatGPT to write stuff. I can bang out an email in a couple of minutes, sometimes less depending on the content. Surely it would take me just as long to tell ChatGPT what I want it to write?

Urgh.. is this the way the world is going???!! I love informally written emails.. even in coms with clients (I’m an auditor).. it’s makes us all more human! Often we are demanding information that they really don’t want to share, (usually because it’s time consuming for them, not necessarily because they are hiding something) and yes, it would deffo get people’s backs up if overly formal language is used.

Same. It's really not hard. Plus, I find drafting a complex email helps me order my own thoughts and understanding of the subject.
I can perfectly well change my register and tone too, to suit the recipient.
And as @TheMamaLife says, isn't it a joy to read peoples' personalities come through in emails?

But mainly I feel AI is being used for trivial reasons, and the process is a carbon disaster!

The flippant way in which people use AI when it isn't necessary is just awful. People seem completely unaware of the environmental impact of it.
it uses a huge amount of water in cooling. We're too distanced from the mechanics of the process and we shouldn't be using it in this careless way.
I want tech to help me with the genuinely rubbish jobs (washing and putting away laundry) not writing!

It is so obvious when stuff like this is done with AI, and it incurs a lot of irritation among the person who has to read it.

The thing is, no one reads them. Employees certainly don’t care. They just want to know what their pay review and bonus are. It’s a tick box exercise.

But for some people it really is hard. I used to be very articulate and was able to ‘bang out an email in a couple of minutes’, but then I developed a cognitive impairment from a TBI and sometimes forget words and phrases, and how to articulate things. I know what I want to say but sometimes struggle to turn it into a sentence, especially when I’m tired. If I get really stuck I tell ChatGPT what I’m trying to say and it will structure it into a coherent sentence for me, or tell me the word I was looking for. I never copy and paste what it says, it just clarifies my thoughts. I also use it to check that something I’ve written makes sense because sometimes I get into a muddle and can’t tell.

I get why you would use it and that makes sense. But for most people it’s just laziness.