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.

Wrt school reports-I'm sure there must be some teachers who use CHATGPT, but it's honestly much quicker just to write the blooming thing than to piss about thinking of AI prompts and then edit whatever garbage it spews out (especially when you're doing several short reports)

Sometimes these can come across as a bit odd/stilted if the teacher is trying to churn out 32 in one lunch break, or if they they're not allowed to say what they actually mean.

But when you're learning your new facts from MN, or from Chat GPT, those things you learn may not actually be facts.

Possibly if you are at a more advanced stage but I am still in the present tense so for me it is like a staff when walking up a steep hill.

Re bold. That was not deliberate. I typed 2 x hash marks before "macros" and that obviously changed the font.

You learn something new every day.

I love this discussion. Legal Eagle also did an analyses on two lawyers who really screwed themselves over using Chat GPT:

DISCLAIMER: I did not use AI to write this reponse.

Don’t worry - I have actually been guilty of saying brusque in the past until it was pointed out to me. Had just conflated several words. We often use words in informal writing (MN) that most of us get the sense of what they intended.

I’m a PhD creative writer/lecturer/editor - I would always underline brisk used in this manner and suggest an alternate word. It’s ambiguous in the way it’s often used and it’s better to choose more precise terms where possible. In this case, you might perform the actual act of writing ‘briskly’ (my ADHD teen does, pacing the room whilst writing her essays 🤣), but the message itself cannot be ‘brisk’, just ‘direct and to the point’. Complete derail, but the type of thing we lose 10mins over in a creative writing workshop with students!

it surely depends on your prompt? I use it for internal mails and intranet posts, and it's fine (it's not my first language so i prefer the grammar to be fine)

I just use good prompts and off it goes.

"Brisk" is not relevant to writing. You can have a brisk walk though :)

If you have to edit, it doesn't save time.

Anche studio Italiano! I ask ChatGPT to have basic conversations with me.

You can have a brisk tone, or a brisk work style, or a brisk email style. Meaning: by analogy to brisk walk.

see my Merriam Webster link, or this from Collins.

I know, I'm a university lecturer! I feel like I'm banging my head against the wall with both dd and my students. Wider reading!

Still does not apply to written content - it applies to the manner in which a person produces the writing. There was a brisk turnaround to my email, for example. Not that the email she sent in reply was a bit brisk.

haha at the Vogon poetry.

But. Be very careful using any AI to do anything at work. Better to talk to your data protection people first.

Honestly, this kind of thing is the reason why it would be better if UK schools had proper textbooks and workbooks, like many other countries do.

I think it's absolutely shocking that a teacher can't be bothered about the accuracy of the content she is teaching. Is that also what you teach the kids in your class - that content, accuracy and fact checking don't matter? That you just type in a few words and let a bot scrape up and regurgitate a bunch of internet matter?

Apparently you can now put ChatGPT content through HumaniseAI to make it sound more like a person has written it.

I am deeply suspicious of LLMs. Data protection, accuracy, bias... all that well-documented stuff. But the genie is out of the bottle and we need to learn to use it for good, like any other new tool.

If it around testing knowledge (education, interviews) then educators or hirers need strategies to minimise unfair use of AI (or unfair discrimination through use of AI).

If it is about generating knowledge, we have a responsibility to understand the capabilities (for research, summarising etc) and also limitations (bias, incompleteness, sheer making shit up-ness) of AI when doing so.

Basically, we shouldn't be indiscriminately using a tool we don't understand. But it will change the world, no question. I hope it doesn't just accelerate the race towards not being able to believe anything at all - which started with the Internet.

!! Oh no ... that's quite scary. Stop the future, I wanna get off

On the bright side, at least you know now ahead of your next shift with the spelling and grammar police. 😂

I will use chatgpt forever. However I also know how to use it properly as a tool to help me. Action lists, summarising my notes. I argue with it.

Brisk can mean literal speed but can also mean metaphorical approach, tone, style. Honestly, check a dictionary. Check several.

If someone says "she gave a brisk reply to my email" then that's ambiguous but much more likely to mean "dismissive, less than friendly in tone, not cuddly" than "it arrived quickly".

If I said "she sent a chilly email" would you object because all emails have the same temperate depending on the room you've got your computer in?

My DH does this too - they have an inhouse AI at his work. He gets lots of billion page long technical reports to read and will skim them as best he can but then ask AI to summarise them to check that he extracted the most salient points. If AI highlights anything he didn’t really register, he’ll go back into the original document and re read that section. He swears by the system, but like you they’ve been given company wide training on how best to use it for drafting email etc and not over-relying upon it.

I've been dealing with a really difficult issue at my DC's school. The head teacher uses ChatGPT to reply. It means I now absolutely loathe her and question her competency.

NO, you are misapplying the meaning. You cannot have a brisk email, only a short or brusque one, or even one that has been written briskly by the writer. The email itself cannot be brisk. The email, a collection of words, is an inanimate object that cannot actively do anything, briskly or otherwise.

Agreed. I use it occasionally when I'm sending a firm wide email usually giving everyone a bollocking about something but I use it to help me come up with ideas on how to formulate what I want to say. I definitely do not just copy and paste and I chop out all the overly formal stuff.

I was very disappointed when a well liked team member handed in their resignation for a number of reasons, but the biggest reason was that it was clear that the resignation letter had been written with AI.

I even went into ChatGPT and asked it to write me a resignation letter and it was almost verbatim.