Speed of changes re AI at work

[Bunnycat101]

Has anyone else suddenly found their workplace is moving really fast on AI? I feel like I’ve almost been in a mini revolution. 3
months ago it was quite sporadic use with people using copilot as an extended search engine. Now, everyone is using it all the time to help draft content, write emails, get advice etc. The speed of change has been really interesting to me. Culturally there used to be a hesitancy at first that you might be cheating by getting copilot to write a letter or a briefing note whereas now it’s normal practice to use it at least in part. Notes are all done via transcription. I worry that junior roles look pretty vulnerable already. The things that I’d have got a new grad to do like minute taking, summarising documents can be replaced very easily by AI. My own skill set feels under threat as well.

AIBU to ask if others have found the same in their organisations? My other worry is that the school curriculum has not adapted at all. The world of work seems to be changing very rapidly and we’re still drilling 10 year olds on fronted adverbials or setting exams that are based on recall of facts.

I am currently taking a year or so off work and am getting increasingly concerned that I am missing a pivotal year in terms of technology advances and that I won’t actually be able to return to a role similar to my previous one as I will have been left behind. I’m trying to do some upskilling but how I use AI at home (recipes, holiday itineraries for example) is very different to what I would be doing with it at work.

Champion Bullshitter is the best description of AI I’ve heard! Love it !!!

Yes agree on the theft of content. Is it a done deal here? I recall some artists moving against Labour on this.

All content generated by "AI" will be free.

It has to be to train "AI". Unless I missed the press release where they are now paying for training content ?

Have found AI in IT to be a bit like asking someone you know if they can fix your laptop.... they might, equally they could hand back a brick.

More generally, it gives out too much false information... depending what is asked, anywhere between 55% and 87%, can't base decisions on that.

If workplaces are using it now, in its infancy.....

No it’s still theft, I think it’s in Labour’s recent bill hence Elton John and others speaking up

Its irrelevant what the UK does if the USA allows it.

Only a larger bloc like the EU can challenge this.

But if AI is to evolve, if in deed we want it too.... it has to have access to content.... where would you like the line drawn?

If you tell it to make sure the sources are real and fact check them it doesn't. People need to learn how to prompt AI properly, the better your input the better output and factual response you'll get. It takes tweaking but now I never get fake sources or links. AI works well when you know how to use it well and also when you practice.

I love AI.

I work outside, in a technical role. I am highly qualified to do so, and I find the desk based element of my job to be so time consuming and a waste of time.

AI really helps. Now obviously I have to spend 5 minutes curating and tweaking what it’s provided, but it has turned hour long email writing tasks into a 10 minute doddle.

I am so much more productive. My job is very secure - but I do wonder what will happen to the wider job market in 10+ years when AI has fully taken off.

https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/09/dead_need_ai_data_delete_right/

You raise some interesting points.

So much of schooling is about socialisation - learning to get along with others, negotiating etc. The thought of children not having access to those social skills and connections in real life context spells disaster for mental wellbeing of individuals and society.

In order to have any value at all, "AI" needs to be trained. If the companies that are selling "AI" had to pay for that content, then the prices they would have to charge would mean that "AI" would remain a premium niche product that wouldn't really make as much ROI as it could.

However if you remove the need to pay people for content (bearing in mind the global direction of travel is to remove the need to pay people for anything) then whatever you are selling is instant profit.

Or so ChatGPT surmised when I asked it how the "AI" industry should develop.

LA. We’ve lost two jobs already. We’ve a lot of natural wastage so it hasn’t mattered, but we aren’t recruiting.
People are using it to write an email fgs and you can tell.
We had a teams meeting and anyone who was worried/had concerns was shutdown. AI is super great and doesn’t mean job losses… apparently.

I’m pretty sure AI is going to make a relatively small amount of people vast amounts of profit. The harder part for us is how to tax it so we can have services if job creation tanks.

Creatives should be paid, the U.K. has enough valuable creativity to be worth it.

Why on earth would you want to tax the rich ?

Truly MN has become a very weird place of late.

The thing that excites me is AI and medical research. Will AI start developing new drugs to cure cancers, reverse ageing, etc? Everyone focuses on the bad, but maybe AI will lead to all sorts of amazing breakthroughs.

Yep. Although the lack of any thought of high job loss and no access to profit as o/s seems to be absent from any discussion on AI.

I use it at work (charity sector), mainly to write grants. It has massively reduced my workload, but tbf a lot of that has required me to upskill in “prompt engineering” (what to ask it) and experiment with different models. I tend like PP to use it to produce first drafts, which I can then amend as I need. I’d say I can now do three weeks’ work in a day. As a person with various deadline/bum on seat issues due to ND it has also been invaluable. It makes the dreaded first step/blank page much easier to deal with.

Combination of people thinking "Can't happen here", and the companies and corporations not giving a shit.

I really can't blame Bezos and Musk et al for their disdain for the human race. If humans really cared about each other then Bezos, Musk et al wouldn't exist.

Tbf it is easy. We love ease and why not. But two things that concern me, we give up on educating in a way that challenges dc and the tax thing.

I say two but then ds shared a video on worst / best case scenario with China v US on AI and how iterative models debunk humans pretty much. I mean that was worst case scenario but still

I think we've passed the Rubicon. The wealth inequality is so large it will never be corrected from within the system. Whether it was inevitable or not I will leave for the 30th century incarnation of Edward Gibbon.

I think it's becoming increasingly obvious that you need a decent level of intelligence to use AI in the first place so I don't think it will replace people entirely. I've seen people put something in ChatGPT and then just send out whatever it says even though it makes no sense whatsoever, it's quite embarrassing and really highlights that you do need some skill to prompt and edit it properly in the first place.

QUESTIONS
Those of you who are finding that colleagues are using lots of AI...

1.Am I right to believe that all PP actually mean they are using specifically large language models and maybe search engine AI-generated summaries?

Or do people mean they are using machine learning, or other forms of AI?

2.Would more of you say what kind of work environment you are in? I assume no one wlll say they are using lots of AI because they are a hairdresser, landscaper, chef, careworker, property developer... Maybe lawyers and sales and marketing offices like to use LLMs ?

web traffic is dropping and people aren’t engaging with primary content but the AI summaries instead.

That's amusing... I swtiched to Ecosia on all my devices for searches so I could easily avoid the AI summaries that Google was forcing on me. I never trust a word of an AI summary, I want to see sources and the info in context plus I loathe my query being used to feed an environmentally disasterous LLM.

I have collaborators in poor countries with bad wifi connections. They put diverse AI-summary bots into our meetings... the summaries generated by their bots are mediocre at best. Very waffly, bad at prioritising, miss action points, wrongly transcribe, etc..

We cannot tax more, they'll leave the UK... isn't that what you ve been posting for the last 12 months?

Everyone seems to be using it at my work especially for writing emails