Caught using ChatGPT to write email

[Jidemummu199]

I don't normally use it to write emails just to structute blog outlines. So I had ever used it to write any text until then. I heard a lot of people have been using it for emails and I was curious to give it a try. Nothing else. The thing is what I didn't know the header and footer prompt responses were visible until I had already hit send about 15 minutes later. I immediately sent an brief apology to my colleague. We are normally very close and we think very highly of each other. So now I'm now concerned that this will make them think lesser of me. I will go into the office tomorrow and I'm nervous to see them. My husband tells me not to worry it happens. But do you think I'm worrying over nothing? One thing for sure is that I won't be trying it for emails again!

No, I don't use it for anything confidential (of course), I was trying to see if I could use it for researching things like legal precedents, the history of various concepts etc. It really doesn't work for that because it makes up stuff and seems so confident about complete bullshit!

@sussexman my professional body is not "neanderthal" but they take a very dim view of the production of vital documents containing false/misleading information.

PS there was a solicitor in the US (I forget exactly where now) who got into serious hot water because of quoting completely fictional case law to the judge. (It's known as AI "hallucinations").

My organisation has been promoting Microsoft co-pilot so I've been using that to do my admin emails. I suppose it's a new area and many places won't have established guidance.

I've tried to use it as well for writing a lecture I have to give. The draft was spot on for time but inaccurate (as well as being very very boring, the audience would have gone to sleep). The inaccuracies were of both commission and omission!

I write perfectly good mails and documents myself, commercial AI tools draft them more quickly and save me time to spend more effectively in other ways.

I’m entirely capable of doing all my own washing by hand but the machine does it more quickly leaving me time for other things.

Its not that many years since letters were routinely drafted by ranks of human secretaries, often from quite sketchy dictated requirements, leaving the professionals more time for the areas of work only they could do.

You can train your AI agent to write in your very own personal style. In fact you can have multiple agents to write in different tones as needed for a given audience.

We've moved form cave walls to wet clay to papyrus to parchment to paper to the printing press, typewriters, word Processors, tablets to Grammarly and chatgpt. Humans seem to want progress, it's in our nature and AI is not a development that can be halted.

What worries me is that while many AI platforms are currently free, or at least offer some access without payment, the best results often come with a paid subscription.

Right now, powerful tools like ChatGPT are widely accessible, sometimes even without an account. This open access not only benefits users but also helps the AI improve, as we all feed our thoughts and data into the system. Remember when a digital system is free we are the product, or our data is (like on Mumsnet)

But once these models have learned enough, there’s a real possibility that access will become more restricted where only those who can afford to pay receive the full benefits. In less open societies, access could be tied to behavior and compliance, making it easy to centrally control who gets to use these tools.

This risks deepening digital inequality, reinforcing existing power structures, and ultimately locking many people out of shaping or even participating in the future.

Not sure I understand what you mean OP. Did you not see them before you hit send? How did you copy the text from ChatGPT? Did you highlight and copy or click on the copy button?

I clicked on the copy button and pasted it straight onto my email draft. My laptop screen is a little small, so I honestly didn't even notice the header/footer text before I pressed send.

In which case how can anyone possibly object to you using ChatGPT to word an email to a colleague?

Needs more training so doesn't bs.

I can't use it for most of my work but it's fun playing around with it.

@MickyMoss was your message fed into AI before you posted it? (Appreciate you might be in the US though!)

Most of the things you mention are tools that still required a human to operate - whereas for me we are asking AI to craft something on our behalf. I’m getting on a bit so have worked through from manual typewriters, telex, and so on. I think AI is different. Like I say I use it (before anyone accuses me of being Neanderthal)

Now this might well be a silly question, but if people stop going straight to a web search engine like Google, because AI is farming sources, how will those search engines continue, and where then will AI get its information from… just musings!

Why? We were told to use AI if we needed to format an email or process

@Reugny I've realised I can't use it for work either (at its current level of functioning anyway), but I also like to try it out a bit for other things to see what it can do. Just as long as I take it all with a pinch of salt. (The written words seem to often be the equivalent of the images of people with six fingers etc, an approximation but nowhere near good enough to be mistaken for the real thing).

It’s completely normal these days. Why on earth would you spend time drafting and checking an email when ChatGPT can write it for you instantly? It’s like counting on your fingers when you have Excel. It does all the hard work but you still have to know what goes in and the sort of thing you can expect to get out.

The trick you missed is you still need to proof it; sometimes it’s just prettily written nonsense. Good learning for you. I’m sure it’s pretty common these days and you’ve apologised so don’t give it a second thought.

I would change your thinking here and be positive about it. You didn't do anything wrong unless you have a company policy saying you should not use these AI tools. Just act confident and say you are trialing it to see if it will help you with tasks at work. I can think of no good reason why anyone would think less of you for this, the world is changing and we are being encouraged to use these tools to help with tasks like this

I don’t understand this either!

If I had to tell it what I wanted it to say, then check through what it produced and redraft anything I didn’t like, why wouldn’t I just write the email myself? I know what I’m doing, and I trust my own brain - plus I’ve written a lot of email before…

I’d be delighted you were embracing technology. We encourage our teams to use it for everyday things to start getting used to using it, it’s a big objective for our teams so I’d be happy you were giving it a go.

Those are all terrible, though! (I work in marketing.)

Well it was a silly example - I didn’t want to use a real life product. Just an example of how you can use it as a starting point to spark a bit of creativity when you’re fed up with reworking the same bit of copy.

Why? It's not that a big a deal. 😳

Another one here whose workplace has their own <company name>GPT and actively encouraged to use it (obviously with caution as it is an emerging technology) to be more efficient.

Asking it to find information in the internet is prone to problems and everything should be validated with credible links, but for summarising documents, responding to emails etc it is pretty good (still need to check it).

Whether anyone likes it or not this is a technology that is coming to all our lives and jobs. Dinosaurs of any age will quickly, and it will be quick, be left behind.

I am saying that as a 56 year old who remembers introducing PC's and the first emailing/shared calendar systems to secretaries in the late 80s/early 90s who didn't want to let go of their jobs typewriters, internal memo envelopes and diaries. The ones who embraced it flourish in bigger roles, the ones who resisted were soon redundant.

Oh that's a perfect time to try out AI. I can't see why your colleague would have given it a thought.

So solicitors and barristers should be cheaper in future? As they could simply load all the documentary evidence into AI, AI distils and finds the key points and arguments, and as we know this, the overall cost has GOT to be lower right? Maybe these will become the new minimum wage jobs

But if your job is to do that, why should your boss pay someone in London £50k per year (or whatever) to operate the bullshit machine, when they can pay someone in India 10% of that?

I suspect stuff like this isnt too far off in the future! Its hard to see what the emergent career opportunities in regard to AI as it'll probably be able to build itself soon!