Ai at work

Hi,
Like a lot of companies we have been looking at AI in our workplace and what information we feed it. How we use the results it spits out and any legal issues around that.

I was wondering what others have been using it for? I appear to be a bit of a Luddite compared to some of my colleagues.

Cheers

We use it to help write SEO blog posts, examine code for new or updated products and it helps review our accounts when we submit via CSV files. Quite handy, but not to be relied upon.

Treat it as an extra business tool not a panacea.

We have started using it in a limited way for various SEO stuff which is not my dept and I don’t really understand it. As well as that I work with a lot of graphics and images. It is helpful in small doses say if your photo has been zoomed in too much, and you need it zoomed out a bit where you can AI generate the surroundings a bit. It’s impressive but also a bit frightening how good it is getting.

I’m a writer so I should hate it, but I use it to pull together outlines for content assets (blogs etc) and to give me ideas for ways into a subject or catchy turns of phrase.

The actual words always get a thorough re-write though, so the finished product has a more authentic, personal feel.

They’ve already blocked Chat GPT at work due to its data sharing.

Very similar to chakaping here, it’s very handy for blog outlines and such. We only use it ‘as-is’ for super, super low-importance copy though.

Looking into using it to analyse data for SEO stuff, but that’s not really my department.

I’m also using it to critique a novel I’m writing.

Oh and we’re looking at building an SEO page checker as a lead magnet type thing, but it’s so flakey I’m not sure that’s gonna work.

Apparently we can use it to help fact check the utter bollocks that some people send us and formulate responses.

Given that there are increasing signs that the utter bollocks some people send us is also written by AI, I’m loathe to use it in the same way you shouldn’t argue with idiots – they’ll drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.

Quick warning about relying on AI – earlier this year a tax agent ran a case to Tribunal relying on something AI created for him. Including an entirely fictitious case he tried to use as precedent. He cracked at the Tribunal when he couldn’t explain to us or the Tribunal why we could find no record of the case.

Quick warning about relying on AI – earlier this year a tax agent ran a case to Tribunal relying on something AI created for him. Including an entirely fictitious case he tried to use as precedent. He cracked at the Tribunal when he couldn’t explain to us or the Tribunal why we could find no record of the case.

Oh that’s brilliant.

This should have made the news.

I meant to add, I don’t hate it because it’s clearly not a real threat to me yet (due to the utter bollocks factor).

I use github copilot for writing code at $WORK. It’s great for Python, JavaScript and pretty decent for C++ and is useful when you’re starting on something.

But it can get quite annoying quite quickly – especially the way it guesses comments wrong, so I often have it turned off to stop it distracting me with it’s inevitably-wrong-guesses.

ChatGPT has an annoying habit of making up plausible sounding – but non-existent – functions.

We’re also using chatgpt for code reviews. Because we’re coming from using Coverity, it has quite a low bar to get over. Not sure it’s useful though.

Very limited in terms of ai.

Some controlled machine learning but that is regulatory controlled.  We are still learning and developing ai controls and regulations in the medicine space so it is a bit of a moving target.

Lots of privacy concerns which rightly limit usage.  Open chatgpt is banned due to data security.

This should have made the news.

Been several cases which have made the news (at least the IT news) of various lawyers finding out that hallucinations are a real problem when it comes to case law. A few US states have currently banned using it for just that reason.

My teams write safety critical software, we use it to help make presentations look shiny, or to answer the occasional silly question. We are a way off  using it to write code.

I work in a finance role, and I use it to draft emails, structure reports, check grammar, put text into bullets etc. it’s great for when I’m starting from scratch on something, to give me an outline I can work, takes a lot of the grunt work out. I thought I would mostly  use it for excel queries, but I found that it hallucinates lot of stuff that excel doesn’t have.

Assume OP is referring to copyright issues? I think there are a few cases going through the courts at the moment but obviously it’s a really new area so not much (if any) precedent. Despite what a lot of people think, generative AI doesn’t simply copy chunks of text or images that it’s found on the internet, all output is derivative – so I’d think copyright is not an issue – IANAL though!! 🙂 Interestingly, the opposite might also be an issue for some – the fact you don’t seem to be able to copyright AI output (since copyright needs a human author to claim it!)

Obviously businesses might also fall foul where their generated content is simply wrong, or even libellous?

There’s a lot more to (generative) AI than just ChatGPT though! The AI tools built into Photoshop now are game-changing for anyone who does photo-editing/manipulation/graphics stuff.

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If by “AI” you mean analysis of large datasets, then it’s been used for years for things like chemometrics. The AI/ML brigade were better at sales that the statisticians, and basically stole their clothes. The language processing stuff will be going into document preparation and assimilation eventually.

I have used it to cobble together some basic tools for my team.  My coding skills are garbage, but ChatGPT helped me put together a webpage for internal use that used a server-side function in javascript.  I didn’t know what a server-side function even was before that, much less how to write one and where to host it.

Other than that, I’d occasionally use it for writing or re-writing copy, if I’m stuck and need a few suggestions as starting points.

We have also had some job applications that very obviously used AI to answer questions! Annoying, but I’m sure it’s the way of things now…

The AI tools built into Photoshop now are game-changing for anyone who does photo-editing/manipulation/graphics stuff.

It is indeed a game-changer. I’m using the ai features in photoshop all the time. Its a real timesaver for the donkeywork. So if I’m doing a roomset and I need to remove an item, instead of me having to spend ages with the clone tool and airbrush,removing it, I just select the item and type in ‘remove’ and it does it for me and then generates a background fill. It will also generate backgrounds for me if I need to extend an image, which are amazingly real. You can’t tell its ai. This frees up my time to do the creative stuff that actually requires the work/thought.

It is however, still pretty hit and miss. The majority of the time its great, but sometimes it will replace the removed item, say a table lamp, with a hedgehog or a plate of hot dogs, for no apparent reason whatsoever. 😀

I’ve used it to outline lessons it saves a bit of time.

Used it to generate some questions and answers again ok but not good enough to use.

I use it for performance reviews.

 I use it to draft emails, structure reports, check grammar, put text into bullets etc. it’s great for when I’m starting from scratch on something, to give me an outline I can work, takes a lot of the grunt work out.

This is pretty much my use of it.

It’s quite likely that apart from finding novel applications, AI is also currently as good as it is going to get.

Improvements are a logarithmic function of the size of the data sample used for learning.

Treat it as an extra business tool not a panacea.

Some less enlightened management will also needed to be reminded of this. I was recently doing a lot of photoshop work for a frankly terrrible company, who’s MD’s idea of timescales was so unrealistic it was laughable. He came running over to us one day like he’d discovered a cure for cancer informing us that he’d found the way we could hit the latest ludicrous deadline he’d set…

AI!!!

Apparently we were barely needed any more. He’d just had a salesman in from some AI software company or other who’d shown him the future. It could all be generated by AI. Everything!

We all simultaneously rolled our eyes at each other and explined to the idiot, making sure not to use any big words, that we were all already extensively using AI to do the donkeywork, but when its comes to hi-res, detailed photoshop retouching and image manipulation, that required a great deal of finesse, he was going to have to rely on us fuddy-duddy, old-fashioned humans and the skillsets we’ve developed over decades.

He looked crestfallen and also entirely unconvinced

****ing clown! I’m sure workplaces all around the world are now full of similar nobheads with completely unrealistic expectations

Be aware not everything badged as AI is actually AI.

Given that there are increasing signs that the utter bollocks some people send us is also written by AI

I’ve started to see some letters from people being written using AI. Well, either that or a thesaurus.

The letters are actually quite believable really, but they overdress the problem while not dealing with the main points. Also, they don’t match the demographics of the writer (a broad assumption on my part, but still valid in my experience).

When I see one, all I can think of is one of Joey’s finest moments…

I love that some people have used AI to create a response to the question! Maybe we can just get the bots to argue between themselves.