I asked a trusted colleague for comments on a written document and they fed it in to chatGPT and sent me back that output and I just want to cry.
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I really appreciate all the great advice and suggestions. I'm just... so disappointed and know I have to approach all my interactions with this person differently in the future. I've written up a long email, but I'm realizing that won't work as well as having a conversation with the person. Especially because I'm likely to start crying during the conversation. So. That's going to be FUN.
But maybe it will help one person be less addicted to the forest-burning plagiarism machine? Maybe?
@sundogplanets it feels pointless to even converse with people that do this. If they’re just going to feed the conversation to an LLM then they’re just acting as a middleman for anyone that is willing to just ask the AI instead of their friend.
Also this: https://shawnsmucker.substack.com/p/please-use-ai
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@sundogplanets @ravenbait I'm wondering if we shouldn't put an explicit clause at the beginning of all our emails with an attachment -- "this is copyrighted material, please do not feed any of the content or attachments of this email into an AI"
@frincon @sundogplanets @ravenbait If the goal is to actually prevent the text from ever being fed into an LLM then it's not going to work (because there are many contexts where emails get automatically subjected to LLM analysis without a human seeing them first), but if the goal is to appeal to conscientious people who would otherwise not think twice about manually running an LLM on the content, then yeah it could help.
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Not sure if this helps, but have been sending this piece to friends who have become addicted: https://www.netmeister.org/blog/everybodys-lost-their-minds.html
And highlighting this quote: "AI is the tool that dulls its users; it incrementally replaces understanding with a new dependency and addiction as you actively de-skill yourself."
@mastodonmigration @sundogplanets
This one is really good too, although like the other links, I'm not sure how convincing they are to a genAI "addict":
https://lookingup.francois-rincon.org/an-open-letter-to-academic-colleagues-using-genai/ -
I asked a trusted colleague for comments on a written document and they fed it in to chatGPT and sent me back that output and I just want to cry.
Guess I won't be asking that person for help or advice on anything anymore. Enshittification happens in people's writing skills too, I guess.
I also have absolutely no idea how to respond to them. If you're that far down the genAI black hole I don't think pointing out the ethical/environmental/cognitive issues will help. Fuck.
@sundogplanets I find that “this could’ve been an email” no longer works.
I received an answer to a questionnaire that we needed from a client to develop their product. The questionnaire was not long, and it was important for the project to receive clear answers. We received an AI slop answer. Wasted time and effort.
Next time I’ll do the questionnaire as 1 hour workshop.
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@hosford42 @MCDuncanLab @sundogplanets ah, my bad, I misremembered the roles of the players. I don't have a specific link for that.
@iris @hosford42 @sundogplanets
Yes I too may have *gasp* gotten it wrong, it was a Anthropic-linked researcher who questioned if OpenAI used things he’d put into one of their tools.
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I asked a trusted colleague for comments on a written document and they fed it in to chatGPT and sent me back that output and I just want to cry.
Guess I won't be asking that person for help or advice on anything anymore. Enshittification happens in people's writing skills too, I guess.
I also have absolutely no idea how to respond to them. If you're that far down the genAI black hole I don't think pointing out the ethical/environmental/cognitive issues will help. Fuck.
@sundogplanets And in their reading skills, by the sound of it . . . Horrible.
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@blogdiva @sundogplanets this is brilliant. "I'm sorry, I really really hate to do this but I had to ask the lawyers and here's what they said" is a power move. Tenure doesn't shield against a legal advisor's recommendations.
that’s exactly the intention, which is why i’ve always contended that if Hollywood actors have SAGAFTRA to negotiate that ish for them, regardless if they are multimillionaires or not, so should university professors. aislop is even more reason now for uni & college tenured professors to unionize ―pull resources to hire a whole new generation of IP lawyers.
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I asked a trusted colleague for comments on a written document and they fed it in to chatGPT and sent me back that output and I just want to cry.
Guess I won't be asking that person for help or advice on anything anymore. Enshittification happens in people's writing skills too, I guess.
I also have absolutely no idea how to respond to them. If you're that far down the genAI black hole I don't think pointing out the ethical/environmental/cognitive issues will help. Fuck.
I wouldn't approach it from the ethical/environmental/cognitive angle. I'd say something to the effect of, "I was really hoping to hear your own thoughts about this." It's the truth, which conveniently has a bit of flattery to it, and which might gently nudge the person to reflect on the situation without you having to get roped into conflict.
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@ravenbait @kim @frincon @sundogplanets
It is very likely that kind of people is feeding all their email into an AI and only reading the briefs the AI generates for them, and skimming the answers. So the effect of that kind of warning is probably very limited.
But it can't do no harm.
@jcurioso @ravenbait @kim @sundogplanets if this is already where we are in academia (I don't think so, at least not in my immediate professional entourage), we might as well close shop
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@frincon @sundogplanets @ravenbait The recipient may perhaps not do it. The email platform may well do it. GMail? It will do it. It will also soak up opinions of all addressees in the email chain. How we get out of this I really don't know.
@Jeffrey @sundogplanets @ravenbait we are using institutional email adresses and have our own email servers usually for work.
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@frincon @sundogplanets @ravenbait If the goal is to actually prevent the text from ever being fed into an LLM then it's not going to work (because there are many contexts where emails get automatically subjected to LLM analysis without a human seeing them first), but if the goal is to appeal to conscientious people who would otherwise not think twice about manually running an LLM on the content, then yeah it could help.
@diazona @sundogplanets @ravenbait the context here is communication between academics with institutional email servers.
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@sundogplanets I'm a jerk and I don't care for prevarication so I would simply say "you have wasted my time, if I wanted LLM sludge I could have gotten it myself without going through you"
@mxchara That is probably what I would've said too.
"If I wanted to know what ChatGPT's output is, I would've prompted ChatGPT myself. What was your thinking process behind doing this? Do you think I can't use ChatGPT myself?
I've been called rude several times by now. Not that I care what idiots think of me, but they didn't change their behavior nor even see the issue.
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@diazona @sundogplanets @ravenbait the context here is communication between academics with institutional email servers.
@frincon @sundogplanets @ravenbait Ah yeah within that specific context it makes sense. (Assuming the institutional email servers are in-house, I guess)
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I asked a trusted colleague for comments on a written document and they fed it in to chatGPT and sent me back that output and I just want to cry.
Guess I won't be asking that person for help or advice on anything anymore. Enshittification happens in people's writing skills too, I guess.
I also have absolutely no idea how to respond to them. If you're that far down the genAI black hole I don't think pointing out the ethical/environmental/cognitive issues will help. Fuck.
@sundogplanets I'd be at "thanks, do you still know anyone who can actually read? Maybe I can have them look at it."
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@frincon @sundogplanets @ravenbait Ah yeah within that specific context it makes sense. (Assuming the institutional email servers are in-house, I guess)
@diazona @sundogplanets @ravenbait They usually are, yes (there are exceptions but they remain exceptions).
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@mxchara That is probably what I would've said too.
"If I wanted to know what ChatGPT's output is, I would've prompted ChatGPT myself. What was your thinking process behind doing this? Do you think I can't use ChatGPT myself?
I've been called rude several times by now. Not that I care what idiots think of me, but they didn't change their behavior nor even see the issue.
@davidculley I suppose one could be quite laconic about it and simply reply with "all right, that's ChatGPT's opinion, but I still don't know yours"
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@iris @hosford42 @sundogplanets
Yes I too may have *gasp* gotten it wrong, it was a Anthropic-linked researcher who questioned if OpenAI used things he’d put into one of their tools.
@MCDuncanLab @iris @sundogplanets
Okay, well I'll keep looking. Thanks!
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I asked a trusted colleague for comments on a written document and they fed it in to chatGPT and sent me back that output and I just want to cry.
Guess I won't be asking that person for help or advice on anything anymore. Enshittification happens in people's writing skills too, I guess.
I also have absolutely no idea how to respond to them. If you're that far down the genAI black hole I don't think pointing out the ethical/environmental/cognitive issues will help. Fuck.
@sundogplanets this happened to me, I got very, very angry. The coworker tried to apologize. I just went "I feel abused by a steam roller". We didn't talk to each other for 2 weeks.
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I asked a trusted colleague for comments on a written document and they fed it in to chatGPT and sent me back that output and I just want to cry.
Guess I won't be asking that person for help or advice on anything anymore. Enshittification happens in people's writing skills too, I guess.
I also have absolutely no idea how to respond to them. If you're that far down the genAI black hole I don't think pointing out the ethical/environmental/cognitive issues will help. Fuck.
@sundogplanets I'd just tell them thanks for nothing, but it's actually worse than nothing.
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@raymaccarthy @ravenbait @sundogplanets OK. What is supposed to be isn't what is. I'm not sure what point you are trying to make. We all know they are stealing.
@RegGuy @ravenbait @sundogplanets The point is that the bot/agent/llm whatever doesn't have any permissions inherited from the user being sent a document for comment. It's simply illegal copying in same sense as uploading to file sharing and publishing the link on every social media.