Some at UAA are embracing the use of AI at work. Graphic by Tressa Wood.
If you’ve been following the news about AI, you might have come across claims that AI is going to radically change the way we work.
CNN quoted Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella as saying, “We believe this next generation of AI will unlock a new wave of productivity growth: powerful copilots designed to remove the drudgery from our daily tasks and jobs, freeing us to rediscover the joy of creation.”
But what does this look like in practice? Are people really using these tools at work?
Two UAA administrators spoke with The Northern Light about their day-to-day use of AI.
Zac Clark is the associate director of Student Life and Leadership. The department organizes student activities and provides support for various student organizations such as USUAA.
He said that he uses ChatGPT 4.0 — the paid version of OpenAI’s chat bot — at least once a day.
Clark said that he uses it to research information. He said that it’s good at summarizing general information that would normally require a visit to multiple webpages.
He said that ChatGPT “knows” information about UAA, such as the mascot and other details about the university. But, Clark said, you should still double check its information.
“Anything you do with AI, you should also verify … If it seems like it makes sense, maybe glance around at a couple other things before you declare it as the overall number one answer.”
Clark also said that he uses it as a document creation tool.
He said that the old way was to search for a document template online – like a resume template – and fill in the details.
He said that ChatGPT can be prompted to generate a template and you can enter details – such as job experience and certifications – to jumpstart the process.
Clark emphasized that users cannot just copy and paste whatever it creates to use as a final draft.
“It’s a starting point, not a finished product … think of it as draft version 1.0. And you really need to get to draft version 4.0 before you’re done with something.”
Clark said that you can use it to help with the tone and voice in a piece of writing too.
Clark said that promotional writing is not one of his strong suits, but he uses ChatGPT to help write engaging social media posts for student events.
Clark said that one drawback to ChatGPT is that it can be “verbose” at times. He said you need to be clear in what you want it to produce and give it strict parameters: summarize information, use a particular writing style, etc.
Clark gave a presentation to the department of Student Engagement and Inclusion about using AI. Director of Career Services Holly Johanknect helped Clark with the presentation.
She also spoke to The Northern Light about her use of AI.
Career Services helps students prepare for entering the workforce. Part of that includes teaching students tips on writing resumes and preparing for interviews.
Johanknect said that she uses the free version of ChatGPT. She said that she keeps it open on one of her two computer monitors so it’s always close at hand.
She said that it’s helped her get tasks done that she would normally avoid doing because she enjoys using it.
“If something sounds boring in advance to me, I would really struggle to do it … It’s not boring to use ChatGPT, so it’s kind of like a hack to my own brain to get me to do things I put off.”
She said that she sees what projects she has on her to-do list at the end of the week and tries to find a way for ChatGPT to help get them done.
Johanknect said that she had a project where she needed to hang a number of hooks evenly spaced along a wall in her office and that she had been procrastinating.
She said that she gave ChatGPT the details to figure it out.
Even though ChatGPT is not good at math, it still figured out a solution, she said.
“It just did it for me in like a second and I had been literally thinking about not doing it for like a whole week.”
She said that another use she has found is to check the tone of her emails.
“I honed my professional writing skills as an attorney, so if I’m not in the best mood, my emails sound like I’m trying to sue you ... I’m not trying to sue anyone anymore. And so I’ll occasionally have it … revise my emails with a friendlier tone.”
Johanknect said that she prefers editing a piece of existing work and that she likes to revise and tweak the responses created by ChatGPT.
“I really like editing … editing it is fun. Whereas just looking at a blank screen to write something from scratch is not always fun to me.”
One problem Johanknect flagged was the tendency of ChatGPT to confidently make up information, a phenomenon known as “hallucinating.”
On a personal project, she said that she asked for information about some cities in Ireland. She said it seemed like it was mixing information together and that she couldn’t confirm some of the facts it was telling her.
Johanknect also described a story about a lawyer who used ChatGPT to help write a legal brief that ended up containing false information.
According to an article from CNBC, ChatGPT cited non-existent court cases in the legal brief, and the lawyers involved were sanctioned and fined $5,000 by a judge.
Johanknect said that’s why it’s important to review anything that ChatGPT creates. She said that she notices the problem is more likely to occur when asking it to come up with a response without giving it any additional information.
She said that the more information you can give ChatGPT, the better its responses will be.
“People … don’t give it half as much information as they need to … It does take longer to write a really comprehensive prompt, but the end result is so much better that it takes less time to revise it to get to what you want.”
She also said that she sees errors when she asks to revise something over and over.
The version she uses does not have access to up-to-date information, so she needs to supply it with details about her department and the university.
Johanknect talked about one way it could be used to help write a resume.
“The [top] resume writing tip is using the position description to guide the language in your resume … So you can copy paste in the position description and say, ‘Pull out the top required or preferred skills. What are the major key words in this that I can use in my resume?’”
She said that the way ChatGPT can pull that info is similar to if you were to do it yourself by finding the information in a printed copy.
It can also offer suggestions, she said, and write up and edit documentation – acting like an administrative assistant.
Johanknect said that Career Services will be hosting an event on Nov. 15 that teaches students how to use ChatGPT to prepare for interviews.
Johanknect said that she used ChatGPT to brainstorm ideas about how to host the workshop.
This article is part of a series The Northern Light is doing on AI. Visit our website to read more articles about AI!
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