When I started work 30 odd years ago there was no such thing as a dictaphones. Mr Low just shouted at Pam Jones who wrote it all down. There was no email. There was no internet (at least that I was aware of). There were no cellphones. Life was good.
Now something called ChatGPT has entered the world and it may be the death knell to my enjoyment of my career.
Every letter that I get from an employment advocate nowadays has words like “all rights reserved” at the end of it. What does this mean? Why do they put it in there? I have never seen it before. I just realized after the third such e-mail that it is the use of AI.
I appreciate that we are being told that AI can replace us all – and some days that makes me happy. But before everyone runs off to individuals who claim to be experts in things when they are not, and are just relying on AI, or runs off to write their own letters, can I give a word of warning. It is becoming blatantly obvious when people use AI to write documents – it is not a good look. I like it when I receive a letter from another lawyer that is written by AI. It does not signal to me that the person is smart or using their time wisely or they are tech savvy – it signals to me that they do not know what they are doing.
There was some big kerfuffle overseas where lawyers were filing cases in court, referring to other cases that did not exist. Clearly Mr AI liked making up stuff. We received a CV at work from a graduate wanting a law job that was written so obviously by AI that my first reaction was that it was a great way to weed out someone who was clearly incapable of writing a letter on their own.
I do not know if it happens in other professions, but for example in medicine I can google my symptoms myself. I would really worry if my medical professional was doing the same.
It seems to me that AI is giving everybody the opportunity to be the expert, when that expertise does not come from learning, experience or knowledge. And before everybody gets angry with me for being an elitist, I feel the same way about other jobs.
I am the woman who does not use the self-serve checkout because I do not want to see peoples’ jobs go, so that the supermarkets get to make more money by using machines and not people at the counters. Every time I have to check myself in at the airport it annoys me because it seems to me that airfares have not gone down due to the technology.
Do not get me started on how every email we receive now appears to be run through an AI format. This irritates me as well. You can get an email from another lawyer effectively saying they are going to bankrupt your client and throw them out on the street and it finishes with “kind regards, have a nice weekend”. I cannot believe that these type of comments in this context are added by a sentient human being.
