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Talk to text and text to talk have made voicemails unnecessary.
It would be a shame if you had to text someone
I’m unemployed. A few years ago, the Finnish government introduced a requirement that all job seekers must submit up to 4 applications per month. (This was stupid from both the applicant and recruitment perspective. They did this anyway. Oh, companies just get swamped by applications? :surprised_pikachu:)
Then I started hearing news that major companies are screening applications based on AI analysis. And then I attended one job applicant event where one of the sessions was literally “using ChatGPT to write a cover letter”.
I’m in software development. I don’t expect to be employed again anytime soon. (Unless I bullshit my way to some AI job using ChatGPT, but hey, I have a few vestiges of morality left.)
Why is the government mandating how many applications you submit? Was this in order to be eligible for unemployment pay?
Yup. In theory, it’s a program to gently kick the job applicants to apply for more jobs, which sounds like a good thing. In practice, it’s yet another way for the authorities to breathe down the neck of job applicants to document the busywork they’re already doing, and make sure they’re doing nothing productive besides sitting by their phones and waiting for calls (that probably never come because you just annoyed every potential employer by spamming them with applications).
Several years ago, Finnish authorities did another experiment. Universal basic income for a few lucky recipients! People who participated in this couldn’t believe how awesome it was to freely engage in a bunch of modern freelancing options that the unemployment benefits program just straight up banned. I hear it was awesome while it lasted. Now, they decided to do this mandatory application bullshit for the rest of the unemployed populace. I’m hoping they got all of the data on which of the options was more productive, because from my point of view, this hasn’t been it!
Damn. In the US it’s totally normalized now to just spam hundreds of job applications per month to hopefully hear back from maybe one of them
UK here and I was unemployed/irregularly employed back around 2012-2014. The requirement was like 10 applications a week.
I used a web plugin that automated it. Just one click applies. You also need to log each thing you do to search for a job. It is trivial to lie. Honestly the system is so awful I think it actually makes it harder to find a job than having zero requirements beyond being unemployed. Not like it’s enough money to live off anyway, it would comfortably cover food and water, but that is all.
Then they made me work full time at Argos (retail) to continue getting welfare payments which works out to less than a quarter of minimum wage.
Now its iirc 5 hours of jobhunting and applying every single day? You exhaust every opening within 50 miles in the first week. Though less so these days because every job demands you spend 90 minutes filling out a survey no one will look at.
Then they made me work full time at Argos (retail) to continue getting welfare payments which works out to less than a quarter of minimum wage.
I want a special place in hell for people who made these laws and/or cheering on them…
You dont like the extra steps we added to slavery? Oh I bet you want us to make an app for slavery to innovate and disrupt the labor market!
One more step should make this daily coercion okay… right? /$
My little protest was that I would occasionally move items in their stock room at random so it didn’t match the database.
There was a fad of running things through google translate and back several times until you get something funny.
Has that fad returned with a ChatGPT expand -> contract loops?
Google translate was the original AI. We would copy an essay, run through translate 2-3 times and correct the grammar errors. Worked every time up until people caught on.
Decearing egg!!
i have been known to send emails like
hello jeff,
yes.
best regards,
grass company title, etc.
I sent a department wide email announcing a new release on an internal piece of software my team maintains, it was very concise, almost like a telegram, it was something like:
To everyone at this department:
Internal Software version 6 has been released.
Added support for ABC feature and fixed the issue with XYZ.
Full details in this link.
Kinds regards, me.
Shortly after I got a very verbose response by someone explaining me why should I use AI to write “better” emails, by better it meant longer and verbose. I replied with this comic
Most of my emails are “Set up” and some login info that I shouldn’t send over email but I was told to send over email.
Try ChatGPT. Expand on the answer. Expand on the answer. Expand on the answer. Simply the answer. Simplify the answer. Simplify the answer.
Congratulations, you are an alchemist because what you started with is clearly not what you ended up with - It must be transmution.
Alchemy isn’t real. What you just described can be adequately explained by Hawking Radiation.
We have been told we have to use copilot at work and they made up a bunch of bullshit reasons to use it. Most were just reasons not to use ChatGPT. I locally host my own LLMs but don’t use them that often.
If people would be happy with bullet points we could just send them.
But you need to have a bunch of fluff or people assume you’re being uncooperative.
“Why can’t I just send bullet points?”
“It’s bad etiquette. You have to put in the effort to write a proper email, to show you care.”
“Okay, how do I write a proper email?”
“Oh I just use ChatGPT mostly.”
Sometimes it’s frustrating not being able to answer a yes or no question with just yes or no
I have never met that kind of person that won’t accept a short answer that actually answers a question.
What I have seen plenty of is people that are completely sure nobody else will accept short answers. They specifically will always accept it, of course, but nobody else.
True social niceties matter
Rent is due in 17 days
I shit you not, I heard both of these mentioned as potential AI uses on one introductory AI training at work.
Not back to back so unfortunately it wasn’t a joke.
Just send the bullet point
“Guess this person doesn’t want to put the effort in to getting this job. Rejected.”
Why even have a human at that point? We shouldn’t even have conversations with each other anymore. Let’s just hold up our phones and let them do the talking.
Do Not Talk. Do Not Think. Simply Consume.
ITT neurotypicals take one step closer lmao
I’ve told this story before, about our last fax server.
Work -> PDF -> send fax -> receive fax -> PDF -> work
I work in international freight and this is still a thing. Most customs brokers are email now, but some still require documents be faxed. So our system takes the PDF that it auto generates for every shipment and faxes it to the number on file. From time to time those same brokers will email us a copy of the PDF we faxed them to have something corrected. So they are getting the fax in their email rather than having us just email the thing directly. It makes zero sense, like I understand keeping the fax capability for legacy customers and as a backup, but your primary should be email if it’s all going there anyway.
So it’s an idiot modem.
That can make serious mistakes. I predict, that someone will lose great money due to hallucinations in the way…
deleted by creator
It’s so sad this happens just because people can’t handle not looking professional 😭
I could look professional… for money.
people can’t handle not looking professional 😭
For weeird definitions of ‘professional’, right?
At both my jobs, I talk in points; I write in points; I rewrite their long-winded shit “just to be sure we’re clear,” in points.
It’s not god’s work I’m doing, but it preserves my sanity when it’s distilled down to facts and goals like my technical writing prof recommended so many years ago. \shrug
Ftfy:
I:
- talk
- write
- rewrite
in points.
I absolutely despise what I call “Bookkeeping” otherwise known as writing stuff for the sake of having more words
But bookkeeping already means something else…
Well yes but in dutch its kinda just used for any type of “paperwork” hence I just call it bookkeeping
It’s a good thing you added those additional words instead of saying simply
I despise “Bookkeeping”
They really helped make your point much more clear:-).
And both single bullet point messages are completely opposite to each other!
Sounds like running an email through translationparty.com
Social Media: I can drive user numbers by using AI to generate interactions and interest
Social Media in 2026: … it’s all AI now
