Hey buddy ! Do you remember when AI showed up like your newest bestest friend and was promising to make your boring-ass job quicker and easier, so you could spend more time scrolling through Instagram pretending to “research market trends”?
Yeah well, that’s a thing of the past now.
Apparently our ‘trusted’ AI-buddy is secretly stabbing you in the back, and everyone else at work thinks you’re a lazy piece of shit for using it.
What?
People think you’re lazy when you use a bot?
Has it come to this now?
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Apparently so, because a new piece of research from Duke University, yeah, actual smart people in lab coats, actually wasted their time studying this shit, and found out that when you use AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini, your colleagues immediately think you’re dumber, lazier, and more replaceable than the office stapler.
It doesn’t matter if you’re actually doing a good job with it, they just think you’re coasting like a burnout surfer dude at the end of summer.
Well, well. . . It’s good to know that my productivity boost came with a free side of professional suicide.
But hold your horses, my smart and augmented friend, cause it gets better.
When Duke researchers did a bunch of fancy experiments (because that’s what researchers do instead of having actual lives), they discovered it doesn’t matter if you’re young or old, man or woman, CEO or intern. . . . “use AI, and you’re screwed” (they used a different formuliation, but that’s what it boils down to).
Everyone automatically thinks you’re less competent, less diligent, and about as motivated as a crackhead after a fix.
And (here it comes) people who secretly use AI, these little “secret AI-abusers”, they are terrified to tell anyone about it, because admitting to using ChatGPT in the office is now the social equivalent to admitting you still wet the bed at 35.
Managers who don’t use AI look down on people who do, and those who regularly use AI prefer to hire more AI users, creating a stupid, twisted, robotic clique straight out of high school.
Never knew this could cause both a social stigma and a social rift at the same time.
Jeeez.
Why?
It’s an efficiency tool, that’s all. Your email looks better, your, um, um, images you use in your um, . . . well, you know what I mean!
So now, next to all the turmoil on the planet, the potential of AI making you redundant, AI sucking up power and water, we also have to worry about this hidden social cost, basically a tax for being lazy as fuck.
Sure, AI might make your boring spreadsheet work a bit faster, but everyone around you sees you as the lazy-ass idiot relying on a robot to do your job. And guess what, even Plato back in the day worried writing would turn us into drooling idiots, so maybe we haven’t changed at all. Technology just gives us shinier ways to disappoint each other.
“This invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practice their memory. Their trust in writing, produced by external characters which are no part of themselves, will discourage the use of their own memory within them. You have invented an elixir not of memory, but of reminding” – Plato, Phaedrus, 275a
Oh, and because life’s not complicated enough, some research even says that AI actually creates more work than it saves.
Hold on, are they about to shatter my utopian dreams now?
Let’s continue . . .
Yeah, apparently AI spits out so much random garbage that someone else has to spend hours checking if it’s accurate.
I get it now.
So basically, using AI at work is like inviting a bunch of drunk raccoons into your kitchen to “help” with dinner.
Still not convinced?
Well, get ready for the last few paragraphs, which I call the “Hall-of-Shame-Full-of-Real-Life-Idiots-Who-Destroyed-Their-Careers-Thanks-To-Their-“Genius”-Use-of-AI.
For starters, I want you to meet this lawyer dude named Steven Schwartz (nah, not Spaceballs), who probably thought he was some kinda Tony Stark genius for using ChatGPT to write legal briefs. And if you’ve been a long time read of TTS you know you’re in trouble. His problem was that ChatGPT decided to invent six totally fake court cases, and this genius lawyer filed them anyway. When he got called out, he doubled down, insisting these fictional cases were real, but he ended up paying five grand and destroyed his career.
Then there’s Anthropic.
Yeah, even AI companies worth billions can can (no, sorry, will) fuck up big time. These guys got absolutely humiliated because their own darned AI, Claude, spat out court documents filled with mistakes. Their own lawyers had used Claude and had to stand up in front of a judge and admit their AI made them look like total idiots. It’s like your own kid embarrassing you in public, but in this case your kid’s a multi-billion-dollar bot that apparently hates your guts.
Now let’s talk doctors. You mean those heroes who save lives and shit?
Yeah those.
But as it turned out some of them relied on AI for medical diagnoses.
OMG!
Big mistake.
Of course, the AI diagnosed stuff wrong, and now these docs got malpractice suits shoved up their asses. So instead of being heroes, they look like they graduated med school by watching Grey’s Anatomy reruns.
Speaking of prestigious fuckups, Stanford professor Jeffrey Cockhan trusted ChatGPT to write his court defense. And AI, once again, invented bullshit sources. Hancock looked more unreliable than a weather forecast when he got caught. Good luck getting tenure now, smart ass.
And hospitals aren’t immune either.
One big hospital let AI handle diagnoses, and of course, AI screwed it up royally. Patients got the wrong treatments, people sued, and now that hospital’s PR team is probably wishing they had chosen a less stressful career, like diffusing landmines.
And what about them genius journalist who let AI write an article full of fake quotes and sources.
Sigh. . . the paper had to retract it publicly, and now that reporter probably couldn’t get a job writing fortune cookie inserts.
Your money isn’t safe either. A financial advisor decided to trust AI’s stock picks – I see those articles pop up on a daily basis – and the result was the he wasted a shit-ton of his client’s money on a roll of the dice. Now he’s facing legal action, and his clients think he’s got the investment skills of a cabbage.
Way to go, wannabe Warren Buffett.
So next time you think AI’s your career’s best friend, remember the research and these cautionary tales. It’s like trusting a raccoon with your wallet, people.
But hey, what do I know?
I was a stern believer in augmentation until I read this, and it made me think. Take my advice and think about it as well. If not, just go ahead, keep trusting robots with your job. I’m sure it’ll all work out just fine, champ.
Signing off.
Marco
I build AI by day and warn about it by night. I call it job security. Let’s keep smashing delusions with truth. We are the chaos. We are the firewall. We are Big Tech’s PR nightmare.
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