How much do you use ai to write or as a work tool?

[Anonymous]

I am a school principal, and using AI to write evaluations has given me back years of my life. I take copious notes when I’m observing and have great reflection conferences with teachers. That is where the real work happens—in the conversation. But then I have to write everything up which takes forever. Using AI has changed that. Of course, it’s only as good as what I put in and what I check.

[Anonymous]

Never. I hate it, and in my field - law - it notoriously hallucinates. I love to write, am an excellent writer, and write quickly. I love language and sentence composition, so why would I have something do it for me, especially if it will do a poor job. Additionally, for advice to a client, a fair amount of my work is tone and nuance. I am not trusting that to an AI. And then too, sometimes I am not entirely sure of what my view of an issue will be until I write it out. The writing process helps me clarify and retain the information. And since my practice is built on expertise, I need to have that expertise at hand when I walk into a meeting and am asked unexpected questions. Can't do that if I rely on AI.

[Anonymous]

Having been a small business owner, I know writing slightly different versions of the same email can make you crazy. Businesses already have template responses. I think feeding that information into AI and creating an agent that can draft or even send responses to inquiries is an excellent use case.

To me, it's a version of search. People are constantly sending emails to businesses just to retrieve existing information that either isn't on your website because it's semi-confidential (like in depth pricing) or it's on your website but they didn't read to find it. So the AI agent in that case is really just packaging and reorganizing information you've given it into customized formats based on the prompt (the incoming email). It's great at that, and it's not really creating anything.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Never. I hate it, and in my field - law - it notoriously hallucinates. I love to write, am an excellent writer, and write quickly. I love language and sentence composition, so why would I have something do it for me, especially if it will do a poor job. Additionally, for advice to a client, a fair amount of my work is tone and nuance. I am not trusting that to an AI. And then too, sometimes I am not entirely sure of what my view of an issue will be until I write it out. The writing process helps me clarify and retain the information. And since my practice is built on expertise, I need to have that expertise at hand when I walk into a meeting and am asked unexpected questions. Can't do that if I rely on AI.

On the other hand, as a client, it's great. I'm a trustee for a relative. A question came up and I fed the trust agreement into chatGPT so I could ask it questions before I met with an actual lawyer. It was terrific as way for me to search and understand that document without knowing the terminology. So I was way better prepared to meet with the lawyer and I was better able to understand the conversation. It's not like I asked it for legal advice. But I did ask it things like "what does the trust agreement say happens if Larla dies before Larlo?" and "what does the trust agreement say about if Larla marries and has a stepchild?" and it was great at directing me to the relevant sections.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am a school principal, and using AI to write evaluations has given me back years of my life. I take copious notes when I’m observing and have great reflection conferences with teachers. That is where the real work happens—in the conversation. But then I have to write everything up which takes forever. Using AI has changed that. Of course, it’s only as good as what I put in and what I check.

I’m a teacher and absolutely fine with this as long as you’re accepting of my AI use. I use it as I write my lesson plans as well as any post-observation reflection paperwork. Because I agree: the real work is the teaching. The excessive documentation keeps me from doing that.

And I agree it saves me time that I now use grading papers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Never. I hate it, and in my field - law - it notoriously hallucinates. I love to write, am an excellent writer, and write quickly. I love language and sentence composition, so why would I have something do it for me, especially if it will do a poor job. Additionally, for advice to a client, a fair amount of my work is tone and nuance. I am not trusting that to an AI. And then too, sometimes I am not entirely sure of what my view of an issue will be until I write it out. The writing process helps me clarify and retain the information. And since my practice is built on expertise, I need to have that expertise at hand when I walk into a meeting and am asked unexpected questions. Can't do that if I rely on AI.

On the other hand, as a client, it's great. I'm a trustee for a relative. A question came up and I fed the trust agreement into chatGPT so I could ask it questions before I met with an actual lawyer. It was terrific as way for me to search and understand that document without knowing the terminology. So I was way better prepared to meet with the lawyer and I was better able to understand the conversation. It's not like I asked it for legal advice. But I did ask it things like "what does the trust agreement say happens if Larla dies before Larlo?" and "what does the trust agreement say about if Larla marries and has a stepchild?" and it was great at directing me to the relevant sections.

This is a really bad thing to do with long documents because often the AI hallucinates if it can’t find anything about Larlo or Larla. I have found when I ask the AI these kinds of questions I MUST go back and verify it myself. At work, Adobe has its own AI tool in acrobat that is better for these kinds of questions.

[Anonymous]

Never.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am a school principal, and using AI to write evaluations has given me back years of my life. I take copious notes when I’m observing and have great reflection conferences with teachers. That is where the real work happens—in the conversation. But then I have to write everything up which takes forever. Using AI has changed that. Of course, it’s only as good as what I put in and what I check.

I’m a teacher and absolutely fine with this as long as you’re accepting of my AI use. I use it as I write my lesson plans as well as any post-observation reflection paperwork. Because I agree: the real work is the teaching. The excessive documentation keeps me from doing that.

And I agree it saves me time that I now use grading papers.

I’m fine with it as long as you have measures in place to ensure students aren’t using to write assignments that you’re grading. Because then it would become AI grading AI.

[Anonymous]

Never. I refuse on ethical grounds, but also because what I’ve seen is so mid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Never. I hate it, and in my field - law - it notoriously hallucinates. I love to write, am an excellent writer, and write quickly. I love language and sentence composition, so why would I have something do it for me, especially if it will do a poor job. Additionally, for advice to a client, a fair amount of my work is tone and nuance. I am not trusting that to an AI. And then too, sometimes I am not entirely sure of what my view of an issue will be until I write it out. The writing process helps me clarify and retain the information. And since my practice is built on expertise, I need to have that expertise at hand when I walk into a meeting and am asked unexpected questions. Can't do that if I rely on AI.

Lawyer in a very technical field and this is me too.

When i've asked AI some legal technical questions, the answers were astounding wrong and mixed up.

I also really like writing and am very good at it. When i get AI written product, I have to review the whole thing and rewrite it (like an intern). It is much faster for me to do it well the first time. Also agree that there's so much value to me doing the research directly, reading the initial document. That's the only way you REALLY learn the hyper complicated nuances of the law, not asking AI for one discrete answer. If i didn't put in the time for the first client's question, then that's a missed opportunity for me to just generally learn the material. And knowing the material backwards and forwards is what sets me apart from others.

I know that AI can make some jobs a lot more efficient, but my understanding so far is that those jobs are low knowledge, low barrier to entry, being done by not particularly inefficient people. Like, when someone says "it helps me write an email that would have taken me 30 minutes to get the tone right", this is not a thing in my job. I'm drafting that email faster than i could instruct and review AI.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Never. I hate it, and in my field - law - it notoriously hallucinates. I love to write, am an excellent writer, and write quickly. I love language and sentence composition, so why would I have something do it for me, especially if it will do a poor job. Additionally, for advice to a client, a fair amount of my work is tone and nuance. I am not trusting that to an AI. And then too, sometimes I am not entirely sure of what my view of an issue will be until I write it out. The writing process helps me clarify and retain the information. And since my practice is built on expertise, I need to have that expertise at hand when I walk into a meeting and am asked unexpected questions. Can't do that if I rely on AI.

On the other hand, as a client, it's great. I'm a trustee for a relative. A question came up and I fed the trust agreement into chatGPT so I could ask it questions before I met with an actual lawyer. It was terrific as way for me to search and understand that document without knowing the terminology. So I was way better prepared to meet with the lawyer and I was better able to understand the conversation. It's not like I asked it for legal advice. But I did ask it things like "what does the trust agreement say happens if Larla dies before Larlo?" and "what does the trust agreement say about if Larla marries and has a stepchild?" and it was great at directing me to the relevant sections.

PP you're quoting. Fair, although I would worry about confidentiality. At my workplace we are not allowed to feed internal agency documents into AI because of confidentiality and privacy issues. But if you don't mind that, then whatever.

I of course glance at AI search results for non-work stuff, like most people. Including Dr. Google. But always with the mindset that it could be wrong so if I truly need to know, I need to read the real results, ask a real doctor, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Never. I hate it, and in my field - law - it notoriously hallucinates. I love to write, am an excellent writer, and write quickly. I love language and sentence composition, so why would I have something do it for me, especially if it will do a poor job. Additionally, for advice to a client, a fair amount of my work is tone and nuance. I am not trusting that to an AI. And then too, sometimes I am not entirely sure of what my view of an issue will be until I write it out. The writing process helps me clarify and retain the information. And since my practice is built on expertise, I need to have that expertise at hand when I walk into a meeting and am asked unexpected questions. Can't do that if I rely on AI.

Lawyer in a very technical field and this is me too.

When i've asked AI some legal technical questions, the answers were astounding wrong and mixed up.

I also really like writing and am very good at it. When i get AI written product, I have to review the whole thing and rewrite it (like an intern). It is much faster for me to do it well the first time. Also agree that there's so much value to me doing the research directly, reading the initial document. That's the only way you REALLY learn the hyper complicated nuances of the law, not asking AI for one discrete answer. If i didn't put in the time for the first client's question, then that's a missed opportunity for me to just generally learn the material. And knowing the material backwards and forwards is what sets me apart from others.

I know that AI can make some jobs a lot more efficient, but my understanding so far is that those jobs are low knowledge, low barrier to entry, being done by not particularly inefficient people. Like, when someone says "it helps me write an email that would have taken me 30 minutes to get the tone right", this is not a thing in my job. I'm drafting that email faster than i could instruct and review AI.

I sort of think this attitude is just as bad as the “AI Boosters” who think AI can or will replace a lawyer. Like it seems overly defensive.

LLMs are software. If someone is adept at using a piece of software to make their job better, that doesn’t mean their job is less complicated than yours. Perhaps they are more creative than you. Perhaps their job is more multi-faceted. Perhaps their process is different, and getting those initial words on the page for them to edit leads to a product that is just as good as yours, or better, and faster.

AI is not magic, but the technology is evolving a bit. Over the past year or so it has improved at legal analysis, especially westlaw cocounsel. Assuming that you are so good, so fast, so important, that a tool (and it’s just a tool) could do nothing for you reeks of hubris. And, perhaps, isn’t the safest position.

[Anonymous]

Never.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I use it for an email that might have taken me 30 mins to craft. For example, a member writes in wanting something we cannot do for them - I tell AI why we need to say no and ask them to write an empathetic response that still says no. Instead of me worrying if i am going to make member mad with my writing, I tweak what AI wrote and less than 5 minutes and I have the perfect response

Thing is, I can detect AI writing a mile away. If you sent me that instead of a personal response, I would quit your organization and stop being a member. I would be so incredibly offended.

I am worth the time it takes to give me a human response.

Sure, because you are so special the organization's rules that apply to all members don't apply to you and you are asking for an exception. The rules apply to all, so the answer is still no, and you've wasted my time. So, don't let the door hit you on the way out

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am a school principal, and using AI to write evaluations has given me back years of my life. I take copious notes when I’m observing and have great reflection conferences with teachers. That is where the real work happens—in the conversation. But then I have to write everything up which takes forever. Using AI has changed that. Of course, it’s only as good as what I put in and what I check.

I’m a teacher and absolutely fine with this as long as you’re accepting of my AI use. I use it as I write my lesson plans as well as any post-observation reflection paperwork. Because I agree: the real work is the teaching. The excessive documentation keeps me from doing that.

And I agree it saves me time that I now use grading papers.

I’m fine with it as long as you have measures in place to ensure students aren’t using to write assignments that you’re grading. Because then it would become AI grading AI.

All student writing is done by hand. No laptops.

But the situations are quite different.

Students using AI in my classroom would defeat the purpose. I am tasked with teaching them to make claims, defend arguments, and organize thoughts.

Using AI for paperwork required by administrators doesn’t defeat the purpose. I am paid to teach, not to fill out excessive documents that actually have little to no impact on my teaching.