5 ms·

There are a lot of people whose professional outcomes are meaningfully constrained by their ability produce clear business English. I know a guy who used to ge

There are a lot of people whose professional outcomes are meaningfully constrained by their ability produce clear business English. I know a guy who used to get inexplicable feedback about his communication that boiled down to “write better.” This limited his ability to get promoted. He runs all his comms through ChatGPT and asks it to “make this more professional” and doesn’t get that feedback anymore.

ianlevesque 3y ago
I get that people don't care or understand this, but that's also saying he cc's OpenAI, and therefore probably Microsoft, and therefore almost definitely the NSA, on all his business communications. What a world.
- beebeepka 3y ago
  I've seen people do this on the same week as mandatory trainings featuring this exact scenario. At multiple companies
- gnulinux 3y ago
  People won't care until something major happens and after that they'll implement some draconian half-measure that doesn't fix anything like snooping on office WiFi.
  - exikyut 3y ago
    How's that even supposed to work, given that the average corporate ecosystem is so vastly cloud-based now that the majority of services use desktop and mobile apps that pin HTTPS certificates?
- almostnormal 3y ago
  > [...] and therefore probably Microsoft [...] Where it will go through teams, outlook/exchange, or O365. Not leaking data is no longer as easy as it used to be. Just some forms are more accepted than others.
- pixl97 3y ago
  As good as the average corporate IT security is that I've witnessed via my work, passing said data to NSA/OpenAI is the least of their issues. Far less scrupulous hackers are running amok as it is.
- zztop44 3y ago
  About 0.1% (0.001%??) of business communication might have adverse consequences for you/your company if forwarded to Microsoft or OpenAI or the NSA. The rest is absolutely fine. And you’re probably already using Gmail or Android or Chrome or Exchange365 or iOS or *something* that could theoretically forward your comms to a tech company (and the security state). Compared to the alternative of having your colleagues think you’re a bit stupid just because you were raised speaking a language other than English, or your parents weren’t middle class… using Grammarly or ChatGPT is a no brainer. I’d support anyone using whatever tools they can to overcome discrimination and thrive. The alternatives are: 1. Educate everyone in the company to stop discriminating against people based on language ability (impossible??) 2. Provide a local self-hosted version of the tools (although as a worker at RandomCorp, I would probably prefer to forward all my comms to Microsoft than to management!) 3. Tell people facing discrimination to just shut up and deal with it.
  - jeremyjh 3y ago
    Given the context of an engineer with such poor writing skills that they can't be promoted I'd say the odds anything they write mattering to Microsoft or the NSA are quite a lot closer to 0%. In the only circumstances that it did matter, I'd guess you're not unlikely to be better off with them in the loop anyway since we're talking deep cover industrial espionage.
- bongodongobob 3y ago
  Man, I don't know where most of the people here work, but the shit most people write about in their jobs is inconsequential and not super secret. It's performance reviews and meeting notes. 99.99% of the workforce isn't writing about the company's secret sauce... Ever. Maybe director level and up. Also, most companies make physical things, not software, so there's no secret sauce to share through email anyway.
  - Georgelemental 3y ago
    > most companies make physical things, not software, so there's no secret sauce to share through email anyway. The conclusion does not follow from the premises.
    - bongodongobob 3y ago
      Sure it does. There's no secret to making boxes, or installing glass windows, or making frozen pizzas, or ordering gravel, or installing breakers, or paving sidewalks. Very very few companies make something that actually sets them apart via a trade secret. And sure, there might be some tricks in those examples but it's not putting anyone out of business via being accidentally found a year from now in accidentally leaked partial training data. My last job was Director of IT and I'm absolutely sick and tired of security fear mongering. Turn on MFA for everything. Boom. You are now secured from 99.9999% of attacks. Chat GPT is absolutely the least of my concerns.
- natbennett 3y ago
  I’m not sure how to explain this but Microsoft doesn’t need OpenAI to get access to business emails.
Muromec 3y ago
I suspect it all started with two Ukrainian who got tired of checking how much of "a" and "the" they forgot to sprinkle into their texts.
- notpachet 3y ago
  I have far more understanding and patience for non-native English speakers making those sorts of mistakes than I do for native speakers.
- pavel_lishin 3y ago
  I read comments online, and in my experience the most difficult writing to parse isn't from foreign speakers who drop articles or mis-conjugate things - it's from people whose writing is just, for the lack of a better term, bad. This is very common on places like Nextdoor or Facebook. It's things like: - total stream-of-consciousness gibberish that could probably be assembled into a coherent statement if the writer would re-read what they wrote and edit it - A complete lack of punctuation, or even understanding of sentence and paragraph structure; at a glance, it looks like what I described above, but it's different because there's definitely a topic and a point they're looking to make, but they can't put the words together correctly. - spelling so bad, that even with context, it's unclear what word they're intending to use. - A wild misunderstanding of how to start and stop conversations online. (One recent example is me asking someone on Facebook if I could stop by to check out a garage sale, and a clarifying question about a term they used, only to get the response "ok." Note that in their post, they didn't specify an address beyond the name of the town they live in.) You can definitely point out flaws in the way I grew up - somewhat solitary, spending a lot of time alone in my room on a computer connected to the internet - but I think that it at least taught me how to make myself understood in written form.
  - jvanderbot 3y ago
    > - total stream-of-consciousness gibberish that could probably be assembled into a coherent statement if the writer would re-read what they wrote and edit it This drives me nuts. Did anyone see this [1] on HN the other day? People in comments were springing up to defend this atrocious writing style. Make a paragraph. Make a point. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38275905 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38275905

ianlevesque 3y ago

I get that people don't care or understand this, but that's also saying he cc's OpenAI, and therefore probably Microsoft, and therefore almost definitely the NSA, on all his business communications. What a world.

beebeepka 3y ago
I've seen people do this on the same week as mandatory trainings featuring this exact scenario. At multiple companies
gnulinux 3y ago
People won't care until something major happens and after that they'll implement some draconian half-measure that doesn't fix anything like snooping on office WiFi.
- exikyut 3y ago
  How's that even supposed to work, given that the average corporate ecosystem is so vastly cloud-based now that the majority of services use desktop and mobile apps that pin HTTPS certificates?
almostnormal 3y ago
> [...] and therefore probably Microsoft [...] Where it will go through teams, outlook/exchange, or O365. Not leaking data is no longer as easy as it used to be. Just some forms are more accepted than others.
pixl97 3y ago
As good as the average corporate IT security is that I've witnessed via my work, passing said data to NSA/OpenAI is the least of their issues. Far less scrupulous hackers are running amok as it is.
zztop44 3y ago
About 0.1% (0.001%??) of business communication might have adverse consequences for you/your company if forwarded to Microsoft or OpenAI or the NSA. The rest is absolutely fine. And you’re probably already using Gmail or Android or Chrome or Exchange365 or iOS or *something* that could theoretically forward your comms to a tech company (and the security state). Compared to the alternative of having your colleagues think you’re a bit stupid just because you were raised speaking a language other than English, or your parents weren’t middle class… using Grammarly or ChatGPT is a no brainer. I’d support anyone using whatever tools they can to overcome discrimination and thrive. The alternatives are: 1. Educate everyone in the company to stop discriminating against people based on language ability (impossible??) 2. Provide a local self-hosted version of the tools (although as a worker at RandomCorp, I would probably prefer to forward all my comms to Microsoft than to management!) 3. Tell people facing discrimination to just shut up and deal with it.
- jeremyjh 3y ago
  Given the context of an engineer with such poor writing skills that they can't be promoted I'd say the odds anything they write mattering to Microsoft or the NSA are quite a lot closer to 0%. In the only circumstances that it did matter, I'd guess you're not unlikely to be better off with them in the loop anyway since we're talking deep cover industrial espionage.
bongodongobob 3y ago
Man, I don't know where most of the people here work, but the shit most people write about in their jobs is inconsequential and not super secret. It's performance reviews and meeting notes. 99.99% of the workforce isn't writing about the company's secret sauce... Ever. Maybe director level and up. Also, most companies make physical things, not software, so there's no secret sauce to share through email anyway.
- Georgelemental 3y ago
  > most companies make physical things, not software, so there's no secret sauce to share through email anyway. The conclusion does not follow from the premises.
  - bongodongobob 3y ago
    Sure it does. There's no secret to making boxes, or installing glass windows, or making frozen pizzas, or ordering gravel, or installing breakers, or paving sidewalks. Very very few companies make something that actually sets them apart via a trade secret. And sure, there might be some tricks in those examples but it's not putting anyone out of business via being accidentally found a year from now in accidentally leaked partial training data. My last job was Director of IT and I'm absolutely sick and tired of security fear mongering. Turn on MFA for everything. Boom. You are now secured from 99.9999% of attacks. Chat GPT is absolutely the least of my concerns.
natbennett 3y ago
I’m not sure how to explain this but Microsoft doesn’t need OpenAI to get access to business emails.

Muromec 3y ago

I suspect it all started with two Ukrainian who got tired of checking how much of "a" and "the" they forgot to sprinkle into their texts.

notpachet 3y ago
I have far more understanding and patience for non-native English speakers making those sorts of mistakes than I do for native speakers.
pavel_lishin 3y ago
I read comments online, and in my experience the most difficult writing to parse isn't from foreign speakers who drop articles or mis-conjugate things - it's from people whose writing is just, for the lack of a better term, bad. This is very common on places like Nextdoor or Facebook. It's things like: - total stream-of-consciousness gibberish that could probably be assembled into a coherent statement if the writer would re-read what they wrote and edit it - A complete lack of punctuation, or even understanding of sentence and paragraph structure; at a glance, it looks like what I described above, but it's different because there's definitely a topic and a point they're looking to make, but they can't put the words together correctly. - spelling so bad, that even with context, it's unclear what word they're intending to use. - A wild misunderstanding of how to start and stop conversations online. (One recent example is me asking someone on Facebook if I could stop by to check out a garage sale, and a clarifying question about a term they used, only to get the response "ok." Note that in their post, they didn't specify an address beyond the name of the town they live in.) You can definitely point out flaws in the way I grew up - somewhat solitary, spending a lot of time alone in my room on a computer connected to the internet - but I think that it at least taught me how to make myself understood in written form.
- jvanderbot 3y ago
  > - total stream-of-consciousness gibberish that could probably be assembled into a coherent statement if the writer would re-read what they wrote and edit it This drives me nuts. Did anyone see this [1] on HN the other day? People in comments were springing up to defend this atrocious writing style. Make a paragraph. Make a point. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38275905 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38275905