How AI helped me through a tricky work conversation

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A tricky work conversation loomed, so I did what any normal person would do: I put it off. I picked up the phone. I put it down.

I gave myself a deadline: after my holiday, then after the weekend.

I’m hardly alone. One survey found half of respondents spent seven days or more avoiding thorny conversations. Instead, they complained and ruminated — all wasteful activities preventing them from getting on with their jobs.

My procrastination became a part-time job in itself. I wrote and rewrote an email, requesting a discussion in person or on the phone, or not at all. With each draft, my tone became moanier and more passive-aggressive.

At night, I worried all these missives lurking in my draft folder might escape, somehow finding their way to the intended recipient — even though I’d triple-checked that I had not filled in their email address. How much havoc would such draft messages unleash on corporate life if they ever got released? Such private complaints about imagined slights, small and large injustices, and expressions of envy and anger are personal archives of office politics.

The longer this continued, the worse I felt, stewing in my little puddle of petty resentment. Clearly, I was going nowhere fast, so I sought the least judgmental assistance I could: ChatGPT.

The first effort was terrible — AI’s rewrite of my angry email made me sound like a Panglossian twerp. But after several attempts, my co-pilot and I got the tone right, draining my email of negativity and angst. I sent it and held my breath. I received a positive reply within minutes, resulting in a brilliant and constructive conversation.

Valerie Mocker, chief executive of Wing Women, a coaching company, turns to generative AI when tired or facing a difficult negotiation. Dealing with aggressive people, she notes with understatement, “really drains my energy”. Recently, she asked Google’s Gemini to write a response to a tricky correspondent. “It acknowledged the other person’s feelings and . . . saved me quite a bit of time,” she told me. Of course, like me, she checked and edited it. Meredith Broussard, NYU professor and the author of More Than a Glitch: Confronting Race, Gender, and Ability Bias in Tech, points out that the “AI ‘voice’ is more formal and mediocre than most people, so if you use an AI-generated script without serious editing, people likely won’t take you seriously”.

That a dumb machine proved more emotionally adept than me, an actual human being, seems wrong. After all, aren’t emotions humanity’s X-factor in a robot takeover? It’s more complicated. A recent study found chatbots generated better “quality and empathetic responses to patient questions” than physicians. Of course, the chatbots didn’t pluck their answers out of nothing — they drew on doctors’ expertise. But such soft skills are acquired through rehearsed dialogue. One doctor wrote in the New York Times that “the truth is that prewritten scripts have always been deeply woven into the fabric of society. Be it greetings, prayer, romance or politics, every aspect of life has its dos and don’ts. Scripts — what you might call ‘manners’ or ‘conventions’ — lubricate the gears of society.”

Productivity claims made on behalf of AI focus on how much time such tools save employees by providing templates for polished and clear language. Consultancy Cognizant said a Microsoft Copilot trial had reduced the time staff spent on emails by 10 per cent.

But what about all that time saved ruminating? If I’d turned to generative AI sooner, I’d have wasted less time brewing on an exchange.

In a recent article, Cal Newport, author of Deep Work, said that so much discussion on writers’ use of generative AI has focused on plagiarism. While that is a significant risk, he wanted to delve into its benefits. When Newport spoke to academics and experimented himself, he found it provided “starting points: interesting research ideas to explore; mediocre paragraphs that might, with sufficient editing, become usable”.

He concluded: “For all its inefficiencies, this indirect approach did feel easier than staring at a blank page; ‘talking’ to the chatbot about the article was more fun than toiling in quiet isolation . . . ChatGPT is not so much writing for you as generating a mental state that helps you produce better writing.”

Procrastination and rumination are a curse of office life — don’t be afraid to ask for help.

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