Photo illustration: by The Cut; Photo: Getty Images
Dear Boss
I'm a senior project manager at a nonprofit organization. Over the summer, I worked on a series of focus groups, and Laura was assigned as an intern. Because our office aims to provide meaningful training to our interns, as nearly 80% of interns are hired after their internship, I assigned Laura to write one of the focus group reports. She attended the focus group itself and was given an audio recording and transcript, as well as a report template with questions to guide her in completing the assignment.
I have experience producing as an intern before. Report by AIrequired a large amount of rework. So when I first assigned this to Laura, I explained that AI was not a reliable tool for this type of work because it could provide incorrect answers, fabricate quotes, or hallucinate during data analysis.
Well, Laura filed a report and it was clear that she had done so. Used AI. The report contained multiple “quotes” that were not mentioned at all, and the analysis was incorrect. I told my manager that I would miss the deadline because I needed to redo the work. In my feedback to Laura, I didn't specifically point out the use of AI, but I did point out all the fabricated quotes and highlighted where the analysis was wrong. This was easy for me as I was also participating in the focus group. However, I pointed out to my boss that if she hadn't, she might not have noticed the problem with her job.
At the end of her internship, Laura was hired as a junior project manager. I thought she had improved because I wasn't the only one working with her. However, she was recently assigned to work with me again on a series of interviews and reports. She received detailed instructions for the task, including (again) a template with guiding questions.
When she sent me the report, I quickly realized that she must have uploaded the interview recording to the AI, typed out the guiding questions one by one, and then copied and pasted the answers. The report was confusing and lacked important information. I felt that the use of AI should not be mentioned in the feedback. Because I was only 90% sure that she did it. So once again I just flagged incorrect information and where more details were needed. She then sent me a revised version. I'm 90% sure that she just used my comment as a prompt to the AI and adjusted certain parts of the text that I flagged, without checking for consistency with information contained elsewhere.
We were already really pissed off at this point. missed the deadline. I told her she needed to be more careful about storytelling, readability, and consistency, and declared her task done. I felt it would be a waste of time to have the text revised again. She would have kept using the AI anyway, and I was tired of giving encouraging feedback to people whose work showed no real skill beyond copying and pasting.
I think you need to talk to your manager about Laura at this point and it should also be reported to higher ups. This is a serious quality issue because if the analysis is of poor quality and the use of AI is identified, the project budget may be reduced. I truly believe that Laura's employment should be reconsidered, or at least that she needs better training. However, I am not her direct manager. She has just been assigned to help me with my work, but I am not sure in what capacity I will have to take on this task directly. What should I do? What about the massive and inappropriate use of AI by colleagues?
As the person responsible for reviewing Laura's work, and as someone affected by your own assignments, you are absolutely in a position to address the use of AI. In fact, I would argue that you have no choice. The employee assigned to help you with your project turns in work that's too sloppy to meet deadlines. and You're seeing evidence that she's putting your project's budget at risk. that would actually be weird do not have To enhance it. If I were your boss and later found out about these issues and realized you hadn't told me what was going on, I would question your judgment in remaining silent. And you'll be worried about what else you didn't say.
It's time to address suspicions that Laura is using AI head-on. Laura needs to raise the issue with herself and management on two different fronts.
There is Situations where someone is suspected of using AI to produce poor quality work, where the use of AI itself does not need to be condemned. Instead, you can focus your feedback on specific issues you see, such as inaccuracy, lack of nuance, poor structure, overreliance on buzzwords, inconsistency, or being overly generic. Ultimately, the problem is not that the person used AI, but that they produced bad work. The hope is that people will listen to this feedback and realize that the AI is not serving the purpose they expected. It's up to them what to do from there to fix the problem it caused.
However, if your company has a policy that specifically prohibits the use of AI, such as for data security or legal reasons, or if initial feedback about the work itself has not been pervasive, then you may need to address the use of AI more explicitly.
In this situation, you tried to give Laura specific feedback about a problem at work. She responded by submitting work with the exact same problems, plus some new ones. This is terrible under any circumstances, but especially since you told her early on not to use AI for these projects. At this point the problem is serious enough that it's worth clarifying what you suspect is going on.
You should also talk to your manager (or Laura's manager if you're someone else) and explain what's going on. You need to bring in your own manager because the person assigned to help you with your work is not only not helping, but is causing you to miss deadlines. At the very least, Laura needs closer supervision and better coaching on how to approach projects like this. It has also become clear that her judgment is sufficiently poor, especially when it comes to the second project, that her manager should take a closer look at her work to see if there are any other problems that are less obvious.
You can find more career advice from Alison Green on her website. ask the manager. Do you have any questions for her? email askaboss@nymag.com (And please read the posting terms here. )
