Slack's new ChatGPT bot will talk to your colleagues for you

[highplainsdem]

https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/7/23628673/chatgpt-slack-salesforce-einstein-ai-business-messaging

ChatGPT is coming to Slack. The Salesforce-owned Slack announced the new AI-powered app on Tuesday that will help you craft replies to your colleagues “in seconds.”

Those with access to the app can click the three-dots icon in a thread and hit “Draft reply” instead of typing out the response themselves. It’s still not clear how detailed these responses will get — or if they might get a bit wonky at times. Obviously, you can probably edit any responses to better suit the conversation, but I honestly feel that I can type up a reply in the time it takes to command ChatGPT to write one for me.

Additionally, the ChatGPT Slack bot can help you find answers “on any project or topic” using its AI-powered research tools as well as summarize channels or threads so you can stay updated on what’s been happening at work. Companies and organizations can join the waitlist for the ChatGPT beta here.

The news comes as part of Salesforce’s broader announcement of Einstein GPT, the company’s own take on OpenAI’s ChatGPT model for CRM (customer relationship management) software systems. According to Salesforce, Einstein GPT infuses both Salesforce’s and OpenAI’s AI technology, allowing it to generate emails salespeople can send to customers, craft responses to customer questions, and create “targeted content” for marketers.

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I've never used Slack but don't think I'd be impressed by any colleague needing ChatGPT to generate short comments.

And I've seen examples of AI summaries of articles, and they were so generic they communicated almost nothing that a long title wouldn't, leaving out almost everything that would distinguish the summarized material from a thousand other articles on the same general subject.

This won't help people "stay updated on what's been happening at work" - let alone find out what colleagues think of it.

But I suppose ir's useful for people who want to appear to be paying attention when they aren't.

[jimfields33]

1. It's kinda funny. Now you can really ignore your coworkers.

[highplainsdem]

2. At least until they, or the boss, figure out you've been

ignoring them, and/or you miss something important.

[yonder]

3. Maybe this is how it starts.

Push the button, send a reply, upon receipt another button is pushed to reply back.

Pretty soon we won't even need to push the button in the first place as bots will be talking to bots.

Then we lose. And it wins.

[highplainsdem]

6. Yep.

[hunter]

4. The circle will be complete when ChatGPT is only talking to itself.

Humans with better things to do will use ChatGPT to generate busy work, those receiving this busywork will use ChatGPT to do it, and ChatGPT will then evaluate that busywork.

Next thing you know we'll all be living in a Utopian Idiocracy drinking Brawndo margaritas on beaches of plastic trash.

The most difficult class I ever had in college was by a world class scientist. He had grants from the National Cancer Institute and major pharmaceutical companies. A letter of recommendation from him would take you anywhere you wanted to go. He refused most of these requests, including one of my own. (Too many professors are not so honest as that, instead submitting "read between the lines" form letters...)

His classes were avoided by anyone who cared about their grade point average. A "B-" in his class was the best grade one could hope for if they could merely regurgitate facts. For that reason alone his classes averaged less than fifteen students. He wasn't the rocky shore most straight-A-since-kindergarten students wanted to die on. He did not suffer fools.

I did okay in his class not because I was an automaton regurgitating facts but because it was apparent to him I was thinking about stuff, that I wasn't an automaton. His class sizes were small enough that he could evaluate my critical thinking skills, lab skills, etc., directly.

My lab skills did lead to employment.

I've heard Richard Fenyman was a similar sort of teacher.

Modern industrial society could easily support support student to teacher ratios of 15 to one. There wouldn't be any niche for ChatGPT in such a world. Teachers and mentors would know their students and those they mentored.

When I taught science a long time ago in overcrowded underfunded city public schools I was completely overwhelmed, 150+ students, but I like to believe I would have recognized any ChatGPT "geniuses."

[highplainsdem]

5. Futurism headline: CHATGPT IS COMING TO SLACK BECAUSE WE LIVE AND WORK IN HELL

https://futurism.com/the-byte/chatgpt-slack-because-we-live-and-work-in-hell

Salesforce is bringing OpenAI's chatbot ChatGPT to Slack, yet another sign that the compulsively lying and hallucinating AI assistant is becoming inescapable in everyday life.

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Its tendency to "hallucinate" and draw purported facts out of thin air could make it a tool of great frustration and confusion in a workplace that relies on Slack as a central place for communication.

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The company also launched an AI tool dubbed Einstein GPT, which it claims is the "world's first generative AI customer relationship management (CRM) technology, which "can generate personalized emails for salespeople to send to customers" or "generate targeted content for marketers to increase campaign response rates."

In other words, companies are about to be flooded with AI-generated marketing sales pitches, a dystopian nightmare for those, who are already drowning in a daily flood of emails.

[HipChick]

7. New update of Teams already has this feature