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We had a mandatory ChatGPT training course at work. You had to sign up in limited space classes. This is a large company, needless to say it was chaos to get a

We had a mandatory ChatGPT training course at work. You had to sign up in limited space classes. This is a large company, needless to say it was chaos to get a significant number of people to participate. I got a spot. We were shown how to copy and paste data from excel and other data sources into the chat interface. We had sample data to work with, there was always someone in class who would say "mine didn't work." The developers in the room asked about codex, the instructor said she wasn't a developer. We did get a certificate though. There was nothing they could teach that you couldn't learn by using the free version in your own time. Whatever they are doing with the Maltese government is just to increase the monthly active user count.

pembrook 4mo ago
You do understand if every person in Malta were to use chatgpt regularly it wouldn’t even show up as a blip on their MAU chart Cue up the next cynical bad take.
- rvnx 4mo ago
  In practice since this is valid for a year it is essentially a free-trial they are giving away and they hope that it may generate additional revenue at some point after that
- darkwater 4mo ago
  But if you can prove any kind of success with Malta then you can go to the next 10 "slightly bigger" nations out there and tell them "See? It worked very well with Malta". And then move to a bigger layer, and a bigger layer...
altmanaltman 4mo ago
The fact they have to resort to these tactics does not bide well for the company that wants to create AGI or go bust.
- GCUMstlyHarmls 4mo ago
  Oh I don't know, it seems like a good step forward towards regulatory capture. First partner, then certify, then require the certification. A limited regional beta, like launching your app in New Zealand first.
deleted 4mo ago
[deleted]
MattDamonSpace 4mo ago
Half of people are below average, these classes raise the floor they don’t expand the ceiling
- KronisLV 4mo ago
  Then they sound good, same as basic computer literacy classes!
- rwmj 4mo ago
  They lower the ceiling since now the other half have to deal with the AI slop.
- jpfromlondon 4mo ago
  They certainly add hay to the haystack
- sethops1 4mo ago
  Fun fact, studies show human performance follows a power distribution, not a normal curve, implying _most people are below average_. https://www.npr.org/2012/05/03/151860154/put-away-the-bell-curve-most-of-us-arent-average https://www.npr.org/2012/05/03/151860154/put-away-the-bell-c...
  - therealdrag0 4mo ago
    Eh, if you are measuring social output and success (eg Emmy nominations), then no duh; there’s a lot of network effects and winner take all games. Also surely there’s some principle about when one end is capped (0) but the other end is not, this happens.
rukshn 4mo ago
I’m now responsible for improving AI literacy in the organization I work. But the people in charge just want the employees to just answer some questions so they can handover Claude or Chat GPT licenses so they can show people are using AI to improve productivity. There are people who don’t know when to use AI and when not to use Ai and think they can just Claude their way through everything. I wanted to change that but when the whole idea is to just increase AI use I guess they don’t care about how AI is used.
- ffsm8 4mo ago
  I was on a quarter demo the other day and the project lead for ai innovation was talking about the things he's preparing for the company. I will not address the things he pitched (as coming soon), as I'm a developer and (hopefully) not the target audience, but I was quiet surprised when they made a questioneer asking how many people use ai and how frequently. (The target demographic was middle management, product owners etc) 75% of people answering said they're using it daily and considered it an essential tool they need to work Considering it was anonymous I was expecting lower numbers, honestly.
  - overfeed 4mo ago
    > Considering it was anonymous In the recent past, my department received an email from on high with a list of people who were yet to complete the "anonymous" survey. I always assume my work-survey answers are traceable back to me, whether it's via self-doxxing with my answers, tracing links of the rootkit-level MDM software that can record my screen, but they pinky-promise to only use for remote assistance, in case I open a ticket with IT.
    - jpc0 4mo ago
      You do know it is possible for the answers to be anonymous but who submitted to be tracked?
      - iinnPP 4mo ago
encrux 4mo ago
For everyone in the EU: Copying and pasting sensitive data (like customer data) into AI tools is a violation of the GDPR, and potentially the AI act, which will be enforced soon. These violations come with hefty fines.
- realityking 4mo ago
  You’re brushing too broad a stroke GDPR only affects personal information. There’s plenty of sensitive business information that is not covered by GDPR - for example per business customer revenue data - that is legal to put into an AI tool but your employer may not want you to.
  - oliwarner 4mo ago
    But the normalisation of copying and pasting internal data into external tools is a recipe for complete disaster. I'd be surprised if there weren't already phishing attacks that work by pretending to be a LLM.
  - layer8 4mo ago
    > business customer revenue data Usually this would require the respective customer to agree to sharing that data with a third party.
- rvnx 4mo ago
  I would be cautious to advocate these laws that strongly in the context of AI tools: Companies and employees always make their decisions based on a risk/reward basis. Sometimes a commercial contract (like Microsoft Copilot) is enough to cover your ass and to meet the needs of the regulator. Even if the operator is exactly the same. Laws are constraints to navigate, but if you are successful enough (ahem, rich) then they don’t apply to you. At the moment what the EU wants is to make sure that in the long-term they can access your private information. Realistically if you are in the EU you have more risks telling your darkest secrets to a EU-hosted model that the government will arrest you, than to a Chinese-model (who doesn’t collaborate). EU Chat Control, is here to protect kids and protect you from terrorists; you don’t want to claim you support pedophiles right ? So following these rules is always a matter of choice. Respect and you will be stuck with your shitty Mistral and no privacy, not respect and you have your shiny Claude that you have to think what to input inside.
olalonde 4mo ago
You got a certificate though.
realty_geek 4mo ago
My saddest interaction recently was with a friend with a 1st class degree in computing and several years experience in software engineering in many prestigious companies. I asked if he had tried out Claude code or anything similar. His answer: My company has scheduled a training course in that so I'll wait :(
- wartywhoa23 4mo ago
  So sad indeed, a man is left out in the cold waiting for his turn to receive a stochastic-brain-implant-as-a-service.
- wise_young_man 4mo ago
  It’s sad to you that they have a life outside of work?
  - shimman 4mo ago
    It's the VC mind rot, the only thing that matters in life is working apparently. A sad existence indeed but you need a cohort to exploit if you're gonna make the next unicorn for cashing out.
- rrr_oh_man 4mo ago
  > in many prestigious companies That's the hint. Most companies >50 employees suck.
  - surajrmal 4mo ago
    Bold claim. I have the opposite experience. On this site I imagine most folks will agree with you, but there are a lot of folks who choose to work at larger companies over small ones.
    - calgoo 4mo ago
      I have worked for enterprise companies all my life, they are all a horrible mess of people trying to play 4d chess to get a promotion and look good. They do offer better life / work balance, so if you are not a workaholic like the startup / SF crowd, then its actually a decent job. Just remember to enjoy the life outside the office, with people that are not from the office and you will be fine.
epolanski 4mo ago
Similar things happen in different non-tech companies I know. But nobody uses LLMs that aren't Gemini or Copilot enterprise, as they are already on Google cloud or Microsoft offering already. And there's high pressure on workers to find use cases where AI can boost productivity, with bonuses dangling on who finds real case scenarios. I don't know about the results of these experiments, but I know unhappiness is widespread.
- jpc0 4mo ago
  My favorite right now. "Make the AI do xyz" That clearly needs a custom harness to integrate with ORG tooling. "No we won't pay for token usage, make it work with the subscription were already paying for"... Guess you don't want AI then...
bartread 4mo ago
> We were shown how to copy and paste data from excel and other data sources into the chat interface. Grnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnguuurnnngh. I remember the copy and paste drudgery from the early days of ChatGPT. It was a miserable and joyless experience. Nowadays (and for a long time) you can simply attach the file.
layer8 4mo ago
You are not providing any argument for why the course developed by the University of Malta should match your experience.
Tenoke 4mo ago
> We did get a certificate though. As someone who never bothered to get any certificates (beyond a University degree) even when I'd do online courses (of which the most course-like must've been fast.ai), are these ever actually useful in any manner?
- stingraycharles 4mo ago
  They are useful for getting a job, that’s about it. In our case, we get our entire team AWS solution architect certs as well just so we can always tell our customers that our whole team is certified (we do a lot of “forward deployed” stuff for enterprise customers).
- jellyfishbeaver 4mo ago
  There are so many stupid "courses" and SaaS tools doing this I imagine that the value of the many of these certificates is close to 0. Many of them you can simply take the exam over and over until you pass, and then stick a shiny stupid badge on your LinkedIn profile.
- benhurmarcel 4mo ago
  In his case of a large company, I’d expect that completing the useless training is necessary to get access to the tool. That’s how it worked in mine.
michaelbuckbee 4mo ago
This sounds an awful lot like the early how to get on to the internet highway classes that existed. I don't think the classes had a lot of worth in the strict educational sense of like "here's how you do X Y & Z" but... We're I think much more effective at saying, you know, "X Y & Z are now possible." It does take time and a little skill to know the edges of the AI tools. What's reasonable? What's not? What's likely to hallucinate? You could get something in the rough bounds of trust. I can see a class helping with that.
vultour 4mo ago
I’ve never gone through a paid training course that wasn’t a complete waste of time. It’s at the point where people at work know there isn’t even a point in offering these to me. “But why don’t you take the Terraform training?” Because I’m not going to waste my time with a 3-day course where it takes the first day to install and configure Terraform. I can install it on my computer in 5 minutes. I think people usually see these as a paid vacation, but I find them so insufferably boring I’d rather just work.
- bookofjoe 4mo ago
  Yes! Forty years ago (c. 1985) members of our department of anesthesiology (University of Virginia Medical Center) were offered an optional two full day course on how to do our own MedLine searches so as not to have to put in a request to the biomedical librarian for same. I jumped at the chance to not have to be in the OR from 7am-5pm doing the same old same old but instead relax and learn something useful. Bad choice. The instructor and material were deadeningly boring; I couldn't even begin to enter into the computer the right search request format and terms and as I sat there I was reminded of my days in elementary school watching the big round clock on the wall tick away the minutes until the final dismissal bell. Because our chairman was in the class and had encouraged all of us tenure-track faculty to take the course, I couldn't bail after the first day but had to return for the second day. Subsequently I continued using the biomedical librarian to request my searches (it took just a couple minutes to fill out the form) with excellent results.
ergocoder 4mo ago
> There was nothing they could teach that you couldn't learn by using the free version in your own time. That's true for almost everything in life. > Whatever they are doing with the Maltese government is just to increase the monthly active user count. That's one of their main goals. Another main goal is to also make money. There are a few other main goals. What do you mean by "just to increase"? Did they try to hide their goal? Was it a secret agenda nobody knows about? These are some strange tautological comments.
materialpoint 4mo ago
A company could get more profits from formally teaching employees the function of the Fn key on their laptops. It is staggering how most people, even among developers, don't know what it's for, and consequently, nearly everybody suffers from not being able to turn volume up or down, or accidentally disconnect from meetings by having turned on airplane mode.

pembrook 4mo ago

You do understand if every person in Malta were to use chatgpt regularly it wouldn’t even show up as a blip on their MAU chart Cue up the next cynical bad take.

rvnx 4mo ago
In practice since this is valid for a year it is essentially a free-trial they are giving away and they hope that it may generate additional revenue at some point after that
darkwater 4mo ago
But if you can prove any kind of success with Malta then you can go to the next 10 "slightly bigger" nations out there and tell them "See? It worked very well with Malta". And then move to a bigger layer, and a bigger layer...

altmanaltman 4mo ago

The fact they have to resort to these tactics does not bide well for the company that wants to create AGI or go bust.

GCUMstlyHarmls 4mo ago
Oh I don't know, it seems like a good step forward towards regulatory capture. First partner, then certify, then require the certification. A limited regional beta, like launching your app in New Zealand first.

deleted 4mo ago

[deleted]

MattDamonSpace 4mo ago

Half of people are below average, these classes raise the floor they don’t expand the ceiling

KronisLV 4mo ago
Then they sound good, same as basic computer literacy classes!
rwmj 4mo ago
They lower the ceiling since now the other half have to deal with the AI slop.
jpfromlondon 4mo ago
They certainly add hay to the haystack
sethops1 4mo ago
Fun fact, studies show human performance follows a power distribution, not a normal curve, implying _most people are below average_. https://www.npr.org/2012/05/03/151860154/put-away-the-bell-curve-most-of-us-arent-average https://www.npr.org/2012/05/03/151860154/put-away-the-bell-c...
- therealdrag0 4mo ago
  Eh, if you are measuring social output and success (eg Emmy nominations), then no duh; there’s a lot of network effects and winner take all games. Also surely there’s some principle about when one end is capped (0) but the other end is not, this happens.

rukshn 4mo ago

I’m now responsible for improving AI literacy in the organization I work. But the people in charge just want the employees to just answer some questions so they can handover Claude or Chat GPT licenses so they can show people are using AI to improve productivity. There are people who don’t know when to use AI and when not to use Ai and think they can just Claude their way through everything. I wanted to change that but when the whole idea is to just increase AI use I guess they don’t care about how AI is used.

ffsm8 4mo ago
I was on a quarter demo the other day and the project lead for ai innovation was talking about the things he's preparing for the company. I will not address the things he pitched (as coming soon), as I'm a developer and (hopefully) not the target audience, but I was quiet surprised when they made a questioneer asking how many people use ai and how frequently. (The target demographic was middle management, product owners etc) 75% of people answering said they're using it daily and considered it an essential tool they need to work Considering it was anonymous I was expecting lower numbers, honestly.
- overfeed 4mo ago
  > Considering it was anonymous In the recent past, my department received an email from on high with a list of people who were yet to complete the "anonymous" survey. I always assume my work-survey answers are traceable back to me, whether it's via self-doxxing with my answers, tracing links of the rootkit-level MDM software that can record my screen, but they pinky-promise to only use for remote assistance, in case I open a ticket with IT.
  - jpc0 4mo ago
    You do know it is possible for the answers to be anonymous but who submitted to be tracked?
    - iinnPP 4mo ago

encrux 4mo ago

For everyone in the EU: Copying and pasting sensitive data (like customer data) into AI tools is a violation of the GDPR, and potentially the AI act, which will be enforced soon. These violations come with hefty fines.

realityking 4mo ago
You’re brushing too broad a stroke GDPR only affects personal information. There’s plenty of sensitive business information that is not covered by GDPR - for example per business customer revenue data - that is legal to put into an AI tool but your employer may not want you to.
- oliwarner 4mo ago
  But the normalisation of copying and pasting internal data into external tools is a recipe for complete disaster. I'd be surprised if there weren't already phishing attacks that work by pretending to be a LLM.
- layer8 4mo ago
  > business customer revenue data Usually this would require the respective customer to agree to sharing that data with a third party.
rvnx 4mo ago
I would be cautious to advocate these laws that strongly in the context of AI tools: Companies and employees always make their decisions based on a risk/reward basis. Sometimes a commercial contract (like Microsoft Copilot) is enough to cover your ass and to meet the needs of the regulator. Even if the operator is exactly the same. Laws are constraints to navigate, but if you are successful enough (ahem, rich) then they don’t apply to you. At the moment what the EU wants is to make sure that in the long-term they can access your private information. Realistically if you are in the EU you have more risks telling your darkest secrets to a EU-hosted model that the government will arrest you, than to a Chinese-model (who doesn’t collaborate). EU Chat Control, is here to protect kids and protect you from terrorists; you don’t want to claim you support pedophiles right ? So following these rules is always a matter of choice. Respect and you will be stuck with your shitty Mistral and no privacy, not respect and you have your shiny Claude that you have to think what to input inside.

olalonde 4mo ago

You got a certificate though.

realty_geek 4mo ago

My saddest interaction recently was with a friend with a 1st class degree in computing and several years experience in software engineering in many prestigious companies. I asked if he had tried out Claude code or anything similar. His answer: My company has scheduled a training course in that so I'll wait :(

wartywhoa23 4mo ago
So sad indeed, a man is left out in the cold waiting for his turn to receive a stochastic-brain-implant-as-a-service.
wise_young_man 4mo ago
It’s sad to you that they have a life outside of work?
- shimman 4mo ago
  It's the VC mind rot, the only thing that matters in life is working apparently. A sad existence indeed but you need a cohort to exploit if you're gonna make the next unicorn for cashing out.
rrr_oh_man 4mo ago
> in many prestigious companies That's the hint. Most companies >50 employees suck.
- surajrmal 4mo ago
  Bold claim. I have the opposite experience. On this site I imagine most folks will agree with you, but there are a lot of folks who choose to work at larger companies over small ones.
  - calgoo 4mo ago
    I have worked for enterprise companies all my life, they are all a horrible mess of people trying to play 4d chess to get a promotion and look good. They do offer better life / work balance, so if you are not a workaholic like the startup / SF crowd, then its actually a decent job. Just remember to enjoy the life outside the office, with people that are not from the office and you will be fine.

epolanski 4mo ago

Similar things happen in different non-tech companies I know. But nobody uses LLMs that aren't Gemini or Copilot enterprise, as they are already on Google cloud or Microsoft offering already. And there's high pressure on workers to find use cases where AI can boost productivity, with bonuses dangling on who finds real case scenarios. I don't know about the results of these experiments, but I know unhappiness is widespread.

jpc0 4mo ago
My favorite right now. "Make the AI do xyz" That clearly needs a custom harness to integrate with ORG tooling. "No we won't pay for token usage, make it work with the subscription were already paying for"... Guess you don't want AI then...

bartread 4mo ago

> We were shown how to copy and paste data from excel and other data sources into the chat interface. Grnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnguuurnnngh. I remember the copy and paste drudgery from the early days of ChatGPT. It was a miserable and joyless experience. Nowadays (and for a long time) you can simply attach the file.

layer8 4mo ago

You are not providing any argument for why the course developed by the University of Malta should match your experience.

Tenoke 4mo ago

> We did get a certificate though. As someone who never bothered to get any certificates (beyond a University degree) even when I'd do online courses (of which the most course-like must've been fast.ai), are these ever actually useful in any manner?

stingraycharles 4mo ago
They are useful for getting a job, that’s about it. In our case, we get our entire team AWS solution architect certs as well just so we can always tell our customers that our whole team is certified (we do a lot of “forward deployed” stuff for enterprise customers).
jellyfishbeaver 4mo ago
There are so many stupid "courses" and SaaS tools doing this I imagine that the value of the many of these certificates is close to 0. Many of them you can simply take the exam over and over until you pass, and then stick a shiny stupid badge on your LinkedIn profile.
benhurmarcel 4mo ago
In his case of a large company, I’d expect that completing the useless training is necessary to get access to the tool. That’s how it worked in mine.

michaelbuckbee 4mo ago

This sounds an awful lot like the early how to get on to the internet highway classes that existed. I don't think the classes had a lot of worth in the strict educational sense of like "here's how you do X Y & Z" but... We're I think much more effective at saying, you know, "X Y & Z are now possible." It does take time and a little skill to know the edges of the AI tools. What's reasonable? What's not? What's likely to hallucinate? You could get something in the rough bounds of trust. I can see a class helping with that.

vultour 4mo ago

I’ve never gone through a paid training course that wasn’t a complete waste of time. It’s at the point where people at work know there isn’t even a point in offering these to me. “But why don’t you take the Terraform training?” Because I’m not going to waste my time with a 3-day course where it takes the first day to install and configure Terraform. I can install it on my computer in 5 minutes. I think people usually see these as a paid vacation, but I find them so insufferably boring I’d rather just work.

bookofjoe 4mo ago
Yes! Forty years ago (c. 1985) members of our department of anesthesiology (University of Virginia Medical Center) were offered an optional two full day course on how to do our own MedLine searches so as not to have to put in a request to the biomedical librarian for same. I jumped at the chance to not have to be in the OR from 7am-5pm doing the same old same old but instead relax and learn something useful. Bad choice. The instructor and material were deadeningly boring; I couldn't even begin to enter into the computer the right search request format and terms and as I sat there I was reminded of my days in elementary school watching the big round clock on the wall tick away the minutes until the final dismissal bell. Because our chairman was in the class and had encouraged all of us tenure-track faculty to take the course, I couldn't bail after the first day but had to return for the second day. Subsequently I continued using the biomedical librarian to request my searches (it took just a couple minutes to fill out the form) with excellent results.

ergocoder 4mo ago

> There was nothing they could teach that you couldn't learn by using the free version in your own time. That's true for almost everything in life. > Whatever they are doing with the Maltese government is just to increase the monthly active user count. That's one of their main goals. Another main goal is to also make money. There are a few other main goals. What do you mean by "just to increase"? Did they try to hide their goal? Was it a secret agenda nobody knows about? These are some strange tautological comments.

materialpoint 4mo ago

A company could get more profits from formally teaching employees the function of the Fn key on their laptops. It is staggering how most people, even among developers, don't know what it's for, and consequently, nearly everybody suffers from not being able to turn volume up or down, or accidentally disconnect from meetings by having turned on airplane mode.