AI Becomes the Tone Police for White-Collar Workers
Workers are turning to chatbots to help them get through difficult conversations with their colleagues and business partners.
Last year, Anna, a university administrator in New York City, was knee-deep in planning a high-stakes event series with a school abroad. Negotiations had grown prickly, and Anna and her overseas counterpart were butting heads over who should lead the discussions and what the participants should even discuss. Anna drafted an email, not holding back about what she thought of the other university’s plans, characterizing its proposal as overly broad and unclear, comparing it to “a big wobbly blancmange.” In other words, a mess.
But she never sent it. Instead, Anna did what she often does at work when she’s teetering on the edge of being a tad too honest. She loaded the draft into ChatGPT and prompted it with a set of bare-bones instructions. Among them: “Soften the tone.”