In the age of the dawn of generative AI, more and more employees who want to stick to their principles are being left behind by those using cheat codes, often literally, to get ahead. AI is undoubtedly the future, but how much will it take away from human cognition?

How would you handle an annoying AI-addicted coworker? One woman recently sought advice over this on Reddit. Here’s what she said.

Struggling with AI-dependent colleague and AI use in new job

I started working for an NGO a month ago as a project manager.

I was supposed to take over a couple of projects, and Toby, the guy who was managing them in the meantime, was supposed to show me the ropes.

He’s hopeless in that aspect.

This job already sounds off to a great start.

Every question I have he tells me to ask someone else or to look it up in the shared drive.

Now, apparently, turns out we have to co-manage the projects and he’s not going to hand them over to me.

But that’s not the part that’s most annoying me.

It gets worse than that?

He is dependent on AI for everything.

Email? AI.

Presentation to introduce the NGO to someone? AI.

That is so wildly irritating.

Notes? AI.

Literally, the first thing he said on our first meeting is “just ask Grok, I prefer Grok to ChatGPT because it is not reliable”…

Ok, whatever…but then we go to a research-based document he wrote.

Not going to be shocked what’s found there…

The goal of this document is to guide field workers to do work with kids in under-served communities.

Since I have a PhD in that topic and years of experience (both practical and in academia) I was asked to look into it.

Surprise. It’s AI generated.

Where does this guy get the audacity?

By itself, if you are discovering the topic and stumbled upon this document, you could be tricked into thinking it’s legit information.

But the redundancies, useless information, misquoted/invented/low-quality sources, and lack of practical application are really sticking out to me.

I thought maybe I was missing something because the organization of the document sections seemed arbitrary to me.

She probably wasn’t.

Maybe it was a strict structure required by a donor?

I looked up the proposed structure of the document: AI generated, again.

It appears that Toby asked Grok to come up with the structure of the document, and then asked Grok to fill in the text for each section of the document.

His paycheck should go to Grok then.

Half-way through the document, I gave up in “editing” it.

Why should I bother to edit what someone didn’t bother to write?

I talked to my supervisor, who now wants me to write a document explaining how I would improve the document.

That’s a deeply unserious response.

I told them the issues, that the ideal would be to propose a new structure and for a human to do proper research with legit sources and practical information.

Of course, we cannot do that because we have a deadline and we are already late.

They still want me to give suggestions to correct the document.

Why does that feel like a punishment?

It takes more effort to write why AI is wrong than to produce the wrong information with AI.

So now, here I am: stuck with a useless AI-addicted colleague who cannot write, forced to edit AI slop.

The image of Ian McKellen breaking down while filming green screen scenes for “The Hobbit” comes to mind.

A perfect image indeed.

To paraphrase: this is not why I became a researcher/why I work with kids/why I work with NGOs.

Any advice (for dealing with AI slop in professional settings or with useless colleagues or both) is appreciated.

This is unfortunately going to be the new reality for many.

Let’s see if the Reddit community could offer any words of wisdom.

Some commenters really struggled with the question.

Others vocalized their larger concern.

A few shared their own examples.

Another person shared a dismal fact.

But someone else jumped straight to sarcasm.

There’s no prompt that’s going to get her out of this one.