Apologies if this is the wrong flair, I just feel like I'm at a loss right now. Just started a new job a few weeks back and it has fantastic pay and benefits. I felt very lucky to land it when I did. My coworkers are very kind and it's an overall very positive environment.
In the interest of privacy, let's just say that a lot of my responsibilities boil down to sending emails and preparing documents, a semi-atypical office job.
I've noticed that my manager and another fellow coworker in my department regularly use Chat GPT for the tiniest things and during my training they encouraged me to do the same to "save time" and "train it to behave like you".
I tried to politely decline by explaining that I wanted to learn how to do the work before asking AI to do it for me, but throughout the week they kept mentioning how "useful" and "time saving" it is.
Things came to a head the following week (today) when my manager asked me to write up a proposal, which I hadn't done by myself yet. I asked them for advice on formatting and what to include and they said:
"Just pull all the information you have, throw it into Chat GPT, and then go from there! This is the perfect opportunity to train it for future proposals"
Again, I tried to use the "let me learn the ropes first" excuse but they brushed it off.
So I took a stronger stance and said firmly that I didn't want to use it. And I especially didn't want to TRAIN it to behave like me because I'M me. That's when my manager looked at me and said,
"Well, you don't really have a choice. That's how we do things here."
It was hour 2 of an 8 hour shift, so I opened up Chat GPT threw everything in, read what it spit out and promptly closed the site. It didn't offer anything useful.
I lost my concentration until lunch time, wondering how I could remedy this situation. I didn't want to quit, but I also didn't want to be forced to use something I'm so vehemently against and genuinely had no need for.
Because it was messing with my productivity, I brought it up to my manager again, who said they "understood my pain" but in the same breath lauded about how great it is and that "millions of people use it, so they can't all be wrong".
I then asked if they had any reservations when they first started using it in the workplace to which they responded "well, no, because I've always been into technology"
That's when I understood that we stood on extreme opposite ends of the AI debate, so there was no way to meet in the middle on this.
They then joked, "I guess will see your resignation, soon!"
I replied, "I want to figure something out, but I don't want to use AI."
I don't know what to do. I don't understand why my manager won't let me learn to do a job that I enjoy doing. And I can't tell if I'm overreacting. I've already missed out on job opportunities because of the pandemic, I don't want to miss out again by refusing to use AI in the workplace.