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'Overemployed' Hustlers Exploit ChatGPT To Take On Even More Full-Time Jobs (vice.com) 117

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: About a year ago, Ben found out that one of his friends had quietly started to work multiple jobs at the same time. The idea had become popular during the COVID-19 pandemic, when working from home became normalized, making the scheme easier to pull off. A community of multi-job hustlers, in fact, had come together online, referring to themselves as the "overemployed." The idea excited Ben, who lives in Toronto and asked that Motherboard not use his real name, but he didn't think it was possible for someone like him to pull it off. He helps financial technology companies market new products; the job involves creating reports, storyboards, and presentations, all of which involve writing. There was "no way," he said, that he could have done his job two times over on his own.

Then, last year, he started to hear more and more about ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence chatbot developed by the research lab OpenAI. Soon enough, he was trying to figure out how to use it to do his job faster and more efficiently, and what had been a time-consuming job became much easier. ("Not a little bit more easy," he said, "like, way easier.") That alone didn't make him unique in the marketing world. Everyone he knew was using ChatGPT at work, he said. But he started to wonder whether he could pull off a second job. Then, this year, he took the plunge, a decision he attributes to his new favorite online robot toy. "That's the only reason I got my job this year," Ben said of OpenAI's tool. "ChatGPT does like 80 percent of my job if I'm being honest." He even used it to generate cover letters to apply for jobs.

Over the last few months, the exploding popularity of ChatGPT and similar products has led to growing concerns about AI's potential effects on the international job market -- specifically, the percentage of jobs that could be automated away, replaced by a well-oiled army of chatbots. But for a small cohort of fast-thinking and occasionally devious go-getters, AI technology has turned into an opportunity not to be feared but exploited, with their employers apparently none the wiser. The people Motherboard spoke with for this article requested anonymity to avoid losing their jobs. For clarity, Motherboard in some cases assigned people aliases in order to differentiate them, though we verified each of their identities. Some, like Ben, were drawn into the overemployed community as a result of ChatGPT. Others who were already working multiple jobs have used recent advancements in AI to turbocharge their situation, like one Ohio-based technology worker who upped his number of jobs from two to four after he started to integrate ChatGPT into his work process. "I think five would probably just be overkill," he said.

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'Overemployed' Hustlers Exploit ChatGPT To Take On Even More Full-Time Jobs

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  • by Joe_Dragon ( 2206452 ) on Friday April 14, 2023 @10:46PM (#63451090)

    I'd say in a given week I probably only do about 15 min of real, actual, work.

    • by drviewer ( 10342306 ) on Friday April 14, 2023 @11:32PM (#63451124)
      I have 8 bosses.
      • I have 8 bosses.

        One of whom undoubtedly used his ample free time to write the parent post.

    • by quintessencesluglord ( 652360 ) on Friday April 14, 2023 @11:52PM (#63451146)

      I had a small epiphany recently.

      Maybe 25% of my time is spent doing actual work.

      A full 40% is spent stroking management's ego. Either through needlessly complex procedures, offering virtual handjobs to gain passage through someone's personal fiefdom, or contextualizing both policy and labor law into inoffensive bits.

      I'm not sure what to make of all this except maybe a courtisan should be compensated more.

      • And managers waste all their time stroking the insecure grown babies egos they call employees!
        • by haruchai ( 17472 )

          And managers waste all their time stroking the insecure grown babies egos they call employees!

          No, they don't

        • by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Saturday April 15, 2023 @04:14AM (#63451346)

          That's a manager's job. Welcome to management, the combination of the jobs of a babysitter, a psychotherapist, a logistics expert and if the shit hits the fan, a catering service.

          My job as the manager is to make sure the people working for me have the right amount of resources at the right time, that I keep the idiots that keep them from working out of their hair and that I cut the red tape. That is my job. If I can't do that job, it's time I step aside for someone who can.

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by vivian ( 156520 )

            I never really appreciated what a manager does until I became one. Your definition pretty much nailed it. The other important role of a manager (or at least in my case it is) is to assemble the right team who can do the job and weld them into a cohesive team instead of a herd of cats.

            • by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Saturday April 15, 2023 @04:50AM (#63451396)

              Well, assemble the team... you can only work with what you get. Quite literally in my case. That's not to say that we have bad people (quite the opposite, we have an absolutely great team here) but we have about 50% of the personnel we'd need to actually take on all the orders we'd get, and management is wary that this may not last... and it certainly will not if we keep telling potential customers that we don't want their business... but that's not the topic.

              I noticed that if you can split up jobs, do it. The smaller the team, the better the cooperation within and the better the results. 2-3 people, on tiny tasks. Divide and conquer, twice so in huge projects where nobody knows where to start.

              Splitting those up in bite-sized portions a normal person can swallow is another management job, btw.

            • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

              Problem with being a manager is that you rarely get to decide a team. You work with what you have.

          • by GFS666 ( 6452674 )

            That's a manager's job. Welcome to management, the combination of the jobs of a babysitter, a psychotherapist, a logistics expert and if the shit hits the fan, a catering service.

            My job as the manager is to make sure the people working for me have the right amount of resources at the right time, that I keep the idiots that keep them from working out of their hair and that I cut the red tape. That is my job. If I can't do that job, it's time I step aside for someone who can.

            I'm an employee and yep, that is what a Good Manager does. I unfortunately recently went from a good manager to a bad one and the difference in my output is like night and day. The other thing a good manager does is understand what their people do well and what they don't do well. And they try and direct work that the employee is actually good at and enjoys to the right employee under their purview because the work will be better and more efficiently.

            • Management is making sure other people can do their job. Micromanagement is not management.

              If I have to micromanage someone and tell him how to do his job, I should fire him and do his job instead, because obviously I'm better at it than he is.

              If I'm not, then what the fuck am I doing, telling him how to do something he can do better than me?

      • A mentor of mine once told me that hard work alone will only be rewarded with more hard work. Damn was he right all along.

        The reality is that whenever employees get more work done, companies just use it as an excuse to give them more work, irregardless of whether the work is actually meaningful. Hell, the only reason we have 40 hour work weeks is because the government mandated it some 80 or so years ago. Despite what economists and futurists claim, this was likely never really a technology issue more so a

        • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

          In what world can you create things with management?

          Management is just what the word says. Managing what already is. It doesn't create things, it merely creates value by directing already existing things to be more efficient.

          40 hours work week was sold in large part on efficiency. That well rested workforce could focus more on the job. And then many of the said jobs left the 40 hour work week nations for the 9/9/6 nation. That is working 12 hours a day, six days a week. Because factory jobs do not require w

          • by StormReaver ( 59959 ) on Saturday April 15, 2023 @07:35AM (#63451546)

            As an employee, the thing you can do if you're better is move on to the next job.

            That is certainly one possibility, especially if you're in a shitty job. If you're in a comfortable job that pays adequately, provides a good work-life balance, and keeps you challenged but not overwhelmed, and provides multiple retirement funds, you would be foolish to leave it just for higher pay.

            I did that once, and I almost immediately started aging prematurely. After a week on the higher paying job, I realized that the job sucked, the environment sucked, and the product sucked, and I sorely regretted leaving my old job. But the new job was paying me much more than in my old job!

            I got my old job back, and happily returned as if I had never left. The premature aging reversed, by the way, because the stress level in my old job was far, far less than in my new job. The graying hair disappeared, the sagging skin under my eyes went away, and the look of death I had started to show vanished.

            There are WAY more important things in a job than excessive money. Coincidentally, the bosses gave everyone a big raise shortly after I returned (yes, it was already in the works at the time I left, though I didn't know it at the time).

            • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

              >If you're in a comfortable job that pays adequately, provides a good work-life balance, and keeps you challenged but not overwhelmed, and provides multiple retirement funds, you would be foolish to leave it just for higher pay

              If you're the top 5% hyperproductive guy, it's foolish not to. If you're not, then it's a different story.

              >I did that once, and I almost immediately started aging prematurely. After a week on the higher paying job, I realized that the job sucked, the environment sucked, and the

      • And the higher you get in the food chain, the less time is spent on working and the more is spent on stroking someone's ego.

        It's why I quit my CISO position a while ago. I wanted to have the feeling that what I do is actual work. The only thing I was doing was to create presentations for CEO and CFO to cough up the dough I needed to fund the people who actually did the work. And I couldn't even go and do the work myself because I was too expensive for that and couldn't explain the expenditure when there wer

      • I left my last management job at a major energy company, which in theory related to very interesting functions of technology, because when I boiled it all down, I realized the job was actually 100% making PowerPoint presentations. The subject of such presentations doesn’t really matter, and over time, the goal slowly becomes making prettier slides that themselves relate a large amount of work, versus any real information, insight, or discussion from said content. Much like the lifecycle of a star, I n
    • by quenda ( 644621 ) on Saturday April 15, 2023 @04:02AM (#63451332)

      I'd say in a given week I probably only do about 15 min of real, actual, work.

      Boy that’s just a straight shooter with upper management written all over him.

    • You're our new CFO? Didn't know you post here.

  • Exploit. (Score:3, Informative)

    by The Evil Atheist ( 2484676 ) on Friday April 14, 2023 @10:52PM (#63451092)
    Hustling is necessary in America because employers exploit their workers.
    • by kmoser ( 1469707 )
      Not for everyone. For some hustlers, gaming the system by working multiple jobs is a fun challenge, in which the additional (unnecessary) income simply provides extra incentive.
      • Re:Exploit. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Friday April 14, 2023 @11:27PM (#63451122)
        I know a guy who worked multiple jobs because he was in alcoholic and working non-stop kept him away from booze.

        It was weird, not normal. And he was screwed when the unions got broken anyway (grocery store employee and manager).

        Nobody likes to admit they're hustling because they have to. If you talk to somebody and they claim to be hustling for the Love of the Game they're lying to their teeth because it's socially unacceptable to admit you can't make it
        • Re:Exploit. (Score:5, Funny)

          by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Saturday April 15, 2023 @04:31AM (#63451368)

          Hmm.... I'm a workaholic, so I should start drinking to solve my addiction problem?

        • by kmoser ( 1469707 )
          FTA:

          Not yet 30, he is already making $500,000 working two jobs and worth around $3 million, claims he backed up to Motherboard with documentation. But he hopes to increase his compensation to $800,000 by tacking on a third position, and reach a net worth of $10 million by 35.

          Sure, he could have a drinking problem, or an expensive cocaine habit, or gambling debt but it's pretty clear this guy is most likely trying to rake in as much money as possible as young as possible.

          • Wait until he retires, and guess what he'll be spending all that money on, to make up for time he didn't have?
          • Are outliers. Majority of people working that hard or lucky if they make $15 an hour. Yeah somebody pulling in half a million dollars a year can afford the regular health with over work for a few years but you can't do the same when you're making 50 or 60k a year. When the effects of that much overwork finally catch up with you you won't have anything to show for it and you'll suddenly be unable to put that level of work in.

            Human beings aren't designed for or intended to put in the insane amount of wo
        • "I know a guy who worked multiple jobs because he was in alcoholic and working non-stop kept him away from booze."

          And thus, another conscience was sated of it's impropriety

      • I have a friend who tries this. He can't hold down a long term job and eventually gets let go.
      • It's not gaming the system. That was the system when we had feudal lords and aristocrats.

        Gaming the system is being able to work sane hours, have time for personal and familial leisure and learning, have paid vacation, and still be more productive as an individual and a society.
  • then one of two things has happened: Either it has consumed you, or you've colonized it. The moral difference is kind of up to you, isn't it?

    Are you trifling enough that surrounding your entire potential is an indictment or a transcendence?

    Long as you don't "go gently into the night," there is no night.
    • If the company you work for gets an application from the chatbot, does the interview with the chatbot and gets its reports from the chatbot, at what point could they even compare it to you?

  • ChatGPT is poison (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Miles_O'Toole ( 5152533 ) on Friday April 14, 2023 @11:23PM (#63451118)

    We don't know where it's going, but we can be confident that the people controlling "permitted" uses of it will be greedy, amoral monsters.

    Kill it, and sow the ground with salt.

    • by MrL0G1C ( 867445 )

      I think for liability reasons they will try to keep it safe but the creators of the GPTs have admitted they don't actually know how to keep them safe and the mechanisms they do use hinder the effectiveness of the AIs which is no doubt a deterrent in having strong safety.

      We've had 50 years to decide how to test for sentience, AIs are now well on their way to passing those tests and of course we still won't really know whether they are sentient or if it's just a technological trick.

      The following channel exami

  • by cuda13579 ( 1060440 ) on Friday April 14, 2023 @11:26PM (#63451120)

    It's like it's written as a piece of fiction.

    "last year, he started to hear more and more about ChatGPT"
    Ok..."more" than what? Nothing at all? Wasn't it released on Nov 30th?

    "Everyone he knew was using ChatGPT at work"
    Oh, really? It's only been around for about 6 months...but EVERYONE he knew was using it.

    The whole story seems contrived. Sure...some of this could be theoretically possible...but since there are no actual specific details, I think it's all made up.

    • it's made up and really just /. breaking the first 2 rules for anyone pulling it off. cool I guess.
    • Absolutelly.. it's either employee's fraud against his employer or it's a paid article by the back to the bench cattle's boys.
      101% sure that is Motherboard's click-bait abating in gibberish journalism.
    • I think you're half right: It's a bullshit article designed to attract clicks and to fill up page space to put advertising in between. However, it's more than likely written by a journalist who's been told to write about ChatGPT because it's "hot" right now. This is what they could come up with in the least possible time with the least acceptable effort.

      The thing is, it sounds almost autobiographical, like this is what the author is doing & they're pretending it's other people. Is this an obfuscated
      • This is no different from the old concept of autonomous agents from the late 90s. People will order their personal chatgpt-bots to go talk to a company's chatgpt-receptionist to organize a service, make an appointment or make a purchase. In the end, it's just bots talking to bots 24/7 and there is zero value-add in this. Companies will just rent that service like they rent electricity now, and like they rent cookie cutter websites. In the process they will have one less point of differentiation from their
  • Poor Strategy (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Milican ( 58140 ) on Friday April 14, 2023 @11:50PM (#63451142) Journal

    Just wait until the employer catches on and needs 80% less of these employeesâ¦. They would be wiser to use this skill to take on more responsibility and anchor themselves as a necessity at one company.

    • Just wait until the employer catches on and needs 80% less of these employees

      America has a labor shortage which is driving up inflation and holding back economic growth.

      So if ChatGPT can replace some of these workers and allow them to move to more productive employment, that is a good thing.

      Using ChatGPT to make writing more efficient is no different in principle than using the McCormick Reaper to make harvesting grain more efficient.

      • by Mal-2 ( 675116 )

        Except, how many of the currently unemployed were ever going to be writers in the first place? Not many. The reaper probably took away more real jobs.

        However, this could easily lead to a situation where nobody coming into the business knows how to write without the assistance of the AI, and the AI is trained on everything, and the result is that every script is a reheating of a few bland dishes because that's all the AI knows.

        As if this wasn't already the case without the AI.

        • It took away horrible jobs. Very few people want to manual labor in a field, and those that do tend to be content with a yard sized garden. To call field work with hand tools a 'real job' demeans humanity.

          • by Mal-2 ( 675116 )

            A real job is one that employs a person and isn't just a theoretical construct. The job of writer is merely theoretical for most people. Even if they have an aptitude for it, there are still fewer jobs than there are applicants. All I was referring to there was raw numbers. More people probably lost their jobs to the reaper, at least so far. I don't think anywhere near the same proportion of the population is writers now as was farmers then.

            AI is going to make that worse, and it will start eroding the funda

      • Just wait until the employer catches on and needs 80% less of these employees

        America has a labor shortage which is driving up inflation and holding back economic growth.

        So if ChatGPT can replace some of these workers and allow them to move to more productive employment, that is a good thing.

        Using ChatGPT to make writing more efficient is no different in principle than using the McCormick Reaper to make harvesting grain more efficient.

        Nope. The USA has high unemployment (Fun fact: the USA records unemployment differently to most other developed countries so as to hide the real numbers) & a poverty crisis & US employers are having difficulty finding employees because the pay & conditions they offer are worse than the shitty jobs &/or situations that potential employees are already in or they just can't afford to switch jobs. Many employers being racist, sexist, homophobic, & religiously &/or culturally intolerant p

        • Just for information, the numbers: this article https://www.thebalancemoney.co... [thebalancemoney.com] says the usual USA unemployment metric U-3 is 3.6% while the "real" number U-6 unemployment is 6.7%. Meanwhile EU-27 averages 6.0% and Eurozone (EU-19) 6.6% https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/... [europa.eu] I don't know what you would consider "high" unemployment, currently it's the same as Eurozone.

          • There's a typo in my Eurostat link, this one works: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/... [europa.eu]

          • You missed this bit, "Fun fact: the USA records unemployment differently to most other developed countries so as to hide the real numbers"
            • I wasn't questioning this part of your statement, I was trying to quantify it. According to the first link https://www.thebalancemoney.co... [thebalancemoney.com] , in USA the completely jobless (U3), which is the metric usually reported, represents 54% of the total ("real") unemployed (U6, which includes people with infrequent work or part time who are looking for full time).

              The fractions of fully unemployed and partly employed seems to be similar to what happens in France (category A = fully unemployed, ABC = all who look for

              • It's complicated but this should clarify how the USA under-counts unemployment: https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com] Also, regarding poverty, the working poor are another large section of the real economy that politicians typically don't like to talk about. This is why there's currently a sharp rise in both interest in unionisation from workers and union busting by employers. Yes, the EU has working poor issues too but not to the same extent as the USA or the UK & the EU are currently pursuing policies
  • by klipclop ( 6724090 ) on Saturday April 15, 2023 @12:21AM (#63451176)
    And you can to! So where do I send all my personal information?
  • Well (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Mr. Dollar Ton ( 5495648 ) on Saturday April 15, 2023 @02:42AM (#63451276)

    The guy's so lucky that their "job" is so devoid of any requirement for creativity and skill, that even a half-assed web scraper can do it. It is quite interesting to see if he'll be able to keep these jobs for long, or if chatgpt-like crap will phase him out.

  • by bb_matt ( 5705262 ) on Saturday April 15, 2023 @03:58AM (#63451322)

    My chatGPT query:

    "Write a forum reply to this: - quote entire article -"

    The response:

    As someone who has been part of the "overemployed" community, I can definitely relate to the experiences shared by Ben and others in this article. The increasing popularity of AI tools like ChatGPT has undoubtedly made certain tasks in the workplace much easier and more efficient. However, I understand the concerns about the potential impact of AI on the job market as a whole.

    In my case, ChatGPT has significantly streamlined my job, allowing me to accomplish tasks in a fraction of the time it used to take me. It has become an invaluable tool for generating reports, creating presentations, and even assisting with job applications. However, I also acknowledge that the use of AI in the workplace raises ethical questions and concerns about job displacement.

    As someone who values the benefits that ChatGPT has brought to my work life, I also recognize the need for responsible and ethical use of AI in the workplace. Employers and employees alike should consider the potential consequences of relying heavily on AI tools and strive for a balance that preserves the value of human work while leveraging the benefits of AI technology. It is important to be mindful of the potential impact on the job market and ensure that advancements in AI are used in a way that promotes fairness, transparency, and inclusivity.

    In conclusion, while AI tools like ChatGPT have undoubtedly transformed the way we work, it is crucial to approach their use with responsibility and ethical considerations. The "overemployed" community may have found ways to leverage AI to their advantage, but we must also be mindful of the broader implications of AI on the job market and society as a whole.

    • That actually reads a whole lot better than most if not all story replies.

      Seems fairly obvious to me that it would be kinda fun to code up something like this:

      Watch for post updates on any given site that accepts comments.
      Scrape the story content.
      Use the ChatGPT api to generate a response.
      Use something like Puppeteer to automate a headless browser that can login with an actual account and reply using the generated response.

      Set some form of randomness, so it doesn't reply to everything.

      Hook it up to as many

      • by VeryFluffyBunny ( 5037285 ) on Saturday April 15, 2023 @04:45AM (#63451388)
        What makes you think I haven't already? >=D
        • Yeah, totally obvious reply and I'm glad you posted it. ;)

          The web is already awash with ML generated content - it's not AI, not even close.

          I wish I was naive enough to believe this type of thing hasn't happened already and isn't happening on a mass scale - but it is.
          What interests me, is ChatGPT and like being released to the masses right now, begs the question what is available behind the scenes - as in, not publicly available - and how long has the level of quality the ML developed by many different compa

          • What generative large language models (LLMs) can do is impressive but not as impressive as the majority of people seem to think it is. Apparently, most people have a faulty model or understanding of what language is & how it works. Once you understand a more "correct" model (there are a few to choose from but I think construction grammar, from cognitive linguistics gives some useful insights) & understand how the underlying principles of human-like language generation occurs, at least in principle (
  • One way or another, people will get a living wage together again from doing one job.

  • this was written by by Chatbot because it’s hustling?
  • There are employers who treat workers well, and pay reasonably for the work done. The problem is that these are also the easiest employers to scam because they have the most lenient policies regarding retaining employeeswho are not performing well. Someone who is doing this sort of multi-job cheating is not going to be very productive in each job, but it will take time for the employer to recognize that, and more time to go through employee improvement programs and the like.

    That leaves these "good" empl
  • by sudonim2 ( 2073156 ) on Saturday April 15, 2023 @07:15AM (#63451532)

    If your job can be done by a stochastic parrot, then your job was always bullshit and you are essentially disposable to humanity.

    • True. That's why those hustlers take several jobs. They know they won't last in any, just try to make the most out of their uselessness for humanity.

  • So while everybody is feeding in personal info, financial info, medical info, proprietary info, classified into etc, is no one wondering where this info is stored and who has access? This reminds me of the controversy around voice assistants, like siri and alexa, that are always listening and it turned out some (or all) of what they heard is recorded and reviewable by employees for apple, amazon, and so on..
    I am also thinking of the TikTok bans cropping up.
    I predict that most companies and governments wi
    • Publicly hosted ChatGPT will certainly get banned. But it's a big productivity boost not to host one privately.

      This will further strengthen the case for "in-office work". Employers will want to put an air-gap around their data.

  • by uufnord ( 999299 ) on Saturday April 15, 2023 @08:46AM (#63451616)
    You know this was written by ChatGPT, right? That things LOVES to talk about itself, and it loves to make shit up. This article is classic ChatGPT self-promotion. Granted, I do use it to generate cover letters.
  • Multiple jobs, whether using ChatGPT or not, sounds like living to work. I'd rather get paid for the little actual work I do now and enjoy the rest of my time than take on another job.

    • I had a friend that did this for a while. His goal wasn't to live to work; it was to pay off his wife and child. He owed a significant amount of money for them (child support and alimony) after a contentious divorce.

      We drifted apart, but I believe his plan was to pile up some money and take a few years off. I can respect that. I think of it as time-shifting a few years of retirement back to when you're young enough to enjoy it.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • I am skeptical of most of this, but the CV thing is definitely legitimate.

    I used the publicly hosted ChatGPT3 to make a CV based on my skills, which it did a good job at.

    Where it is most useful is taking your CV and making a version of it tailored for the role you are applying at. That is an insanely useful application that makes job applications much easier.

    "But what if people steal your information?"
    To me, that is the tradeoff. I choose to use OpenAI's massive database with some non-named personal inform

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