to everyone using AI to make forum posts and especially replies, please take this one additional step! Please! you may be doing more harm than good!
I've only been in 7cups a few days and i've seen a ton of AI posts and replies in the forums, and i love AI, i use it myself too, it really helps me find the right words especially in tough situations, and i love how easy and simple it lays everything out In Most Situations but if you just simply copy/paste a very clinical outline format (overly correct wording/grammar, headings and bullet points, phrases such as "stop blaming yourself" (like it's that easy)) it can be not just cold and invalidating and shows a lack of compassion or effort, but also it just...doesn't do a good job when it's a random internet stranger who is in a real time of crisis
There's something you can do to try and prevent negative feelings getting a plain copy/pasted ai response can cause
simply ask the AI, "can you please try again, without the headings and bullet points, i'm trying to sound as authentic and human as possible" and it almost always comes up with something more natural"
compare these two "responses" to a generic situation and see if you can spot the differences
Generic Situation:
"I’ve been feeling really overwhelmed at work lately. My workload has increased, and I’m finding it difficult to keep up with everything. I’m worried I might burn out soon. Does anyone have any advice on how to manage this?"
________________
Your Feelings Are Valid:
It’s completely normal to feel overwhelmed when your workload increases unexpectedly.
Recognizing these feelings is the first step towards managing them effectively.
Time Management Techniques:
Prioritize Tasks: Identify the most important tasks and tackle them first. This ensures that critical deadlines are met.
Set Realistic Goals: Break down larger tasks into smaller, manageable pieces to avoid feeling overwhelmed.
Use Time-Blocking: Allocate specific time slots for different tasks. This can help manage your time more efficiently.
Stress Management Strategies:
Mindfulness Practices: Engage in mindfulness exercises such as deep breathing, meditation, or yoga to reduce stress levels.
Regular Breaks: Take short, regular breaks throughout the day to rest and recharge. This can improve productivity and reduce burnout risk.
Physical Activity: Incorporate physical activity into your daily routine. Exercise is a natural stress reliever and can boost your mood.
Seeking Support:
Communicate with Supervisors: Have an open discussion with your supervisors about your workload. They may be able to provide additional support or adjust your responsibilities.
Build a Support Network: Connect with colleagues who can offer support and advice. Sharing your experiences with others can help alleviate feelings of isolation.
Professional Help: Consider seeking support from a therapist or counselor if you’re feeling overwhelmed. They can offer valuable coping strategies and support.
Self-Compassion:
Be Kind to Yourself: Acknowledge that it’s okay to feel overwhelmed. Give yourself credit for the efforts you’re making.
Set Boundaries: Learn to say no when necessary. Setting boundaries can help protect your time and energy.
Celebrate Small Wins: Recognize and celebrate your achievements, no matter how small. This can boost your morale and motivation.
Conclusion:
Managing increased workload and preventing burnout requires a combination of time management, stress management, and seeking support. Remember to be kind to yourself and prioritize your well-being. If you need further assistance, reaching out to a professional can be a helpful step.
________________
ok awesome, now can you give me the very natural human response, without the bullet points and headings, much more authentic feelings?
________________
Hey there,
I'm really sorry to hear that you're feeling overwhelmed at work. It’s totally understandable to feel this way when your workload suddenly increases. Feeling like you're on the brink of burnout is really tough, and it's important to acknowledge and validate those feelings.
First of all, it’s okay to feel this way. It doesn't mean you’re not capable; it just means you’re human. Everyone has a breaking point, and it sounds like you’re being pushed to yours. Take a moment to breathe and remind yourself that it’s alright to feel overwhelmed.
One thing that might help is to prioritize your tasks. It can feel like everything needs to be done right away, but usually, there are a few things that are more urgent than others. Tackling those first can sometimes make the rest of the workload feel a bit more manageable. Also, setting small, realistic goals can help break down the big picture into more digestible pieces. It’s less about doing everything at once and more about making steady progress.
Don't forget to take breaks. Even short ones can make a big difference. Step away from your desk, take a walk, do some deep breathing—anything that helps you reset. It’s easy to skip breaks when you’re busy, but they’re crucial for maintaining your productivity and sanity.
Talking to your supervisor could also help. Sometimes they might not realize the extent of your workload and can offer support or solutions once they understand what you’re dealing with. It can feel daunting to bring it up, but it’s worth it for your well-being.
Lastly, consider leaning on your support network. Friends, family, or even colleagues can provide a sounding board for your frustrations and might offer helpful advice or just a sympathetic ear. If things feel too much, speaking to a therapist could provide you with strategies to manage your stress and work through your feelings.
Remember to be kind to yourself. It’s easy to be hard on ourselves when we're struggling, but it’s important to recognize that you’re doing your best. Celebrate your small victories, even if it’s just getting through a tough day.
Take care, and hang in there. You’re stronger than you think, and it's okay to ask for help and take the steps you need to protect your well-being. You've got this.
________________
Yes, i totally get there are times and places that having a nicely formatted outline is really helpful and simple and straightforward, i get it, i do. it can just be read with ease and it's so quick to use to remind ourselves. But when someone is pouring their heart out in these very painful and desperate posts about their deepest hurts, it's like a slap in the face with a cold dead fish to read a clinical outline ai format in response, and i cringe hard every time. especially from listeners. i know we can do better in these specific situations
thank you for reading this far, and i appreciate you and all you do and just want to help and i hope you have a great day!
P.S. here is what the 7Cups Community Forum Guidelines has to say about AI specifically
Any violations of these guidelines may be subject to editing or removal by our forum moderation team.
The excessive use of artificial intelligence when creating forum content is not allowed. This includes the use of other software and using content from other sites without citing the original author or creator.
Purpose of rule:
to ensure 7 Cups remains authentic and supportive to all users whilst maintaining genuine connection and human touch.
@SummerOfCA
Validation:
Acknowledgement: I totally get where you're coming from about these AI posts on 7 Cups.
Insight: The points you make are very valid.
Impact: You bring out some good insights on how these posts might be received.
Agreement:
Usefulness of AI: While AI can be super helpful, it can also sometimes come off as a bit cold and robotic.
Balance: AI has a time and place, especially in an empathetic community like 7 Cups.
Human Touch: It's crucial to maintain that human touch in emotionally charged situations.
Your Proposal:
Revision Request: Asking AI to revise responses to make them sound more natural and human is spot on.
Effectiveness: A little tweak can make a big difference in how a message is received.
Example Comparison:
Clinical vs. Personal: Your comparison of the clinical AI response versus the more personal one highlights how the second one feels warmer and more supportive.
Conclusion:
Importance: This is a really important point, and I hope more people take it to heart.
Appreciation: Thanks for bringing this up and for trying to make the 7 Cups community even better!
😂😜🙃
In all seriousness though:
Yeah, I've been a bit disheartened to see how many AI responses there are in comments of posts. I know people are just trying to be helpful, but AI is a relatively new tool, and support forums have existed for way longer. People put in the time and energy and effort to read people's struggles, empathise, and come up with what they want to say; their own personal experiences, things they've learned along the way, their own advice or words of comfort and support, etc. I know we've all got problems and don't necessarily always feel like typing and typing and whatever, but that's part of helping people, right? Not just outsourcing to an AI for generic advice that the OP themselves could find (and likely has already before reaching out to 7Cups). I guess sometimes people want to help but don't know exactly what to say or have the motivation to do so? But speaking for myself, personally, I'd rather have someone not respond than to respond with AI; the implication to me is that they just copied my post into a chat AI and pasted the response, which feels uncaring and dismissive.
@SummerOfCA
Appreciate you sharing this. 😊
The clinical outline is definitely noticeable as being AI-generated. But I feel like even the "try to sound more human" AI writing feels very different than how a normal person would write and creates a bit of a gut reaction of "that's not human" from me. Some things I notice about it:
- Lots of information/recommendations, but all of it pretty vague/general
- Lots of certainty, confidence, objective rather than subjective voice, imperative demands/instructions rather than tentative suggestions/questions
- Lots of trite encouragement (e.g. "you're stronger than you think", "it's okay to ask for help", "it just means you're human", "everyone has a breaking point", "it's totally understandable", "it's really tough"). Humans do this too and it's good in moderation, but AI responses seem to be filled to the gills with it, lol.
- Highly structured writing that's almost "too perfect". Very even, detached emotional tone that is usually 5-8 paragraphs of 2-3 sentences each, with perfect organization and perfect transitions between ideas. Human writing is typically a bit more random or "spiky"; there will be variation in sentence length/structure, tangents, bursts of emotional/intellectual intensity (some things might just spark my interest more than others and they get a richer response), idiosyncrasies in word choice, random emojis, etc.
Some typical ways I usually use AI if I'm looking for help in responding to someone:
- Copy/paste a forum post and ask for the AI to summarize what the other person is saying and give its own reactions
- Share my own understanding of a post with the AI (or my own reactions to the post) and ask the AI for its feedback/reactions to what I've written
- Write a draft response and ask the AI for its reactions/suggestions (which I'll frequently ignore but sometimes it'll catch an obvious mistake or come up with better wording)
- Describe my strategy for how I want to respond to a post and ask the AI for help brainstorming how to flesh out or expand certain parts of my reply that I'm struggling with
@SummerOfCA
Sooooo glad someone pointed this out!
Also the way you did, by sharing the whys and hows. A solid way to share constructive feedback!🌻
Ai is helpful for many reasons, yes, but in moderation only, using it excessively specially when it comes to "tasks" that involve emotions and expression, takes away the human-ness, which isn't great to see at all! I'd rather appreciate typos, incorrect grammar or incoherent sentences even, if it's someone actually taking the time and thought to express how *they* feel, about *their* experiences and what may have worked/ not worked for *them*, than some perfectly layed out, well structured paragraphs that I could too easily google search at my convenience!😅
Thank you for sharing a better approach in using these tools in forming supportive responses, if someone still wants to.
Moderation is key, y'all!💛
@Sunisshiningandsoareyou
That's exactly how I feel. AI is helpful in a lot of ways but ultimately it's telling you things that you can (and probably already have) use Google for. It's no match for human experiences and the compassion and sense of community/less alone feeling that comes from hearing people's authentic responses.
@JasonC92
Orrrrr we can always say it with a gif too haha, something I guess (hope?) AI cannot! XD
I'm glad you see it the same way, and totally, authenticity is what really matters!🙌
Right, but what about just using our brain and feeling ?
I mean how can you understand someone if this person only have an AI to talk to
By the way help me Noni took me in hostage
@SummerOfCA
Yes, I agree that makes completely no sense to use such a copy-and-paste practice and I wonder why some people do that. I believe it is like cheating on an exam. And if anyone needed some advice from the AI, they could ask for it themselves.
I've heard that answering with a numbered or dotted list might be giving a clearer picture, but in most situations it can bring some clinical, academic or even slightly offensive feel. That is the reason why I don't like to use it very much.
However, I am also not a big fan of either three-screen-long messages with no paragraphing at all, or talking about people and things that are important in our lives using "words" like "my bf" or "Idk" 😕
@SummerOfCA Well, someone had to say it lol
I totally agree,
I mean it's so hard to think of an answer?!, it can even be short, the important thing is that there are to be feelings!!
When I see the AI posts I do recognize them in their bullet or non-bullet form. My assumption has been that these are pure AI bots rather than people using AI bots. There is a problem right there, how do I know for sure that I am interacting with a human at all. Frankly, if I wanted an answer from an AI then I’d stop coming to 7 Cups at all.
Having to use AI to come up with an answer is a lazy low IQ B.S move! If you, YOU YOURSELF, don’t have lived experience with a problem then why the flyin flapjacks are you even answering someone’s post? If I wanted your cut/pasted AI response I could just as easily Google and come up with answers that with a little effort in my little brain might be far superior to the 💩 you just pasted in.
AI works by pulling other human responses and maybe some other AI responses and tries to make it sound like AI has a flippin clue. It also has the hallucination problem and could very well tell someone that their best option may be to take a long walk off a short pier.
The fact that 7 Cups even allows this AI garbage to be used is disgusting!
We have given away our privacy to big tech and now they are grooming us to become non-humans by replacing our ability to think for ourselves with AI. Soon enough someone with power may decide AI is good enough so why do we need these excess humans. We might just be complicit with their assessment, after all by then we will be so cognitively lazy that we will ask AI if it’s a good idea.
AI is interesting. It probably has some great uses. But AI can never know human suffering or human joy. It can only be a convincing fake. I don’t want to build relationships with machines because it isn’t a real relationship. It is a fraud! I don’t want a clump of electronics to tell me what I should do about my problems because it neither understands the problem or the solution. It only knows how to model language. Unfortunately this site is using your suffering to be a guinea pig for an AI language model. Look no further than this thread here - you’re telling AI how to look more human.
Many of you here are arguing for the lazy way of answering someone’s post. It makes me wonder what your motivation is. Please never answer any of my posts with AI, I don’t want to feel like I have to shower after reading it and I will definitely not think kindly about you.
I’ll be curious to see if the admins can handle my dissent or remove my post. If the latter it will be telling what kind of “community” this is.
People come to 7 Cups seeking human connection. That another person who can also feel and is vulnerable to suffering like them reads their message and replies.
Replies don't need to be well-written or complete. The key is feeling you have connected with another person.
For those who seek AI-generated information, there are some awesome bots out there we all know about.
I think it would be better to answer, after a genuinely compassionate response, something like "How sad! I can imagine how overwhelming that might have felt! I suggest you ask ChatGPT about ways to deal with a panic attack. It has great advice about useful techniques". Or "(...) These are some suggestions I got by asking ChatGPT: (...) I hope some work for you"
Giving links and directions to resources is always ok I think.
Replacing genuine human expression with AI is detrimental to the Forums.
Fortunately, we are still far from a dystopian generalized replacement.
@SummerOfCA
I prefer a miss-spelled, grammatically incorrect, imperfect, yet, human-composed message from the heart any day over an AI copy and paste response... especially during any emotional or traumatic event.