I need a refresh on here. I've had this tumblr for 6 years now, which is most of the time I've been on tumblr. Im following too many people (largely notorious tumblr "microcelebs") id rather not be following anymore, and if Im going to continue using tumblr I want to use it less anyway. Watch this space for a new account â€ïžâ€ïžâ€ïžâ€ïžâ€ïžâ€ïžâ€ïž
Corporate Glossary: every Friday, learn the secret meaning of common corporate words
âTheyâre trying to discharge her constructively. Do you know what Constructive Discharge means?â She asked.
As soon as I heard the term âConstructive Discharge,â I knew Iâd never seen it on a vocabulary quiz.
âNo. What does it mean?â I asked.
She explained.
âConstructive discharge is a fancy way of saying âbeing forced out.â Itâs not good. And if youâre not a lawyer or in human resources, youâll probably learn what it means when itâs happening to you.â
âOh my God. Iâve seen this my entire career and never knew it even had a name.â I thought.
Youâve seen constructive Discharge too. You may have experienced it. Weâve all made choices to avoid it.
Constructive discharge defined
âWe canât fire you, but weâll make you so miserable youâll quit, and then we wonât have to pay your unemployment.â
Then thereâs the textbook definition:
âA constructive discharge occurs when your employer has made working conditions unbearable, forcing you to resign.â
Or as one person put it.
âI didnât get handed a pink slip, but when youâre not wanted, people have a way of letting you know.â
HR isnât always the secret police.
Employees arenât always victims of evil-doers.
However, employers push employees out all the time to maintain and protect the, âWe didnât do anything wrong, YOU did,â power structure.
Constructive Discharge looks like this:
â Meeting invitations slow to a trickle, and youâre excluded from emails and generally looped out of whatâs going on.
â People stop talking to you or stop talking when you walk in.
â Your emails donât get answers, or they arrive too late to be of value.
â Suddenly, your work is not good enough, though nothing about your work has changed.
â Reviews, once good or even glowing, are now mediocre or bad.
â Instead of a bonus, you get a Performance Improvement Plan.
â Warnings and write-ups start so they can justify your eventual termination with documentation of your âpoor performanceâ
â Your work, clients, assignments go away, or they overwhelm you with work.
â The words âSet up to failâ were practically invented to describe this scenario.
Constructive Discharge is illegal
It isnât easy to prove youâre a target, and itâs even more challenging if you donât even know constructive discharge is a real thing.
If youâve ever experienced this and donât fully understand whatâs happening to you beyond knowing youâre in the process of being excommunicated, it can be hell. Itâs not uncommon for the experience to leave long-lasting scars.
Talk to anyone whoâs ever been through it. Theyâll tell you.
Knowing constructive discharge exists and how itâs used gives you power to predict whatâs coming and to protect yourself.
Seeing the endgame helps you in two ways.
You know what to expect. Having a sense of whatâs coming next is enormously empowering.
You can go on the offensive and protect yourself. Constructive discharge works to crush your ego, making you feel you did something wrong and deserve this treatment.
Without strategy, you end up being a miserable pawn in your employerâs endgame.
Remember, theyâre almost certainly building a case to fire you in the event the hellscape they create for you doesnât persuade you to quit.
If youâre getting pushed out, and you know what to look for you can prove constructive discharge and you can get unemployment benefits, be released from payback obligations on a signing bonus, and protect your mental health.
Youâre not crazy, incompetent, or a failure. This is real and itâs carefully executed to leave you holding the bag and feeling like you did something wrong.
If they force you out, in addition to feeling horrible, you lose your paycheck, benefits health insurance, and possibly owe them money.
So Hank Green got caught using AI and itâs a whole huge blow up, and I really donât have much interest in adding to the pile on.
However, I do think this case is great example of what happens when smart people decide they can use these systems âresponsibly.â
Letâs put aside the plagiarism and the energy use for a second (not that these donât matter, but theyâre not relevant to my point at the moment) and pretend these systems were made with entirely properly obtained info and ran on only solar, but otherwise were entirely the same. If youâre a person, you might think âokay, Iâm going to only use this to come up with ideas for my next paper: Iâm going to do all the research myself and the writing, Iâm just gonna brainstorm topics.â
The thing is, even if youâre trying to limit use to just âbrainstormingâ the chatbot isnât going to limit itself to just brainstorming. You might ask it âwhat should I write about involving Greek historyâ and it may suggest âthe plague of Athensâ but itâs also going to suggest some âbasic infoâ on the plague of Athens that you might end up picking up and deciding your topic is. Itâs going to provide you with âresearch.â And even if you decide to check that research yourself, thatâs still setting you down a specific path you might not have picked organically.
And speaking of double checking its âresearchâ, fact checking is a time heavy process. Not only now do you have to read the original text the bot provided, but you also have to compare it line by line with the summary the bot provided. Thatâs more time than it would have taken to just read the article by itself. And with any time heavy task, people are going to get lazy. And in original research being lazy might mean skimming a paper or an abstract, chatbots allow you to be lazy without looking at the article at all.
And soon enough, despite telling yourself you were only going to use it for brainstorming, you have offloaded topic generation, research and eventually even drafting because thatâs what these bots are intended to do. They are not meant to serve as research tools or help brainstorm or serve as a bouncing off board: they are built to encourage maximum engagement. And that means if you go at them with the best of ethical intentions, they are built to tempt you to use them as much as possible, regardless of whatever line you drew in the sand for yourself.
Anyway, my main thought here is you are not smart enough to outwit the dopamine machine. It wants your attention and nothing more. Do not assume you can resist just because you know whatâs under the hood.
Whenever you decide to use a tool, you should consider âwhat is this tool designed to doâ and for LLMâs that answer is âmaximize user engagement.â Anything else is in service to that goal.
My read of this came from Hankâs own response to the situation which you can find here. Iâve screenshotted the part in particular that drew my attention and spawned this post below:
Obvs, Hankâs situation is not the same as the scenario I laid out but I think the snippet above gets back to my main point which is these tools are built to encourage interaction and thatâs a hard thing to avoid, regardless of intentions.
Some other notes:
1. As stated, I donât bring this up to add to a pile on, just to use this as an example of something Iâve seen happen with folks trying to engage in this tech with an ethical framework. This is because-
2. Frankly, I think shame is a shit motivator. I bring all this up to try to draw attention to something I find under discussed which is what these LLMS are meant to do, and what they are advertised for which are often very separate lists. (I didnât even get into how theyâre meant to train off user data but thatâs another can of worms). If you want to discourage AI use, itâs a far better strategy to listen to why the person is engaging with AI and then address that reason.
3. I donât want to come off as someone trying to scare folks that theyâll get addicted just by touching the stuff: my point is merely that is it critical to know what something is made for before engaging with it. This actually goes for a lot of tech besides AI like Google or social media (which are also designed to 1. Capture your attention and 2. Show you advertisements). AI isnât a special kind of evil in this way, merely a continuation of a tech trend where a product is sold to a consumer with the goal of the time of the consumer becoming the source of revenue.
4. I have book recs on this topic. As you can guess, this is an academic interest of mine. But thatâs another post if folks are interested.
[ID: digital drawing of bbc merlin's gwen and morgana over a black background. they're in a bed over white sheets wearing white sleeping dresses, which have pink undertones and blue shadows. they both have their hair loose. gwen is sitting and morgana has her head on her lap, her eyes shut and a frown on her eyebrows. morgana's eyes slightly glow gold from under her lashes. she has a fist on the sheets in front of her and there is a glow visible from inside of it. gwen is looking down at her with a calm expression, one of her hands on morgana's hair and the other on her shoulder. End ID]
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