Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

The systems we use at work are woefully behind what we use at home. This is especially true if we work in a government organization.

At the time I wrote this post, OpenAI demonstrated their GPT-4 with ChatGPT. That means I see how to summarize lots of things and understand what is in photos and save myself hours of typing well-known facts. Also, Microsoft has shown how all these things will appear in plain old boring Microsoft Word.

Anyone can use Microsoft Word and take advantage of all this writing and summarizing and looking really smart, right?

Wrong. I work inside a Federal government organization. We use Microsoft Word 2016. Yes, seven years behind. We will never see all these fancy AI Copilots and stuff at work. We are having a good day when the systems come on when scheduled and don’t crash during the day.

Okay, that’s our Federal government. But are most companies much better? Will all the companies have these new MS Word features on the same day that I have them at home on my personal account? Will their IT departments accredit them that fast? Will these things be deployed?

Accredit? Deploy? Well, all those things are important and they take time. I understand that. Big companies have a lot at stake and don’t want to mess up by moving too fast. Me at home? Whatever, just do it. I have a backup. I’ll be okay.

And that is why we hate IT at work. The Information Technology departments have a lot to do. They are worried about things I don’t understand. They have to move slowly. Sometimes laws require them to move slowly, and no one wants to go to jail.

Still, why can’t they just …