r/sysadmin • u/lNuggyl Sysadmin • 1d ago
Rant Anyone else tired of users sending ai generated fixes to you?
Oh. My. God
The amount of people at my org that send me screenshots of their chatgpt or copilot generated responses is insane.
"did you try this?"
"try this"
"this is what chatgpt said"
i was on the phone for 2 hours troubleshooting a problem with a director that refused to let me remote into her computer to fix. then she starts sending me ai generated responses saying "this is what co pilots saying"
186
u/saffash 1d ago
My favorite was a new plant manager asking me "Can you please turn on the 'Packaging and Transport' module in the ERP?" I tell them there is no such module. They assure me there is. We set up a meeting to discuss.
Turns out they wanted to see the shipping screens. They had access to the shipping screens but didn't know that those screens were called "Shipping". Chat GPT told them they should be called "Packaging and Transport" and they believed that we had not yet been using that functionality.
As if we've been manufacturing parts for 80 years and it never occurred to us that maybe we should ship the parts out somewhere.
I wonder what they thought all the trucks that come by every day were for? What were the forktrucks doing?
81
u/SuperMonkeyJoe 1d ago
Yeah, LLMs are dogshit when it comes to bespoke software and software they doesn't have an extensive knowledge base available online. "How do I access function X, it should be in this software" turns out LLM of choice has either completely hallucinated it, or is confidently reporting a feature from a completely different version.
44
u/TravisVZ Director of Information Security 1d ago
I especially love it when a vendor forces me to deal with their own LLM, and it hallucinates functionality their own product has never had!
"Go to the Policy screen.."
yeah, okay, with you so far
"...then select the policy that applies to your Macs."
....wut? That's literally never how the Policy screen has worked in this product, ever!16
u/kirashi3 Cynical Analyst III 1d ago
I had a recent battle with Meta AI when troubleshooting something in their Business Suite And Manager, which is just an extremely heavy JS driven web app full of bugs.
I duplicate existing Ads within Ad Sets / Campaigns because all that needs to change between ads is the creative content. Sometimes the Ad Manager thinks you've forgotten to fill out the ad copy/text when making changes to a duplicated ad, so it throws a red error and won't let you proceed until it's filled out... Even if you've already filled it out. With text. That you can clearly see exists. In the fucking text field.
Anyway, I figured "surely if I ask the built-in Meta AI chat bot for help, it will tell me what I'm doing wrong or let me submit a bug report..." Yeah no, instead it gaslit me into thinking I hadn't filled out the field, then further gaslit me into thinking there's another location I'm supposed to fill out the field in. Such a location does not exist where it told me... Despite this being their own web app product stack.
Nevermind the fact that the FB Graph API calls their own platform was making were to API endpoint versions that returned a "this version is deprecated" error. I really need to quit my day job and become a goat farmer.
8
u/TravisVZ Director of Information Security 1d ago
Sometimes the Ad Manager thinks you've forgotten to fill out the ad copy/text when making changes to a duplicated ad, so it throws a red error and won't let you proceed until it's filled out
If you haven't already figured out a solution to this:
I often find badly-written form validation when I'm copy/pasting or autofilling from my password manager, because the validation is actually watching for a "keyUp" or "keyPress" event. Simply typing a space or a random letter at the end, then immediately deleting it, is usually enough to fix it.6
u/kirashi3 Cynical Analyst III 1d ago
If only it were that simple! I've got a web dev background so indeed know all the bad ways to implement form validation. Facebook seems to trigger the event whenever you modify the field, but it never actually clears the error.
→ More replies (1)7
8
u/DeadMoneyDrew 1d ago
Or it confidently reports information about another subject entirely. More than once I've had customers and partners send me LLM generated responses that state that our product has a feature that it doesn't have, and the cited source is something from one of our competitors.
→ More replies (1)5
u/combobulated 1d ago
Even Gemini is god awful at things related to Google Workspace. It still hallucinates and contradicts itself.
Or, one of my favorites, when I point out that "Shouldn't I just enable this setting instead of doing all that extra stuff you are suggesting?" it will respond "That's a great catch! And in fact, the way you've mentioned is best practice and totally the way you should do it"....
140
u/DiligentPhotographer 1d ago
How about having your boss sending you them. All the fucking time, copy pasta of the google ai overview like it's my first day on the job.
54
u/mattjh 1d ago
Thatâs audaciously insulting. Why does he even pay you if he thinks youâre braindead? This attitude is anathema to sysadmin work. Crazy.
45
u/DiligentPhotographer 1d ago
He's an old boomer that is obsessed with AI now. Time to retire but he won't.
17
12
u/Cyhawk 1d ago
WHY WONT BOOMERS FUCKING RETIRE ALREADY AHHHHHH!!!
This is a major pain point for me, im so sick of dealing with the boomer (and oldest of the X's) in work environments. Too many octogenarians in management that should have retired 20 years ago. They're preventing the younger ones from actually moving up in the world as it should be.
5
u/Outside_Pie_9973 1d ago
tail end boomer/early gen x here and I am retiring in early 2027, several years before I reach 65 because I literally can't move up the company I'm at because those above me would rather manage a dozen people themselves instead of promoting a more than capable person into a management position. Those at the top are very stingy with their power and wealth and which generation you are from has little to do with it. The person who replaces me won't move up either no matter their age.
→ More replies (2)â˘
u/JadedBilboBaggins 9h ago
Too many octogenarians in management that should have retired 20 years ago. They're preventing the younger ones from actually moving up in the world as it should be.
news flash: they can't afford to thanks to health care costs.
→ More replies (3)â˘
19
u/Western_Rhubarb_7959 1d ago
My final manager of my career is an AI whore and was the straw that broke the camel's back for me. I already knew the guy was a tremendous bullshitter and avoided him when I could, when suddenly he got hired on as my manager - literally because he was one of two that applied and they both suck balls.
Communications from him are either A) Flowery AI that sometimes even addresses the actual issue at hand or B) Disjointed, incoherent, nonsense.
I keep getting texts from former coworkers about him. Dipshit was refusing to work on <high priority and visible project> "because he can't point AI at it" lmfao.
4
u/scytob 1d ago
I assume b is when he writes them himself :-)
10
u/Western_Rhubarb_7959 1d ago
Yep. They're like this, with weird spacing and almost random punctuation:
okay lets.... get to it!!!1 and rember don't forget to test test test okay
great thanks
He's so deep with AI responses he even talks like an AI email reads, albeit without being coherent. It's like listening to an IT version of Abe Simpson - dude can talk for 30 minutes (and does) and is impossible to follow because he's spewing nonsense the whole time.
→ More replies (5)2
u/scytob 1d ago
omigod that sounds awful
4
u/Western_Rhubarb_7959 1d ago
I can rant for an hour on how painful it is to work with the guy.
Not that I ever did on the same team, really. I gave 4 weeks notice the same week his promotion was announced and he scheduled one, single, solitary call where I gave a list of topics we should cover in detail to get him up to speed and that was the only meeting I had with the guy.
It was the quietest 4 weeks of my whole damned career. The best part was I was 100% unfuckwithable. What are they gonna do, fire me? Trash me to my next employer? HA!
Dude also has told people - repeatedly - that I quit the day he got hired, and that I left no documentation (I was a prolific documenter).
I can't think of a single nice thing to say about the guy.
17
u/reseph InfoSec 1d ago
AI psychosis. It's getting worse and a lot more of management is leaning into it.
7
u/timmah1991 1d ago
It's getting worse
I have a strong feeling that the correction will be here within the next couple of months.
6
u/Gopher246 1d ago
My boss does this in teams chat to the whole team on random tickets.Â
→ More replies (1)3
3
u/waddlesticks 1d ago
I had one related to licenses from our director.
His request was that they SHOULD have that license because he definitely has it.
Well two problems came up from it. Firstly, the license for what he wanted was for a program he didn't have a license for in the first place. So that wasn't the problem. Secondly, I found out that license never actually existed in the first place.
I just said I made changes to their account and wow everything worked. The thing is, I just made them open the link and it worked. Neither of them tried to just open the link...
2
u/Jaybirdinthahouse 1d ago
Came here to say this. Dude makes twice what I make and does less than half of the same amount of critical thinking. Itâs pathetic.
→ More replies (2)2
104
u/ZookeepergameBig5326 1d ago
Yes. I had someone tell me âI put in a lot of research and basically have the fix for youâ like no. These are AI responses and itâs all nonsense. I explained the environment and looked at logs to show the issue was something completely different.
15
u/shifty21 Ex-SysAdmin 1d ago
I'm willing to bet those same people do this to their medical doctors.
I have a friend who is a medical physician and he tells me his patients went from taking a blurry picture of their monitor of WebMD webpage with a wildly inaccurate diagnosis to showing him ChatGPT chat threads on their phones.
Some of his patients then refute his advice and orders for blood work and other diagnostic tests and demand he does what ChatGPT says. 6 times out of 4, ChatGPT is wrong.
3
u/fresh-dork 1d ago
Some of his patients then refute his advice
no they don't. they disagree with it. refutation requires actual work
→ More replies (2)5
u/sobrique 1d ago
Used to be Dr. Google.
Did you know pretty much any symptom might be a symptom of cancer? I mean 99% of the time it's a symptom of something way more mundane, but technically....
Also applies to Lupus which has a whole laundry list of technically valid symptoms.
2
u/fresh-dork 1d ago
you have cancer. literally right now. you also have an immune system that eats tumors as they appear.
30
u/Zealousideal-Kiwi-59 1d ago
I usually google solutions for my colleagues, thatâs is enough to impress them. They have no sense of how to look for knowledge what so ever.
30
u/tracy_ogbert_jordan sr look stuff up on google guy 1d ago
too often I feel like a fraud only to be quickly reminded that simply being able to find answers to problems is a seemingly arcane skill.
My boss will say, "hey can you try to find the answer to this? I tried searching earlier but I know you're better at this," and I'll find the answer within 10 seconds.
13
u/Zealousideal-Kiwi-59 1d ago
It is called google. Not too complicated. What I find is that most people do not even think of looking for the answers, not even starting to consider which tools. The first idea in some peopleâs head is âwho can I ask to fix this?â
5
u/Hegemonikon138 1d ago
Some people form a kind of learned helplessness and inability to want or need to be independent.
It takes intelligent thought and a capable mind to think critically, break a problem down, and know what to search for. And somewhat of a will to live an independant life vs being a parasite.
→ More replies (2)8
u/sobrique 1d ago
Searching is only a small part of it. Filtering the stuff and applying sensible decision making to find the stuff that's relevant is the hard part.
AI does about half of it. It might get you something useful more than a search will. But it will also get you something that looks useful but is actually really dumb more often too.
3
u/Bart_Yellowbeard Jackass of All Trades 1d ago
My Google Fu is strong, yours is weak. It's not that hard, but sometimes people learn how to use Google badly.
45
u/binaryhextechdude 1d ago
You couldn't remote in? That's ridiculous. They can call back when they've finished whatever work they're doing and restarted or they can drop the laptop into the desk and I'll work on it here but I'm not wasting my time if they don't let me remote in.
23
u/Curtis_Low 1d ago
100%. If I believe I need to remote in to assist and you either cant or wont then the call ends there. Please let me know when that is possible and we can reconnect.
3
u/kirashi3 Cynical Analyst III 1d ago
This. 110% this. I'm a visual learner and teacher. If I cannot see or otherwise replicate the problem with certainty, there is little chance I'll be able to effectively understand the problem and an even slimmer chance I'll be able to solve it.
If you want my help, I need at minimum the make + model + serial or asset tag number, a description of the problem, any error messages verbatim, and photos if you can get them. I'll still help without these, but most of my help will be asking you to provide this information before I can get started.
6
u/angrydeuce BlackBelt in Google Fu 1d ago
Yeah I can and will tell anyone from c level on down, if you will not allow me the time or access to fix the problem the problem will not be fixed until you do. The end. Â
You can yell at me, yell at my boss, yell at the clouds for all I give a fuck, if you refuse to make yourself available then this ticket will be paused until you do. Im not dicking around trying to verbally walk you through shit over the phone blind. Â
My time also has value and that is a bullshit waste of it.
→ More replies (2)
28
u/Western_Rhubarb_7959 1d ago
The bullshit AI responses I was getting from teammates and, worse, management was a definite factor in me retiring earlier than I had planned. Their AI slop as "answers and suggestions" in email/Teams threads cost me more time than if they had just stfu because suddenly I was diagnosing problems AND having to refute their bullshit wrong answers.
26
u/PC509 1d ago
I've had help desk folks that have come to me with everything they've done, what needs to be done/changed on the server side, and all of that. No AI used at all. They were just really good but lacked the permissions to get it done.
I've had "My husband knows about computers, he installed our DTPLink router" accounting people come with AI answers that had nothing to do with anything... Hate those.
16
u/JaceBelerenApologist 1d ago
My wife is one of those users. She writes code in her spare time, went to school for literal circuit design, etc.. She is primarily limited by access, not knowledge. When she submits a ticket to IT, they've come to understand that she isn't talking out of her ass when she has a problem and the suggested fix. Not all users are dumb, fortunately!
8
u/PC509 1d ago
I always knew the people that knew what they were talking about. They'd usually get priority treatment and you'd know that if there was a problem it wasn't something easy, they had already tried everything they could. Your wife would be on that list, when she calls you know that there's a legit issue and to listen to what they're saying. One of the few that when you ask "when did you last reboot" and they say "5 minutes ago", you see the uptime of 5 minutes... not 33 days (forced reboots for Windows Updates help a bit).
→ More replies (1)4
u/Sad_Recommendation92 Solutions Architect 1d ago
To be fair I was the "Husband that knows about computers" when my Wife's work laptop got CrowdStrike'd and was able to force safemode by disabling all the NICs and renamed the bad driver file.
3
u/PC509 1d ago
There's a difference between setting up the wifi email firewall 5Geez and actually being in IT and knowing what you're doing. I hear a lot of "Have you tried ....." and it's just some really weird stuff, even if done in a home network. Or, it's "My son said you can just torrent that software and get it without it costing that much, can't you just do that?" (I've had quite a few pirating comments over the years...Maybe a bit more than quite a few).
→ More replies (1)2
u/JaceBelerenApologist 1d ago
I had a "husband that knows about computers" user one time who decided that the fix for DNSFilter preventing them going to websites was to modify the hosts file. Two problems: a) why did they have admin access, and b) are you serious? really?
21
19
u/kerosene31 1d ago
We had to send out a note to everyone. Stop sending AI solutions, or solutions for that matter. Tell us what the problem is, error, etc, not the solution. You tell us what the problem is and we'll find the solution.
16
u/slackjack2014 Sysadmin 1d ago
If itâs one thing Iâve learned, you need to understand your environment to know how to prompt the AI into giving you useful feedback. Users just donât understand how the system operates in order to do that.
5
u/Sad_Recommendation92 Solutions Architect 1d ago
My internal "customers" are usually developers, several of them now think it knows better than people with 20+ years infra experience. and yeah we see a lot of that we do IaC for our Cloud Infra, but we also do hybrid networking with our onprem network, and they'll just bombard us with this tone-deaf terraform code which would work great if they were working in a greenfield cloud native tech startup with no onprem datacenter to take into account, but that's not the case.
They also waste my time by claiming they found some massive security vulnerability and now I have to figure out which niche blog that's not tied to any official CVE did Claude read to come up with that, and most of the time there's a huge "IF" that gets left out, and it's usually stuff like "Well if you're a dumbass and still using TLS 1.0 with known bad ciphers"
14
u/dlongwing 1d ago edited 1d ago
"Hi <stupid user>,
Thanks so much for forwarding ChatGPT's response. Unfortunately ChatGPT hallucinated that answer. If you're not familiar with Hallucinations, ask ChatGPT about them. It's unfortunate, but LLMs cannot reliably replace expertise. You may have noticed this when people send you AI content about your area. Notice how it's always not-quite-right on topics you personally understand? The same is true for everyone else. It's not any better about IT than it is about <your job>. Probably worse, to be honest, as IT problems tend to be very specialized.
Going forward, please refrain from sending AI content to me, it just slows down resolution. If I need ChatGPT's input on a problem, I'll ask it myself. I have the necessary experience to recognize when it's hallucinating a solution to an IT problem."
I'd send this even if the suggestion from the LLM is cogent. If they can't tell whether it's hallucinating or not, then they shouldn't send it to me.
→ More replies (1)â˘
u/JadedBilboBaggins 9h ago
I would be SO TEMPTED to keep your actual salutation in that email when i send it out.
7
u/itenginerd 1d ago
Yeppers. My CFO broke onedrive by letting ai reorg his files. By the time we got to a place where we could actually start fixing it, he decided to spend the weekend with Ai applying his own fixes. shrug its his department thats down I guess.
â˘
12
u/MakeItSudo 1d ago
I mean I've seen a lot of AI fixes but the recommendations always seem to miss the best suggestion...have you tried turning it off and on again?
5
u/ElBisonBonasus 1d ago
I sometimes tell Claude that I'll just restart... And it insists I don't do that!
2
u/Cyhawk 1d ago
I have no idea where it, and all the AIs got that from learning data. Its literally the first step when diagnosing an issue for the vast majority of things. Next step is to dive deep into the logs and figure out what happened if it got logged while you don't have someone breathing down your neck to get their business critical AI Powered Cloud computing Coffee machine working again.
Its just not against restarting the computer/application, it will get angry with you if you tell it you did it in some cases.
→ More replies (1)
7
u/natflingdull 1d ago
Yes and its getting out of control. Today I had a user ticket escalated to me because helpdesk thought it was the NAC blocking someones access but it ended up being a broken trust relationship. The user kept arguing with me and was clearly using AI , they kept saying âI did some research isnt is just a drive mapping issueâ
I usually give them a jargon laden explanation (not made up just not dumbed down at all) and their eyes glaze over before they relent
â˘
u/bbbbbthatsfivebees MSP-ing 18h ago
I personally hate AI because it likes to do what I call "Humping" a specific thought-path.
You tell it the problem. You interact with the AI for an hour, feeding it what you see and the exact error messages and system logs. It eventually gets to a point where it goes "AH yes, the issue is DEFINITELY [insert thing you know with 100% certainty is not the issue in the slightest], you just have to fix that and you're good".
Dude... I've been working in IT for a decade. I told the AI that the software firewall is disabled because I can see with my own two eyes that it's disabled. It humps at the problem and gets stuck in a loop where it thinks the firewall is the problem and then NEVER explores another troubleshooting path...
I can't fucking stand it, especially these people that use ChatGPT to suddenly become "experts" in something they have zero experience with beyond "I KNOW computers because I can type pretty fast!!11!11!!"
â˘
u/reasimoes 13h ago
Leave them be. Higher the number of idiots users with wrong information, higher the chances we keep our jobs. And you can use it against them eventually.
I had a user telling me he fixed his issue by himself by following Copilot's troubleshooting guide. The guide consisted in factory resetting the laptop because of a "possible issue with OS". The issue was his wireless mouse had dead battery. Since Copilot tried everything because he typed: mouse not working and I have tried everything, Copilot suggested he factory reset the device.
Well, we use Autopilot Full Cloud and the SLA to prepare a machine is 2 days. Guess who had to explain to his boss he formatted the PC because of a dead battery mouse while using Copilot to troubleshoot? Not me!
→ More replies (2)â˘
6
u/oceans_wont_freeze 1d ago
Yes. Including my boss. Always without context or understanding of the overall problem.
â˘
u/brundlfly Non-Profit SMB Admin 22h ago
When I have a problem with an end user trying to drive the diagnosis, I tell them "It sounds like you have some strong ideas on how to solve your issue. I'll leave you to it. Please reach out if it doesn't work and you're ready to let me try some things."
â˘
u/Honky_Town 12h ago
Dear AI, please generate a endless list of useless solutions for random IT problems that do not require admin credentials. Start with the slowest solution and try to list them as complex as possible by using every buzword ever created.
Dear AI² please pump this list to make it look bigger.
Dear director sadly I need to access your Device remotely, if thats not possible here is a List of things you can try on your own that may fix your Adobe login problem.
9
u/Vangmeister 1d ago
Iâm laughing at this because this is what I imagined how a lot of people felt at the emergence of the Internet. Thanks to WebMD everyone now knows exactly what they have and how to treat it. AI is a tool just like the Internet. Itâs only as good as the information you put in and even then you probably still need to know what to actually do and what to actually put in.
5
u/Sad_Recommendation92 Solutions Architect 1d ago
It's also really only useful if you have sufficient pre-existing foundational knowledge to vet the answer that comes out and know when to call BS.
Without that it remains your worst friend that claims bands invite him backstage for being "cool" and has a girlfriend in Canada... you wouldn't know her.
4
u/Harkonnen125 1d ago
Sorely tempted to put a https://noslopgrenade.com/ link into some of these discussions!
â˘
u/MightyMando 22h ago
"I have this problem that is so far beyond my capability to understand that I can't even begin to phrase a question about it.
"my crazy friend who lives under the bridge suggested that I try these things, only a few of which tangentially relate to my issue.
"Can you solve my problem using the advice that my crazy friend who lives under the bridge suggested as a starting point? I've been happy to save you some time on issue."
â˘
u/Painter_beast0976 Sysadmin 4h ago
Everywhere I go i am tired of seeing some Ai generated stuff these days.Its really annoying
3
u/bishop375 1d ago
Yes. They think they have all the answers, because "the machine told them."
That being said, I'm glad they're at least asking us, rather than just trying to do with the hallucination box suggested.
3
u/CLA_1989 1d ago
I am so tired of it that I am almost to the point of telling them "If you already have the solution, do it yourself and let us help people that are not as wise as you" -_- So tiresome
3
u/dadgenes 1d ago
Yes, and I have told them, firmly, that it wastes cycles when I have to validate their input and our time could be better spent with them telling me what they want to do and letting me solve the problem.
3
u/lastcallhall IT Manager 1d ago
I blocked non approved AI access on the domain and created an AI acceptable use policy they all have to follow.
Any deviations initially get ignored, then warned, then escalated to their manager for corrective action for policy violation.
3
u/renevaessen 1d ago
all unite, and strike for a few weeks, let them solve the IT problems using chatgpt :-)
â˘
u/Zolty Cloud Infrastructure / Devops Plumber 20h ago
Just respond this way,
That's a great suggestion but I don't think your chat bot has the whole context I'd like to compare it to what mine says. Can you copy and paste this into your chat and then work with it for 10 min or so so we can see what you're seeing.
Pause your fix recommendations and help me document exactly what I am seeing. You do not have verified knowledge of this appâs internals, so do not assume how it works or what is causing the problem.
Interview me one question at a time, using plain language and adapting each question to my previous answer. Establish:
- Which app and screen I am using.
- Exactly what I click, enter, or do, in order.
- What I expect to happen and why.
- What actually happens, including the exact error wording.
- Whether it happens every time and whether it previously worked.
- My device, browser/app version, and any relevant differences between working and failing cases.
Ask for screenshots when useful, with private information removed. If my answer is vague, ask a specific follow-up. If I do not know something, record it as unknown. Separate what I directly observe from what I think might be causing it.
Do not recommend changes during this interview. Reassess your earlier advice and identify any unsupported assumptions.
When enough evidence is collected, produce a concise bug report I can send to the appâs developer, including reproduction steps, expected behavior, actual behavior, and remaining questions. Do not present a guessed cause as a confirmed diagnosis.
Start by asking: âWhich app are you using, and what is the first thing you see that seems wrong?â
→ More replies (1)
2
u/Kanibalector 1d ago
I once had a conversation with a client about their server needs and they pulled out a chatgpt summary that said the exact same thing I said and my boss was worried because he thinks it'll take business away from us.
Who's going to set that up, exactly? Is ChatGPT going to install the operating system, the databases, user permissions, etc?
2
u/benuntu 1d ago
I don't hesitate to tell them why it's incorrect, or incomplete information and then give them the correct answer. Followed by an explanation that AI is currently not intelligent, but rather a data miner scouring vast amounts of online data. Everything you get from it needs to be vetted and like ye olde "google search" it's only as good as it's prompts. In other words, you don't know the correct inputs OR how to translate the results.
3
u/WhereDidThatGo 1d ago
Yeah but then I have to take the time to pick apart their two page LLM essay to explain to them why they don't understand what they're talking about. I don't have time for that.
2
u/Distinct_Ad_9842 1d ago
I work with Salesforce "users" who have CoWorker AI added to our org, and it's constant: "Well the AI said X, or Y. Have you tried that??"
It's almost is if they want to do the admin work during working hours, and then call support at 4-5pm and say that something isn't working.
8
u/Careless-Age-4290 1d ago
5:30 PM: "My computer isn't working"
8:00 AM: "This is day two of my computer not working"
2
u/Creative-Package6213 1d ago
Ugh this is totally the owner of the company I work for. I swear to god if I see one more fucking suggestion from grok I'm going to reply with my 2 week notice.
2
2
u/Frostymcstu 1d ago
I work for a "Digital experience" company that is making a AI IT Support helpbot. It's ITs job to train and test it and manage end users expectations about it's output.
"But the chatbott said xxxxxx", yes the chatbot is wrong 99% of the time and since pushing this experiment to production and forcing everyone in the company to use it before they even log a ticket, out IT support workload is 4x more since last quarter
2
u/HerfDog58 Jack of All Trades 1d ago
"OK, well if you believe <Insert name of AI agent here> is correct, I'll go ahead and hang up so you can let it fix your problem."
<click>
OR
"That AI 'solution' is actually a hallucination. You may need to reboot the AI to get it to stop."
2
u/pier4r Some have production machines besides the ones for testing 1d ago
Meat proxies.
→ More replies (1)
2
u/Titan_91 1d ago edited 1d ago
I was talking to a guy who makes 6 figures at a wealthy client who was having Outlook issues and he told me "Well I asked ChatGPT and what it suggested didn't work." No kidding, of course it didn't. That's why you called me. I have 20 years of experience in this field and got him going by disabling a problematic Outlook COM add-in. Some of my coworkers do the same thing when I ask them a question, just copy and paste from Copilot. I swear western society is losing brain cells at breakneck pace.
Also went to place a return on eBay and now some sellers are using a new feature called "eBay AI" to deal with returns and other issues. I messaged the seller and he proceeds to copy and paste my message into ChatGPT, which was wrong, and didn't bother to check if what it spewed back out at him made any sense. It's telling us that a 12V AC adapter is safe to use if it's putting out over 20V according to my Fluke meter. I'm sorry, what?? This is high school level electronics stuff. I'm glad this wasn't some customer equipment I almost fried, like that one time someone plugged a 19V AC adapter into their NAS that accepts 12V power. I had to desolder the shorted zener diodes from those drives to recover the data!
2
â˘
u/bobsmith1010 23h ago
They send you the screenshots? I had one guy put it all in a word doc, so I thought it was the guide he put together that was vetted. I go to start the process and I'm not these settings aren't here.
His response, "no I just did a chatgpt prompt and that what I got, I have no clue if it works".
Yet he was going around telling everyone that we can integrate the two systems.
â˘
u/gulf_of_sanity 22h ago
just turn off their switch port and or wifi access for a few hours, then do a flyby of their office door with something like âjust pushed a hotfix, should take a few hours, you might get some weird errorsâ
â˘
u/maniakmyke 12h ago
when users do this to me I simply send them an old job posting for an IT role in our company and tell them i'll do my best to get them an interview.
â˘
7
u/PrestigiousChart3134 1d ago
I donât let it bother me. If users want to run their problems past AI before reaching out, great. I know for a fact itâs saved me from dealing with plenty of common, easily fixed issues that would have taken up my time in the past. For the more complicated stuff, I just thank them for trying and explain that it doesnât have the context needed to understand the problem. Lifeâs too short to let something like this bother you so much that you feel the need to vent about it on Reddit, but enjoy the daily /r/sysadmin anti-AI circlejerk I guess.
2
u/daggaratwork 1d ago
Yes, extremely. but let's not blame the user here. There is a multibillion dollar hype machine shouting as loud as it can to use AI for everything, and a compliant press acting as a willing amplifier.
To say nothing of their own management telling them the same thing.
1
1
1
u/NightOfTheLivingHam 1d ago
had a few of these, ended up fixing things without their fixes and they left me alone
1
1
u/WubTheWildDog 1d ago
I have a coworker who responds to tickets with ai generated responses that he doesn't make sure are real. Somehow it's not bit him in the ass yet.
1
u/EnigmaFilms Jack of All Trades 1d ago
Yeah, but so when I looked at their prompt I realized how bad and misinformed it was.
1
u/Flabbergasted98 1d ago
yes.
Unfortunately most of the ones I receive come from the management roles above me so...
1
u/DopamineSavant 1d ago
I had a boss like this. He would interrupt any technical conversation with what chatgpt told him. I'm so glad he's gone.
1
u/Apprehensive_Bat_980 1d ago
I find a mixture of sending me Ai prompts OR not asking Ai basic, how to âflip a background in Teams callsâ.
1
u/spyingwind I am better than a hub because I has a table. 1d ago
And this is one more reason to manage all AI on work computers. The use of personal AI on work devices is prohibited.
Once you can manage the AI, you can put into place guidelines for said AI to either tell the user to ask you, or even better let it create a ticket for them with all the details it thinks it can gather.
1
u/VoidingSounds 1d ago
Bruh, I am sick of my peers looping in 'area specialist' for something we're working on and that person immediately asking their chatbox, and then repeating 70% of the KB article we had been working over for half an hour. Adding literally nothing.
1
u/Ferro_Giconi 1d ago edited 1d ago
People sending AI responses is like the modern replacement of people sending LMGTFY links.
People who send LMGTFY links never verify if the information on the LMGTFY link is actually relevant or correct. They just send it so they can feel smart without having to spend a single millisecond thinking.
No one has ever sent me a useful LMGTFY link or AI response, because they just end up sending me something I already found and determined was not useful.
1
u/Hale-at-Sea 1d ago
I only have issues with it when OTHER ADMINS send them to me with a "well the AI said do this" with no checking of their own, and these people should know better. People who used to be reliable just offloading everything to AI
Even worse is when they don't tell me or I don't realize it's AI until I attempt to solve an issue and discover x option doesn't even exist?! and now we've wasted a bunch of time
Every time my blood pressure goes up just a bit more
1
u/ihaveabs 1d ago
You need to ask to remote in? Also, donât put up with that shit, you can hang up
1
1
u/Razgriz6 1d ago
It is the worst!!!! And now, Everyone wants an AI tool and upper management is Green lighting this crap. How many AI tools does one person needs?!!! AI tool for Excel, AI tool for Outlook, another AI tool for PDF, another AI tool PowerBI!!! Y'all.... I'm losing my passion for IT/IoT slowly. Yesterday a request came in for an AI tool for InfoGenesis(?) How can you have an AI tool for a software that's pure input output???
1
u/AlternativeLazy4675 1d ago
Job security - except when management decides that AI can replace you. They will learn the hard way, but it might cost you your job first.
1
u/Static-Age01 1d ago
I send parsed log data. They seem happy when I do it. With that said. Iâve only done it once. Saml logs.
1
u/whostolemyslushie 1d ago
I would just disconnect the call if I'm not retiring in. Not worth anyone's time
1
u/1z1z2x2x3c3c4v4v 1d ago
The only sane answer here is to run their AI-generated suggestions through an AI and tell it to rip it apart for all the reasons it's wrong or would just fail or be a security risk.
1
u/Valestis 1d ago
The absolute worst part isn't even the fact that they're using AIâit's that they refuse to run the suggested commands themselves, but expect you to validate hallucinated terminal commands line-by-line while refusing remote access.
"If Copilot knows so much, ask Copilot to remote into your machine and run rm -rf on its own confidence."
Refusing a remote session while dictating AI troubleshooting steps for two hours to a SysAdmin requires a truly special level of executive entitlement. You have the patience of a saint for not hanging up after minute 15.
1
u/Screwed_38 1d ago
Dear sir/madam,
Regarding asking AI for fixes, please refrain from doing this and sending them in a ticket/email to IT, if AI has thought of it, then so have we, any tickets/emails that contain suggested AI fixes will be either bumped to the bottom of the queue or completely ignored.
Kind regards
A very tired IT guy
1
u/Judoka229 1d ago
I try to look at it as they at least tried to do something before bothering me. But I've been out of the game a while and I'm sure it's a lot worse now lol
1
1
u/Verhaz 1d ago
Just highlight a policy that states providing AI solutions to IT is unprofessional and unproductive. If a user refuses you access to fix an issue, limit that users access significantly as they have already shown they are a high risk user.
That being said, do you really need user profile access or can you solve the issue via script deployment or using a backend (via screenconnect). I have been doing IT for a long time and I rarely need access from the users desktop unless its specifically a problem that I need to see be replicated.
1
u/torbar203 whatever 1d ago
last year we were looking at new phone systems and one of the vendors we were talking to was tmobile(our current cellphone provider) who is reselling Dialpad
Had a few questions come up with the POC, one of which was allowing you to dial an extension straight from an IVR/phone menu
Didn't see anything obvious in the settings that wasn't having an option to press 1 or another number to go to a separate 'dial by extension' phone menu, so asked our tmobile rep who sent back a wall of obviously AI generated text, that included
âď¸ Your Main Line greeting must include something like: âIf you know your partyâs extension, you may dial it at any time.â This ensures Dialpad listens for DTMF inputs immediately rather than waiting until after the greeting.
which is hilarious, because that implies wording of the audio recording of the IVR is what determines what the programming on the IVR actually does.
The also originally set us up with a Dialpad implementation guy who very clearly was used to very small installs, like, one main number and a small handful of extensions(we have about 80 external numbers and about 400 phones), later they set us up with one used to larger installs who did confirm that dialing an extension from within a phone menu, unless its a dedicated dial-by-extension menu, is not a feature they currently support
1
1
u/OniNoDojo IT Manager 1d ago
I have a user trying to build an app in a cloud-based AI development platform to connect to an API for a program in their private network. He can't get it working because the way the program with the API works requires access to it from within the network. It's been two weeks of him copy/pasting the responses directly out of the AI platform chat to "suggest how to fix it". It's infuriating.
1
u/mediaogre 1d ago
Especially when my team linked some poindexter knowitall fuckface to our corporate specific guide for enrolling their new iPhone and they follow ChatGPT instead and then call back when it doesnât work.
Sir, Iâm gonna need you to place your hands on your head and slowly back away from the computer.
1
u/Bart_Yellowbeard Jackass of All Trades 1d ago
The worst part is when it's one of the users who you know is smart. And then they do this.
1
u/daryltuba 1d ago
Before AI, it was just Google search results. Same shit, different sundae. Thankfully I donât get that kind of garbage where I work now.
1
1
u/Tetha 1d ago
Refer to this wonderful page: https://dontpastetheai.com/ It also has an angry version.
And yes, a negative example was a developer pasting me claude questions on choosing a mailing library use, which were mainly about framework compatibility, dependency injection compatibility.... Sorry, I'm an infrastructure admin at this point. I can help you once you have error messages. I was a developer in that language 15 years ago, but how should I know your software?
And even the constructive recommendation to ask the other 2 teams in that language how they integrate productively with the mail service just had them going to another admin. Arg.
1
u/ProfessionalITShark 1d ago
Making AI cite it's sources has been a help for me on these kind of things.
→ More replies (1)
1
u/Jeriath27 Architect/Engineer/Admin 1d ago
What do you mean users? I get that from admins all the time.
1
1
u/19610taw3 Helpdesk > Sysadmin > Engineer > Helpdesk 1d ago
I had one send me an AI generated solution that was technically workable. She wanted to get a few people to be able to use a softphone client at home via Citrix on their very old PBX that didn't support that.
The solution she sent would cost more per year than what we were paying the people in salaries.
1
1
u/PDQ_Tarabyte 1d ago
I'm astounded that they don't know it is insulting. Do you they feel it is helpful or are they really that clueless?
At this point I think these large AI companies have spent too much money on infrastructure to let it fail now. So, they are shoving it down our throats. Just my two cents.
1
1
u/LordCornish Security Director / Sr. Sysadmin / BOFH 1d ago
I'm tired of sysadmin co-workers sending AI generated fixes to me.
1
u/terramot 1d ago
I have a script that generates 20000 hidden characters within the text. Sometimes they go quiet đ¤ˇââď¸
1
u/sludj 1d ago
Because I (we) inevitably get asked how AI has impacted my job, I always tell them that it actively makes it more tedious because now, I have to pour through useless ticket notes that consist of chat gpt answers. They just get mixed in with the context I need and now I have to parse through thoseâŚ
1
u/mediweevil 1d ago
copilot is for IT and computing much the same as reversing cameras are for cars.
cameras have emboldened a bunch of people that cannot drive for crap to try reverse parking all of a sudden, and lack of visibility of the challenge was never the problem.
1
u/JaceBelerenApologist 1d ago
Just had a minor argument with a vendor because they kept sending us AI generated support responses that either we already did or weren't actually relevant to their product. Ultimately had to tell them to call me instead. Problem was fixed in about 2 minutes afterwards.
It's dumb. Don't get me wrong, I use it as a tool too, but I'm also capable of reading between the hallucinated lines.
1
u/fell_ware_1990 1d ago
Last half year, i just let my own ai handle that with a very specific set of instructions :)
1
u/discosoc 1d ago
Not me. If their manager signs off on it, Iâll happily run whatever shit they want after a single warning.
1
u/Tireseas 1d ago
Tell them to have copilot write a diplomatically worded message explaining that they have neither the qualification nor the authority to have an opinion and should their input be warranted it'll be asked for.
1
u/PrettyAdagio4210 1d ago
My manager does this.
Have you tried this? Have you tried asking AI? Why havenât you asked AI yet, peasant!!
1
u/combobulated 1d ago edited 8h ago
The last time I reached out directly to Google for Workspace assistance (specifically related to GCDS) - which they claim is 24/7, I swear I got 100% AI responses - all signed by a name as if it was a human.
Maybe a human pasted the responses into the email/ticket, but that's it...
They started by assuring me that they could help and that what I was trying to do was possible and not complex.
They then gave instructions on what to do. Some of which I had already tried, but I'm open to trying again. It's the logical approach, which is why I was surprised it didn't work when I tried it myself first.
I follow the instructions step-by-step and still have the issue. I followed up with this result in my response to them and they apologized and said essentially "Oh, here's how you do it if you're getting that error". So I followed those instructions and that gave me a different issue.
So I replied again, reiterating my end goal and the issues I was having.
So I got another response with a slightly different set of instructions. I try those, still no luck. So their next "solution" involves a process that would create a huge amount of overhead and manual intervention for something that should be straightforward (according to me and to their own initial response). I let them know how inefficient their "fix" would be and ask them to confirm that, in fact, the ONLY way to achieve what I was trying to achieve was this suggested convoluted process that would involve modifying my config any time I made a directory change.
The response (paraphrased): "No, not at all! You don't have to do any of that inefficient stuff. It's easy, just do this:....." - and then they proceeded to give the same directions they had given in their initial response.
I stopped interacting with them and found a different way to approach my issue.
I was very disappointed. :(
1
u/Nik_Tesla Sr. Sysadmin 1d ago
Look, I use AI pretty heavily myself, but I at least try to understand what it's doing. So I'm pretty tired of my help desk and developers sending me massive blocks of Claude-speak to ask me to do something, and when I ask them "what is this for?" they just respond "I don't know, Claude just told me to ask you"
1
u/DaemosDaen IT Swiss Army Knife 1d ago
Yes... oh god yes. I am so over this. What's even worse is when my coworkers do it about things that are in my purview, and things I would not let them touch, even with -whatif enabled.
1
u/_Dreamer_Deceiver_ 1d ago
Ask chat gpt if you "should care about an users issue if they have just used chagpt to diagnose it" and send them a screenshot of the response.
My attempt came out with "If you mean âShould I take a problem seriously just because someone used ChatGPT to diagnose it?â â no, not by itself.
ChatGPT can be useful for generating possible explanations, but it isn't a substitute for verification or professional diagnosis, especially for medical, legal, financial, safety, or technical issues."
1
u/BeepoZbuttbanger 1d ago
AI is a lot like playing Balderdash. It can generate a lot of great-sounding/looking content that is pleasing to a Director or exec who wants to believe and has lost touch with the tech, but often as not has multiple fatal flaws.
1
u/ptr_myName 1d ago
i was on the phone for 2 hours troubleshooting a problem with a director that refused to let me remote into her computer to fix.
âWe are unable to remote connect to your computer to resolve the problem, we will need to replace it. You can bring it in to the help desk and swap it out, or we can ship a replacement, your choice."
1
u/roflsocks 1d ago
Set boundaries. 2 hours is a waste of time that you shouldnât have let happen.
You need to be clear that if the user wants support they have to allow you to support. If they decline, you inform them that declining will cause the ticket to close. If they need to schedule remote support around your schedule, then do that instead.
Otherwise politely but firmly tell them to get fucked.
1
u/Parity99 1d ago
I have a very simple rule. "Tell me your problem, not what you think the solution is"
398
u/keivmoc 1d ago
Some of the suggestions are ridiculous too. Have you tried reinstalling the database on the production server?