Meet workers who use ChatGPT to take on multiple full-time jobs – and employers have no idea

Employees admitted that they use ChatGPT — a revolutionary chatbot powered by artificial intelligence (AI) — to work multiple full-time jobs.

They refer to themselves as “unemployed”, because the tool allows them to complete each role’s workload in at least half the time.

Most of the jobs they do involve a fair amount of writing, such as creating marketing materials, which the chatbot has proven to be remarkably adept at.

ChatGPT is a large language model – an artificial intelligence system that has been trained on massive amounts of text data to generate human-like responses to certain prompts.

When it was released for free by startup OpenAI in December, it opened the public’s eyes to just how powerful the technology had become in recent years.

It was quickly used to pass exams, give a sermon, write programs, prepare legal documents and give relationship advice – just to name a few.

But after nearly half a year, its users have become more efficient, and can now use ChatGPT to trick employers into thinking their job has their undivided attention.

In fact, they have many other employers who think the exact same thing.

“ChatGPT likes 80 percent of my job,” said Ben, an unemployed worker whose name has been changed. Vice.

Ben works in marketing for financial technology companies, and first heard about the idea of ​​working in more than one role during the pandemic.

Reports began to come in in the latter half of 2024 of employees taking advantage of the massive shift toward remote work to get an additional job.

But this wasn’t always due to greed, as many people lacked financial security in the face of mass layoffs and economic uncertainty.

Ben, from Toronto, couldn’t join the redundancy community at the time because his job was too demanding, but when he discovered ChatGPT, things changed.

He and many other colleagues in the world of marketing have been able to use artificial intelligence to quickly find specific information, or to create written material that is nearly indistinguishable from that written by a human.

After this greatly reduced the time it took to get through his workload, he wondered if he could get another job and do the same.

Sure enough, earlier this year he did just that, even using ChatGPT to write his cover letters while applying.

To have ChatGPT write him a story, he’ll give him a template and some context as a prompt, and he’ll build the foundation of the final product for him in a matter of minutes.

Ben added that the latest version of GPT-4, which is a more powerful version of the original, is better at understanding its own requirements.

“I can just tell her to create a story and she just does it for me, based on the context I gave,” he told Vice.

He added that the text it generates will usually need some minor modifications, as it may make mistakes sometimes.

This element is what some workers believe will prevent them from losing their jobs to AI altogether, as their expertise is still needed to validate what has been created.

Ben also uses ChatGPT to write messages to his manager, which he has specified as having to be in lower case, so they look like they were written by a busy worker.

Another employee is using it to transcribe Zoom meetings so they don’t have to pay attention, and can look at the notes later.

A thrice-employed financial reporter also said he uses it to write programs for Microsoft Excel, reducing processes that would normally take two weeks to just a few hours.

The amazing power of ChatGPT struck fear into the hearts of some, leading to fears of losing their jobs and being replaced by a robot.

Some technology leaders, such as Elon Musk, Apple co-founder Stephen Wozniak, and the late Stephen Hawking, believe that rapid advances in artificial intelligence pose a “profound danger to society and humanity.”

But others, like Bill Gates and Google CEO Sundar Pichai, have called it the “most important” innovation of our time, saying it could solve climate change, cure cancer, and boost productivity.

The latter is certainly true of one worker, who told Vice that ChatGPT allowed him to work four jobs at once.

A software engineer is currently making over $500,000 (£400,000) working two jobs with the help of ChatGPT, as it helps them write coherent code and work notes.

To help him reach his goal of a $10m (£8m) net worth by the age of 35, he also wants to find a way for a third party to mimic his voice and image, so they can ‘do my job for me’. Using ChatGPT.

Tech workers have also said that they use AI to write professional-looking emails because “maybe they’re not as good at writing things as most other people.”

Most of the workers Vice spoke to didn’t think what they were doing was immoral, comparing it to people who work one job during the day and the other at night.

One of them said that he had no confidence that he would be “rewarded more” by working hard at one company, and that this was a realistic way to generate more income.

But they are happy to keep their scheme under wraps for as long as possible, because they know they can take advantage of a short window of opportunity.

When their managers research how AI — which does not require a salary — do a large portion of their work, they may inadvertently exclude themselves from the workforce.

Comparing the technological advancement to the development of the modern loom, Ryan told Vice “It would be one loom worker, as opposed to, you know, 100 weavers.”

Are you using ChatGPT or another AI tool to allow you to maintain multiple full time jobs? Please email [email protected] from a non-work account.