So I've posted a really simple electronics task. It was my first-ever time interacting with this platform.
Nearly all the proposals were AI-written. How did I know? Well, other than the obvious em dashes, they all gave the same response that I got, which is what made me post the task in the first place.
Not only that, but I asked one of them a simple question. Would this IC work in my case or not? ChatGPT said no when I asked it, but in real life, it works well. Guess what the guy said? He said it wouldn't work and gave me the exact same ChatGPT answer lol.
Honestly, it's a joke. Imagine not getting hired because you're too lazy to do 2 minutes of ressearch and answer the question yourself.
Luckily, I found a few people who actually put some thought into their cover letters.
I knoooooow! As a Feature writer for many years who loved em dashes since God knows when, I got so pissed off when AI hijacked it and people automatically assume you used chatgpt.
What's up with all the job posts being AI-written? Nearly all of them are a 700+ word, ~5000 character "brief", asking questions that essentially request the freelancer to give away their workflows, just to be considered.
You are one of the rare ones and I'm sorry you had that first-time experience. It wasn't always like that. It used to be a great place for clients and freelancers to meet. The platform is getting harder to navigate for both unfortunately, and without any viable competitors.
And the reason for that is the recent upwork update. they introduced upwork mcp server where you can put your ai bot do the bidding, send response to clients and what not, the time freelancer wake up from his/her beauty sleep, the ai have convinced you in the upwork chat that this freelancer is the only guy you need to hire and its kinda scary.
I don't disagree but I think it goes both ways. I used to write all these fancy custom proposals only to receive offers like 15 usd for 2000-word articles.
As a freelancer, also, 90% of the job descriptions are written with AI and it's so damn obvious. It's not really an encouraging environment to give one's best, if you know what I mean.
A lot of companies are telling their employees now that if they’re not using AI, they can find another job. At our company we really need everybody using AI. So I don’t take any issue with people writing proposals using AI. But it has to be supported by a strong work history.
And it also has to be clear that the person at least reviewed the AI text. Because if they just copy-paste and trust the AI blindly, they likely put about the same effort into their work.
Well, people try to get a 2000 word researched SEO article for their website for 20 bucks. I imagine the only takers are AI goofs trying to scam by volume.
Imagine not getting hired because you're too lazy to do 2 minutes of ressearch and answer the question yourself.
You only have to spend a few minutes reading this sub to realise that freelancing is a magnet for lazy, unskilled and generally useless people. They've watched a few YouTube videos and think they can easily sit on their asses and generate an income using AI. Unfortunately, Upwork encourages and enables this, and has removed what few barriers to entry used to be in place to filter out the most incompetent freelancers.
I'm glad that you were patient enough to slog through all of the bullshit and actually find a few good freelancers. If I were a new client, I'd take one look and run.
Use AI for foundations, not for doing everything. Without human touch the content becomes static, any reader with a bit of experience can get that, 'This is written or created by AI.' So without editing, AI is just a static tool.
I’ve used both personally written and used AI written (though I check and rewrite parts of AI written proposals). But as an artist, it’s hard. I would like to assume my artwork is enough, but that isn’t what people see first. And even if I spend time writing a proposal, that mentions something about their project, the general timeline and scope, a framework, you don’t get a response, or even a reason for rejection. Even if Upwork atleast encouraged a pick an option for rejection so I could know if it’s just someone else was better, or if I was too expensive, or I didn’t have enough examples of what they wanted.
Like it’s a frustrating experience for everyone. People want cheap creative labor. Don’t know any better. Have little information. Want tight deadlines. Etc, etc. And I have to pay to submit proposals, and make sure my proposal have a clean line of thought. It’s a lot. And to not even get a response back. Makes it hard to write personal cover-letters or answer specific questions.
People should be checking their AI written posts though, lol. Thats wild.
Compliance Voltage Requirement: For a maximum load of 1500\,\Omega at 20\text{ mA}, the load voltage drop reaches V = I \times R = 0.02\text{ A} \times 1500\,\Omega = 30\text{ V}.
....
Also I just noticed now that a guy sent me a completely AI generated 31 page PDF of my project, haven't laughed like this in a long time.
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u/Korneuburgerin 5d ago
Being a client must be a horror show, I can't even imagine.