Performance reviews can win you a raise or get you laid off — and managers and employees alike are turning to ChatGPT to write them, Megan Morrone reports.

Why it matters: The sensitive work of writing your own self-assessment, or reviewing the work of an employee who reports to you, has become so daunting or monotonous that some would rather turn it over to AI.

What's happening: It's been over a year since ChatGPT became a household name and though the excitement over its magic has begun to wane, people are increasingly using it for all sorts of critical tasks.

• If you ask manager friends, you'll probably find at least one who may have taken this shortcut with performance reviews.
• A brief search of X, LinkedIn, or Reddit will show you scores of people bragging about it.

What they're saying: A former manager at Dropbox (who asked to remain anonymous) says she has used ChatGPT to help write performance reviews for direct reports and peers because, she tells Axios, the review process at big tech companies can be "exhausting," "tedious" and "bureaucratic."

• She also used it to write her own self reviews, "particularly when I know that my manager is busy, far away from the day to day and I'm assessing my own performance as 'meets expectations,'" she added.
• Lee Gonzales, director of engineering at BetterUp, uses ChatGPT to write performance reviews and also shares his own performance review prompts for ChatGPT on LinkedIn.
• Stephen Lytle, assistant vice president of people and culture at Evara Health, puts his own meeting notes into ChatGPT along with the person's self evaluation and feedback he's gotten from other people. And then he tells ChatGPT, "synthesize this into an effective evaluation."

Yes, but: ChatGPT might save you time, but it won't do everything for you.

• Gonzales told Axios he takes copious one-on-one notes throughout the year and then feeds these notes into the enterprise version of ChatGPT to get what he calls a "shitty first draft" of a performance review. Then, he edits from there.
• "Never, ever, ever, ever take what comes out of these models as the truth," Gonzales says. "They make stuff up. They confabulate."

The big picture: Management experts have argued for years that the annual review process is imperfect. And the pandemic, back and forth return-to-office wars, fights over DEI, quiet quitting and waves of layoffs haven't helped.

• Gonzales told Axios that generative AI can help with the kinds of "pathologies" he sees with performance reviews, which "actually don't produce better performance."
• "I try and use this as a thinking tool to help me create a summative piece that is oriented around growth, looking forward, calling out the good." Then he sits down and talks to the person about it.
• Lytle says AI can reduce "the administrative burden" of writing evaluations without eliminating "the feeling of making somebody feel good and recognized for what they did" or "challenging somebody to improve and be better next year."

Between the lines: Writing is hard — and many find producing long-form performance reviews painful and even cringe-worthy, especially if you're writing about yourself.

• Several managers who said they used ChatGPT found that it lifted the terror of staring at a blank page.
• "Not everybody has a college degree. Not everybody has a high school diploma, not to mention a doctorate. Not everybody is taught how to write annual evaluations," Lytle says.

The bottom line: If you use generative AI to produce your performance review (or any content), don't expect to go unnoticed.

• Gonzales told Axios that he can spot content written by ChatGPT all over LinkedIn and blogs and in magazines. "I find ChatGPT writing is visible from space for me now."

When it comes to generative AI at school and work, Gen Z says: Bring it on, Jennifer A. Kingson reports.

Why it matters: While some workers are fearful or ambivalent about how ChatGPT, DALL-E and their ilk will affect their jobs, many college students and newly-minted grads think it can give them a career edge.

• So-called "AI natives" who are studying the technology in school may have a leg up on older "digital natives" — the same way that "digital native" millennials smugly bested their "digital immigrant" elders.

Driving the news: College students are piling into generative AI (GenAI) courses — the better to give them an advantage in the growing number of jobs requiring such skills.

• A third of this year's seniors — and more than half of tech majors — say they plan to use GenAI in their careers, per a class of 2024 trends report from Handshake, a job-search platform for college students.
• Members of Gen Z —"Zoomers" — are more likely to want to learn AI skills than Boomers (1.6x) or Gen X (1.1x), according to LinkedIn research provided to Axios.

What they're saying: "We're not seeing a nervousness" among Gen Zers, says Valerie Capers Workman, chief legal officer at Handshake.

• "They are actually digging in on AI," says Workman, the author of a book on career advancement in the age of AI. "The most important headline is [that] they are hyper-aware that it is mission-critical for them, to be able to have the best opportunities in the employment space."

Yes, but: GenAI is starting to cause major job disruptions.

• A recent McKinsey Global Institute report found that it's "accelerating automation and extending it to an entirely new set of occupations."
• Gen Z isn't immune from such tumult. But as the first generation entering the workplace to study the discipline in school, they may be better-positioned than their elders.

Where it stands: Most U.S. adults say AI's risks outweigh its benefits, per a Mitre-Harris Poll — though younger adults are less likely to be anxious about it.

• As Axios reported, 57% of Gen Z respondents and 62% of millennials said they were more excited about the potential benefits of AI than they were worried about the risks.
• LinkedIn and Handshake surveys suggest that today's college students and recent grads believe GenAI is here to stay — and they're confident enough to take on student debt to pursue it academically.

The bottom line: Everyone is trying to figure out GenAI and its impact on the job market — but Gen Z may have a leg up.

• "This cohort is very aware that AI tools are critical to their job profiles and them being able to get the type of employment that they're interested in," Workman says.

• Why a team of developers created a chatbot that refuses to answer every query. (Wired)
• A leading player in the recycling industry is using AI to help with sorting. (Washington Post)
• Pakistan's former prime minister has been using AI to speak to his supporters from prison. (The New York Times)
• How to eat and drink in a restaurant while wearing Apple's Vision Pro and other advice from early adopters. (The Wall Street Journal)
• No, Hackers didn't hack your smart toothbrush. (Axios)

I guess I'm not alone in freezing up when a second call comes in to my phone.