I think I screwed up by using ChatGPT too vigorously at my freelance work

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I lost my job last November and have been looking for full-time work ever since.

A few weeks ago, a Christian organization approached me and was looking to get several thousand sermons transcribed into Word documents (to be read by an audience that might not, for whatever reason, be able to access the YouTube sermon videos or audio recordings themselves). They were paying a pretty decent rate; $1/minute of YouTube video and $2/minute of audio recordings. Being in dire need of any income, I accepted of course.

I’m pretty sure they were going by the assumption that there would be no “technological assistance” involved; they were expecting us freelance transcribers to do everything manually. YouTube does offer rough, disorganized text-to-word for most videos, and the Christian group knew that, but it was supposed to be our job to manually tidy it up into neat, organized paragraphs. (Which is a lot more laborious than it sounds, especially since most of these videos were 6,000 words long - some even worse, 30,000 to 60,000 words.) The audio recordings were expected to be typed out manually; they thought we’d be listening to the sermon and typing it verbatim.

But using ChatGPT to do most of the editing (“Please insert proper punctuation into the following sentences and divide them into suitable paragraphs” does the trick most of the time) and also an audio-to-text service called Temi, I suddenly had software doing 80% of the work for me. ChatGPT would make the jumbled YouTube text come out in mostly-good paragraphs and Temi, although charging me about 20% of what I was being paid to do the job and still making many errors, freed me of most of the tedious typing.

So I suddenly raced ahead (I’ve earned over $1,000 in just the past few days, for instance,)…but now the Christian organization is suspicious, because I’m far outstripping the expected pace. They’re demanding to know how I am able to do it so fast, and I’m not sure what to tell them. I’m concerned they may demand a steep pay cut if they realize I’m ChatGPT-ing and Temi-ing most of the labor. On top of that, there’s no written contract - all of this pay was mere verbal promise. (So far, they’ve paid up, true to their word…but no written contract.) They expected me to be earning something like $90 per day, not $300 per day.

TLDR, I used tech to do my freelance job too enthusiastically, and now I’m in trouble.

2

“Proprietary information, sorry”.

3

They planned to pay $X/minute of transcription; it shouldn’t matter to them how it was produced, so long as it is correct.

4

How long would’ve taken you to do it manually?

5

They agreed to pay a set fee for certain work. If the work is satisfactory they should be delighted to get it faster than expected instead of bitching about it. They’re entitled to offer you less on a future contract, but they’re just being jerks in trying to renege on one they already agreed to.

6

I don’t think you’d actually be in trouble since there isn’t an actual contract. And because it’s based on a job lot that is going to have a fixed total cost, I wouldn’t think they should care how long it takes. If the minutes to be converted equal $900, it doesn’t matter if they pay $90/day for 10 days, $300/day for 3 days, or $900/day for one day. They may suspect it’s an automated process and be wondering if they can do it in-house and save on the transcription cost. However, there’s no guarantee that the automated audio-to-text conversion was correct. You’re reading over the text version when you’re doing your formatting, but the text you’re reading may not match the actual sermon. You’d have to listen to the sermon while reading the text to make sure that they match. While they may not have really specified how the conversion is done, there is the implied expectation that the conversion will be correct and the transcribed text will match the actual audio.

7

They may be concerned that you are outsourcing the work to lower paid workers, which may be agaisnt their principles.

You should reply that all of the work is being done by you personally and that you are utilizing tools available to professionals in your field. And do they have an issue with your work quality? If not, ask them to set limits on your submissions and see if you still want to work with them.

8

Didn’t you anticipate this happening in a post in an earlier thread?

9

Or they may want to use the same trick themselves. Or think if one person can do it that fast, why not the rest?

10

The OP has also essentially given away his customers’ information. I doubt they ever agreed to allow their data to shared in such a manner.

11

If the work is correct, I don’t think you did anything wrong legally or ethically. However, if manual transcription is more accurate than what you’re doing, then they would have a right to be angry.

However, I think they probably just want to be able to do it themselves. I wouldn’t tell them how you do it.

12

It’s far more likely that they only have the budget for something like $90 per day and not $300 per day.

13

According to the OP it was already on YouTube.

14

The Polls thread?

15

This situation reminded me of workers in past times telling the ones that did their job too fast to go slow; so, then all other workers would have a job at the end of the day, to avoid the situation where the boss would send all the workers home early. With less pay.

16

I’m sure the budget is for the complete job. Unless they are idiots, of course.

As for the OP, no contract means no promise of not using the latest tools. Would it be a problem if he was a fast typist? Never had to look up punctuation questions? Assuming that he checks the result of automation against the video to make sure it matches perfectly (and with automation it might match better than doing it purely manually) then no problem.

17

I suspect transcription jobs in the future will be more along the lines of “proof and format this computer generated transcription text” rather than “listen to this audio and type everything up”.Right now, transcribers are in a sweet spot where customers are have the expectation of paying the manual transcription price, but transcribers can complete 3-4 times as much transcription by leveraging AI. As such, I’m guessing the prices will eventually adapt to something like “$X/page to be edited” rather than “$X/minute to be transcribed”. And eventually I would guess AI will get good enough to do it all on its own, especially for this kind of work (church wanting transcriptions of sermons).

18

No, here’s the one I saw:

Bye-bye jig.

19

Realistically, you’re creating a rule in your head that they don’t want you to use computer aid. That’s imaginary. It’s just something that you invented for yourself. Who’s to say that’s not just self-sabotage more than it’s connected to what they’re concerned about.

Not using child labor, sure, that’s a bad thing. If it looks like they’re concerned in that realm, then make clear that they don’t need to worry.

What you are doing is the difference between writing with a pencil versus writing with a typewriter. Being the first person with a typewriter just makes you a professional, not a cheat.

As someone said above, tell them you’re using a custom software solution to speed up the process, apologize that you can’t tell them the specifics since your livelihood depends on it, and leave it at that. But, ultimately, they’re paying the same amount, regardless how fast you go, and this just lets you take on more work. They’re not losing anything.

Give the typewriter example. In the world of pencil writers, as a typewriter owner, you’re the one who all most seek and adore. You can command a higher price. Once everyone else also has a typewriter, you’re just one among the throngs. If you were in a better position, financially, then maybe that wouldn’t matter if others caught up. But if that’s not your situation right now then you need to keep your trade secret a trade secret.

20

There is only one way in which this is potentially unethical: If the ‘transcription’ company explicitly said it must be done manually, because they want you to read the transcripts as part of their mission or something.

But if they just offered payment for delivered pages, then screw 'em if they want to kmow how you did it so fast.

But this is an example of the cost to everyone of not spending time right now learning how to use AI. If the company understood the tech, they wouldn’t have offered so much money. And if other transcribers don’t get up to speed on AI, they’ll lose their work to people like you.

For example, one way you could respond is, “Tell you what: I’ll do it for 3/4 of what you pay anyone else” and eat up all the work at the expense of the people who haven’t yet learned how to accelerate their work with AI, while still making more than you otherwise would wothout it.