Dear Boss,
I am a senior project manager in a nonprofit. Over the summer, I was assigned Lola as an intern. Our office aims to provide meaningful training, as nearly 80 percent of our interns are eventually hired, so I assigned Lola to write a focus-group report. Because I'd had previous experiences with interns producing AI reports that required extensive rework, I explicitly explained to Lola that AI is not a reliable tool for this work, as it often fabricates quotations and hallucinates during data analysis.
Well, Lola turned in the report, and it was clear she had used AI. It included multiple "quotations" that were never said, and the analysis was incorrect. I told my manager we would miss our deadline since we had to redo the work. In my feedback to Lola, I didn't call out the AI use specifically, but I pointed out every made-up quote and highlighted where the analysis was wrong. I also noted to my boss that had I not attended the focus group myself, I might not have recognized the problems with her work.
At the end of her internship, Lola was hired as a junior project manager. She was recently assigned to work with me again on a series of interviews and reports. When she sent me the reports, I could immediately see that she must have uploaded the transcripts into AI and copied the answers. The report was confusing and lacked key information. I didn't mention AI in my feedback since I was only 90 percent sure, so I just flagged the incorrect info. She then sent me a revised version, but I'm again 90 percent sure she just used my comments as AI prompts and adjusted the specific parts I flagged without checking for consistency.
I was really pissed off, as we had already missed a deadline. I told her she had to be more careful about storytelling and consistency and declared her task closed. I felt asking for another revision was a waste of time; she would have continued working with AI anyway, and I was fed up with providing encouraging feedback to someone whose work shows no real skill beyond copying and pasting.
I need to talk with my manager about Lola. This is a serious quality matter, as we could have our project budget cut if poor analysis and AI use are identified. I believe Lola's employment should be reconsidered, but I'm not her direct manager and I'm unsure how much standing I have. How should I deal with this?
Response:
As the person charged with reviewing Lola's work, you absolutely have standing to address this. An employee assigned to help you is turning in work so shoddy that you're missing deadlines and risking your project budget. It would actually be strange not to raise it. If your boss found out later that you stayed silent, they would wonder about your judgment.
It's time to address your suspicions head-on with both Lola and management. In some situations, you can give feedback focused only on the problems you see — inaccuracies, lack of nuance, or poor structure — hoping to nudge them to realize AI isn't serving them. Ultimately, the issue is not just the tool, but that they produced bad work.
However, you must address AI usage more explicitly when initial rounds of feedback aren't sinking in. In this situation, you tried giving Lola specific feedback, and she responded by turning in work with the exact same problems. This is particularly egregious because you told her early on not to use AI for these projects.
Talk to your manager and hers. Explain that the person assigned to help you is instead causing you to miss deadlines. At a minimum, Lola needs closer supervision and better coaching. She has demonstrated poor enough judgment that her manager should be taking a closer look at her work to see if other problems have been flying under the radar.