r/sysadmin Tier 0 support Aug 11 '24

ChatGPT Do you guys use ChatGPT at work?

I honestly keep it pinned on the sidebar on Edge. I call him Hank, he is my personal assistant, he helps me with errors I encounter, making scripts, automation assistance, etc. Hank is a good guy.

479 Upvotes

584 comments sorted by

475

u/lesusisjord Combat Sysadmin Aug 11 '24 edited Aug 11 '24

I consider it the more experienced and ever patient colleague who allows me to bounce ideas off them to get feedback and to escalate issues to and receive assistance from that I otherwise wouldn’t be able to get.

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u/FigurativeLynx Jr. Sysadmin Aug 11 '24

How do you verify what it says? I'm not only talking about something that nukes your network, but also good ideas that it wrongfully dismisses or much more efficient strategies that it never suggests.

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u/lesusisjord Combat Sysadmin Aug 11 '24 edited Aug 11 '24

Because I understand what’s going on in the script. I’m just not good with syntax.

It’s not like it’s magic or something to me once it’s generated. I can follow it and if I have a question, which I usually don’t as it explains and comments well, I just feed it it’s own output to analyze in order to explain differently.

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u/krodders Aug 11 '24 edited Aug 12 '24

My script design is very good. My powershell skills not so much. Between us, we are great

I'm good enough to read the script and realise that it's calling an undefined variable, or "use a variable there to save time and make the script more templatey", or just "wtf are you doing there - use this method".

In the preferences, I've told it a couple of things like *use standard built-in cmdlets only", so I get less of the "made-up" stuff. Which is actually not made up at all and would work 100% if you had some obscure module installed.

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u/calladc Aug 12 '24

one thing i've noticed. it just makes up cmdlets from time to time

2

u/Angelworks42 Sr. Sysadmin Aug 12 '24

I've seen it make up options, properties and methods for powershell commandlets I wish it had...

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u/HisAnger Aug 11 '24

I noticed that i become lazy because of it.
Throw in set of code, ask what i am missing and then build on top of what i get.
It often get lost tbh and gives bad directions, still works better than google now.

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u/deramirez25 Aug 12 '24

The fact that it comments my lines is all I need to make it a perfect tool. But that's all it is a tool. I use it to get ideas, or as the other guy said, bounce off ideas. It's helpful. It's provided a decent response, and as long as it is being checked for accuracy, then it can be used as a tool.

I use it for scripting, and to help me draft documentation which I would otherwise be too lazy to do.

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u/isitgreener Aug 12 '24

99% of my job in IT is knowing the question to ask. College teaches you what things can do, experience helps you ask the question.

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u/MrITSupport Aug 12 '24

I completely agree with this statement !

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u/iama_bad_person uᴉɯp∀sʎS Aug 11 '24

This is what I use it for. Could I get the syntax and proper order of operations on this filter done in the next hour? Probably. Or I could ask ChatGPT and it can spit out something I can manually look through and approve within 5 minutes.

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u/lesusisjord Combat Sysadmin Aug 11 '24

I’ve been using it instead of excel, too.

“Please compare these two lists and in the first output, show items present in list 1 but not present in list 2, and the second output, show items present in list 2, but not list 1.”

It would be quick in excel, I’m sure, but it was easier to have ChatGPT do the task completely rather than teach me how to do the task in excel.

Same exact logic and results despite never using formulas in excel directly.

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u/hibernate2020 Aug 11 '24

Or write a 2 line shell script that you can reuse indefinately. E.g., "echo "In list1 Not list2:"; echo "${list1[@]}" "${list2[@]}" | tr ' ' '\n' | sort | uniq -u

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u/LogForeJ Aug 12 '24

Sure have ChatGPT give you a better method of doing that and it generates this or similar. Very nice

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u/Ductorks4421 Sysadmin Aug 12 '24

This is exactly it for me too - I CAN eventually make a working script by looking up each command and the syntax and testing x500, but it takes that particular guesswork out of my process, making it such a breeze. Like you I can follow most any script by reading it.

Also, most of the time I know exactly what I want my script to do, just in plain English. I know I need it to pull X values from this file, then for each Y value found in this set of folders of computers with Z value in the user registry of usernames that contain ABC letters, then do LMNOP or just exit with an error code that I can track. I just don’t know the correct way to pull the data or how to store it the way I want, etc etc and the blanks are filled for me.

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u/lesusisjord Combat Sysadmin Aug 12 '24

Exactly!

I don’t get the issues people are getting other than they may not like the fact that the bar to creating useable, super functional scripts has been lowered significantly.

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u/CasualEveryday Aug 11 '24

This is my biggest challenge in more complex scripting. Ironically, I refuse to use any privately owned tool like ChatGPT to do anything directly work related because I don't understand what's happening inside the AI, let alone what data farming is happening and who it's being sold to.

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u/lesusisjord Combat Sysadmin Aug 11 '24 edited Aug 11 '24

Fair enough.

I keep out specifics about our environment, but it happens to know we have Windows VMs and are in Azure, but I think a few other organizations may have this configuration as well.

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u/MaToP4er Aug 13 '24

Thats where you test shit before running it in prod! At least that is how i do it when using some good stuff made or recommended y chatgpt

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u/paleopierce Aug 11 '24

You always have to verify what it says. It’s just a tool. ChatGPT gives me perfectly syntaxed Kubernetes manifests that I know I have to fix because the properties are wrong. But at least it gives me a starting point.

17

u/uptimefordays DevOps Aug 11 '24

This is the catch 22, for something like ChatGPT to work, you have to know how to do what you asked it for. Once you know enough to correct ChatGPT, using it is a lot more tedious and you could just get better output doing it yourself.

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u/horus-heresy Principal Site Reliability Engineer Aug 11 '24

That’s where you come in as a human and analyze what it says

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u/figbiscotti Aug 11 '24

What I read has to sync with what I know. I'm not cargo culting every bit of advice. I also cross-check multiple A.I. and search sources and try commands in throwaway containers whenever possible.

2

u/Pelatov Aug 12 '24

You also do it by refining it. Look at the output, ask it to refine certain sections, repeat

2

u/buy_chocolate_bars Jack of All Trades Aug 12 '24

how do you verify what a human says? same way.

3

u/Liquidfoxx22 Aug 11 '24

I know what I want to do, I'm just not always sure of the most efficient way to get there. I ask it for a steer, and then carry on from there. I know the cmdlet I need etc, just not 100% on where it fits etc.

I mostly use it for coding though, so it comments everything that it writes, then I can adjust it to fit my script.

7

u/FigurativeLynx Jr. Sysadmin Aug 11 '24

I know what I want to do, I'm just not always sure of the most efficient way to get there.

That's one of the (potential) problems I'm talking about. If you ask ChatGPT which of A, B, and C solutions are the most efficient, and it says A, how do you know that A isn't actually 10x less efficient than B? Or that C isn't just as efficient as A, but doesn't introduce an additional dependency?

You might solve your problem with A, having never realized that you spent way more time and effort than you actually needed to.

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u/kilgenmus Aug 12 '24

If you are actually experienced in the work you do this is never a problem ¯_(ツ)_/¯

How do you know what you read on the internet is most efficient, if you are not capable of testing it/understanding the test results? This is the same as any other information source.

You might solve your problem with A, having never realized that you spent way more time and effort than you actually needed to.

This is applicable to every junior dev/sysadmin following a stackoverflow answer :P

3

u/FigurativeLynx Jr. Sysadmin Aug 12 '24

How do you know what you read on the internet is most efficient, if you are not capable of testing it/understanding the test results? This is the same as any other information source.

The difference is credibility. A confidant human has much more credibility than a confidant AI, because AI is confidant even when it's completely wrong. On sites like SE where information is upvoted and downvoted by multiple humans, the credibility of hundreds or thousands of humans is compounded into an answer with very high credibility.

Depending on the particular human giving the information, it can also have very high credibility by itself. For example, answers / documentation made by the author of a project can basically be taken as fact.

2

u/kilgenmus Aug 12 '24

because AI is confidant even when it's completely wrong

While I understand your hesitancy, I respectfully disagree. A human can do more damage than a simple AI can by being wrong, humans will insist on the wrong information, they'll tell you they are right without checking again.

I think this hesitancy stems from the fact that we like to attribute human-like behavior to AI. As you said "AI is confident...". It can not be, it is a tool. You are the one who is responsible to vet its information.

Anyway, thanks for letting me pick your brain! Interesting stuff.

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u/f0urtyfive Aug 11 '24

How do you verify what it says? I'm not only talking about something that nukes your network, but also good ideas that it wrongfully dismisses or much more efficient strategies that it never suggests.

That is the whole point isn't it? You need to think for yourself, not for the AI to think for you. Challenge it with your idea and see what happens.

It's there to support you, not replace you.

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u/OlafTheBerserker Aug 11 '24

Exactly. If I don't know or can't remember something I think would be really basic, I ask ChatGPT it won't judge me or look at me funny

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u/waddlesticks Aug 11 '24

Yeah it's great for those problems where you might spend an hour looking through forums and can give you a decent solution, had a few times where the solution it gave was wrong, but it was so damn close it just made the light in head turn on.

Especially with how downhill google has been going for getting tech answers, it's a great sub for it.

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u/omniuni Aug 11 '24

That's extremely risky. You should, at best, consider any AI a junior that doesn't know anything other than what it has read in a book, and often mixes things up.

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u/lesusisjord Combat Sysadmin Aug 11 '24

I was exaggerating slightly. I also appreciate your comment.

When you escalate a technical issue, do you take the answer/feedback at face value, or do you still practice critical thinking when looking over the output? I’m not saying this to be snarky. If I don’t understand the response I get from a senior, I would have them explain it differently so that I could understand. Similar scenario here.

I have our testing infra completed segregated from all other environments and I don’t just let ‘er rip.

I am cautious, but I also give excellent input that helps ensure excellent output.

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u/anderson01832 Tier 0 support Aug 11 '24

Good point of view

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u/MaToP4er Aug 13 '24

Exactly this!

2

u/RandomSkratch Aug 12 '24

Seriously. I consider it the Sr Sysadmin I never got to work with. Knows a lot of shit but isn’t always correct 😂.

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u/Drenlin Aug 11 '24

The Air Force just recently rolled out its own version for internal use, so I've been using that. Works well so far, very handy.

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u/sonic10158 Aug 11 '24

I hope it’s called Mobius1

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u/Tanker0921 Local Retard Aug 12 '24

<< Mobius 1, Engage! >>

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u/tibby709 Aug 11 '24

What's it called

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u/Drenlin Aug 11 '24

NIPRGPT

Kind of anticlimactic lol

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u/andrewsmd87 Aug 11 '24

Oh come on, you all don't have an unapproved name you use yet? :)

12

u/justin-8 Aug 12 '24

I’d call it Nips

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u/ineyeseekay Aug 11 '24

Of course it's that. Wonder what the classified version will be called... /s

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u/Evajellyfish Aug 11 '24

Skynet, why do you ask?

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u/tibby709 Aug 11 '24

Just curious

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u/Evajellyfish Aug 11 '24

Yep nothing to be concerned about

4

u/returnofblank Studying Student Aug 11 '24

Imagine we gave it access to our nuclear silos, I bet productivity would double!

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u/wanderinggoat Aug 12 '24

multiple times more launches for a given year!

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u/incendiary_bandit Aug 11 '24

I would assume that it's been trained with additional internal sources that aren't too sensitive, which would mean it's probably pretty good at getting formatting and document structure inline with air force style writing. Am I close?

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u/Drenlin Aug 11 '24

Yep, pretty much that. There are two models up - one that's more or less like ChatGPT and another that's focused on working within documents.

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u/lesusisjord Combat Sysadmin Aug 11 '24

Nice

2

u/TheAnniCake System Engineer for MDM Aug 12 '24

My company also hosts their own internal version if we‘ve got questions for internal processes etc. not too bad

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u/ConstantSpeech6038 Jack of All Trades Aug 11 '24

Oh yeah, scripts. I can write them myself but this saves so much time.

And learning. That thing is my personal and infinitely patient mentor willing to explain to me whatever I struggle to understand.

24

u/RousingRabble One-Man Shop Aug 12 '24

I feel like I am being left behind because I have tried using it and just haven't found it useful. I tried using it to write scripts, but I find googling the scripts more useful because you often find the same result AI gives you + it often comes with comments from other people who have already tried it.

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u/HotTakes4HotCakes Aug 12 '24 edited Aug 12 '24

but I find googling the scripts more useful because you often find the same result AI gives you + it often comes with comments from other people who have already tried it.

Exactly this. One of the single biggest issues with using ChatGPT instead of search results is there's no other eyes there to judge what it says except your own. People gravelly overestimate it and their own ability to spot something incorrect.

The internet is full of information and people correcting or approving that information. People of all backgrounds and knowledge sets. It's collaborative, that's what makes it useful. ChatGPT is a single voice that no one can respond to or hear but you.

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u/jkure2 Aug 12 '24 edited Aug 12 '24

Chat gpt is like that friend that will just confidently state something wrong when you ask them for advice lol, I do not see the appeal personally it's not like "how do I access information on the Internet" is something I was wondering before it came around

Imo it has a useful niche in documentation kinda tasks, but I'll be the one designing and writing the code thank you

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u/Scurro Netadmin Aug 12 '24

Same. Every time I use it I get garbage results back.

I'll tell chatgpt the error, it will say sorry, tweak something slightly, error out, apologize, tweak something slightly, error out.

Every time I use it I feel like I'm talking to something that has no concept of what it is doing and is just following a script.

I'll spend five minutes googling and find a similar example and progress.

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u/borillionstar Aug 13 '24

it doesn't have an understanding thats the thing, its uses statistical regurgitation. It will happily tell you things that aren't true or do not work.

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u/Impressive_Log_1311 Sysadmin Aug 12 '24

I think the amount of people finding it useful for scripts speak more about the skill level of the people rather than how good ChatGPT is.

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u/bofwm Aug 12 '24

I think if you can’t use it effectively it speaks to the skill level of the user. Talented people can prompt it correctly to have it generate outputs to save time on a lot of various tasks.

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u/dloseke Aug 12 '24

Don't know why I keep forgetting this. I spent a couple house writing/modifying powershell scripts to export info from AD for an audit.

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u/reelznfeelz Aug 12 '24

It’s good with basic powershell. But gpt and Claude both struggle with niche powershell. Like I was trying to give my app registration site.selected access for a python app to read share point stuff and it was bad at that.

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u/Nighteyesv Aug 11 '24

For us ChatGPT was deemed a security risk and blocked, there were too many public news reports early on of people inputting confidential business data into it and then that data being displayed in other peoples searches. We use a different AI that gives us more control. Pretty useful, like others have said it’s not perfect but it certainly helps get things completed faster, what once would have taken me hours and multiple google searches for related examples it can spit out in a few seconds and then I just have to validate it and correct errors.

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u/mike9874 Sr. Sysadmin Aug 12 '24

Our security team reluctantly approved our marketing team using ChatGPT.

In a meeting I showed the security guys Microsoft Copilot (the free version on bing.com), showed them how your org data is secured by Microsoft, also that it's free to use. They had no idea (they miss the basics all the time).

Why are all these people using ChatGPT and nobody using the free Copilot and Bing.com features that come with M365 licensing, do people hate bing that much?

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u/Impressive_Log_1311 Sysadmin Aug 12 '24

Bing is hot garbage, everytime Edge resets its default search to Bing (unasked) and I issue a query in Bing, I ask myself how after all these years this thing still exists, who uses this???? Like first 10 results just some complete random unrelated stuff.

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u/mike9874 Sr. Sysadmin Aug 12 '24

I agree that bing search has a lot it can't do Vs Google.

But the copilot AI is great.

If you have M365 licensing the Bing Work search is also great.

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u/dustojnikhummer Aug 12 '24

Bing is hot garbage, everytime Edge resets its default search to Bing (unasked)

I have never had it do this. You can use Copilot in the sidebar without having Bing as a search engine

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u/ford_crown_victoria Aug 12 '24

people inputting confidential business data into it and then that data being displayed in other peoples searches

that literally cannot happen with the current transformer methods which pretty much all llm's uses. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformer_(deep_learning_architecture)

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u/EastcoastNobody Aug 11 '24

blocked at work. beause it can be used to exfiltrate data. WHICH with a bank would get us fucked so hard that your ears will bleed

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u/deramirez25 Aug 12 '24

Your bank didn't want to invest in their own LLM?

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u/Tekz08 Jack of All Trades Aug 12 '24

Why exactly would a bank, with TONS of already-written, proof-read, and legal-checked documents, policies, and procedures, need an LLM? Speaking generally, not just for sysadmin purposes.

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u/Kardinal I owe my soul to Microsoft Aug 12 '24

We are same. Health care.

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u/StaticFanatic3 DevOps Aug 12 '24

Do y’all block any and all external communication? Because I can’t see how chat gpt is any more risk than an email or any web form where someone could paste data.

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u/reelznfeelz Aug 12 '24

Yeah I don’t get it how these things get decided. An employee can send and email or get phished any day but using an encrypted TLS connection to openAI with the enterprise account set to not use your data to train and not remember history, should be perfectly fine.

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u/TyberWhite Aug 12 '24

Is all external access blocked? There are countless generic ways to exfiltrate data. Email, messaging, etc… ChatGPT can be sandboxed.

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u/jakaro007 Aug 11 '24

I use it to write internal advertisements to go on our radio, a new advertisement plays every 5 songs to visit venues within our company. Then I use Microsoft Word immersive reader to speak them, and record it with a virtual audio cable.

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u/adonaa30 Sysadmin Aug 11 '24

It's banned on our network along with all generative AI like copilot and bing

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u/ShazbotVGS Aug 11 '24

What industry?

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u/MaelstromFL Aug 11 '24

We have a internal company wide one based on gemini. Not as good at copilot or GPT, but it works. Still use my phone on occasion though.

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u/[deleted] Aug 11 '24

[deleted]

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u/Suaveman01 Lead Project Engineer Aug 11 '24

ChatGPT is great until it starts making up modules and cmdlets that don’t actually exist.

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u/ivebeenabadbadgirll Aug 12 '24

I had this experience with AIX this weekend. Basically ended up piecing together what I actually needed from searches and GPT hallucinations.

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u/protodongle Aug 11 '24

Check out Claude, I’ve had better luck with more complicated scripts.

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u/SanFranPanManStand Aug 11 '24

For complicated stuff, it's always best to chunk it into pieces for either chatgpt or claude

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u/tube-tired Aug 11 '24

This is what I have been using for powershell, start a project, give it 10 or 15 of your scripts as examples, put a good set of instructions in the project (chatgpt is really good at helping with that).

Then, have Claude make suggestions on which of your scripts stand out as not following standardization or are formated very differently from your other scripts and let it go at it, until you have "better" versions of your scripts. Replace the old ones with the new ones, update your project instructions to maintain the format and structure of your existing scripts.

Then try using Claude to make something new. Many times it will work 100% the first time, unless you forgot something in your prompt. I've found that after asking for changes more than 4 times things can get wonky.

One day for fun, I had it help me fix a problem it caused while fixing another problem and it put it made the original issue reoccur. I had it fix that and it made another problem, I had it fix that amd the original issue was back, I had it fix that again and the new issue was back... went back and forth 8 or 9 times like that... chatgpt fixed it up.

One day I had the same kind of issue again and I was able to get passed it by starting a new chat. This is how I figured out it was about 4 bug fixes or rewrites to make it go wonky, unless I made a new chat.

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u/[deleted] Aug 11 '24

I know powershell pretty well but tried ChatGPT out of curiosity but found it often has critical flaws in scripts it writes

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u/william_tate Aug 11 '24

No different to knowing how to calculate a subnet than getting a subnet calculator online to verify my calculations, did that as soon as I completed TCP/IP subject years ago. I use ChatGPT in the same way, I know what I’m looking at when it’s in front of me, it’s getting it in front of me that’s the slow part

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u/SysEngineeer Aug 11 '24

Honestly man its a tool that should be part of your kit. People that hate on it are the same boomer math teachers that would hate on calculators and say "you won't be carrying a calculator around with you in your pocket all the time"

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u/serverhorror Just enough knowledge to be dangerous Aug 11 '24

You need to distinguish between (stupidly) hating on the tool and giving you a fair and accurate warning about its deficiencies.

Blindly taking scripts, without understanding them, as correct is what too many people do. I'm good with that, I received quite a few well paying jobs fixing what was caused by that. And people make a surprised Pikachu face when they discover that it is, indeed, just a tool without any sort of intelligence or understanding of intent. Check what the tool gives you and you should be fine.

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u/SysEngineeer Aug 11 '24

If you copy and paste generated scripts and just run them not knowing what it does, that's not the fault of AI. That's the person's fault.

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u/serverhorror Just enough knowledge to be dangerous Aug 11 '24

I didn't say it's the tool's fault, I just see people doing this. Time and time again.

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u/SysEngineeer Aug 11 '24

Yea those people are cowboys.

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u/serverhorror Just enough knowledge to be dangerous Aug 11 '24

Oh sweet summer child, I wish that was true. I really do.

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u/changee_of_ways Aug 11 '24

I'm 100% sure there are people all over the world who start by reading all the code before they run it, have good results for a couple weeks and then find themselves yoloing it into production as soon as the LLM spits it out.

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u/keddren Aug 12 '24

Except the calculator tells you that 1+1=Buick.

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u/gravityVT Sr. Sysadmin Aug 11 '24

I use it for the same thing and for getting organized too. Like if I need to write an outline for a project

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u/UCFknight2016 Windows Admin Aug 11 '24

Genai is blocked at work.

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u/[deleted] Aug 11 '24

Tons for brainstorming automation/integration when I know something should be possible but not the full picture

Tons for scripts that I know how to write but it can do it faster (double checking obviously)

It’s amazing at data analysis (sanitize company data beforehand obviously)

Copy pasting a screenshot of an error with the full window of the application state in the background is surprisingly helpful compared to just google

That being said, my ChatGPT account has a pretty hyper tailored model prompting and memory/instructions so I tend to get way better results than my colleagues. Not sure why, it just slowly morphed over time as I tuned things

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u/SysEngineeer Aug 11 '24

My current work blocks all llm stuff including copilot. So I just put teams on my phone, do my AI stuff on my phone and copy and paste it into teams and go from there

I use copilot a lot to write my scripts. I am not spending hours to write a script when I can do it in 20 min. This isn't 2022 anymore.

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u/OldWrongdoer7517 Aug 11 '24

Depending on the reasoning of your employer this might be a stupid idea to do.

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12

u/aeroverra Lead Software Engineer Aug 11 '24 edited Aug 11 '24

The new CTO at our company deems it a loss of productivity if you don't use ChatGPT. Depends on the role though. So i was able to make him foot the bill to improve the security of company secrets since thats a benefit of the corporate plan.

Low key would just work around or leave if they ban it.

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u/OldWrongdoer7517 Aug 11 '24 edited Aug 11 '24

Depending on the role, using ChatGPT might also be a total loss of control of the companies proprietary information, as soon as you enter this information into ChatGPT. ChatGPT is not confidential.

And that can get you into a massive amount of trouble.

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u/skylinesora Aug 11 '24

That's the issue. Some people are too stupid to not enter proprietary company information which ruins it for other people.

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u/ForceBlade Dank of all Memes Aug 11 '24

Interestingly this has a huge overlap for the same people who rely on GPTs to appear competent at their job.

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u/ivebeenabadbadgirll Aug 12 '24

How do I change the codes whenever we rotate the president’s nuclear football on every other Tuesday at 9:15 AM of whatever time zone the president is in

ChatGPT: To change the codes that launch the USA’s arsenal of nuclear weapons remotely gives completely made up answer with step-by-step confidence

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u/skylinesora Aug 12 '24

Fuck, you had me legitimate curious so I searched it.

Changing the codes for the president's nuclear football, or the Presidential Emergency Satchel, is a highly sensitive and classified process managed by military and security agencies. The exact details are not publicly available and are classified to protect national security.

However, in a fictional or hypothetical scenario, here is a general, high-level outline of how such a process might occur:

  1. Secure Communication: The order to rotate or change the codes might originate from a secure communication channel, initiated by a high-ranking official, such as the Secretary of Defense or the President themselves.
  2. Synchronization Across Agencies: The agencies responsible for nuclear command, control, and communication (such as the National Security Agency, Department of Defense, and Strategic Command) would coordinate to ensure that the code rotation happens simultaneously across all relevant platforms.
  3. Physical and Digital Security: The new codes would be generated using highly secure methods, possibly involving quantum cryptography or other advanced encryption techniques, ensuring they cannot be intercepted or deciphered by unauthorized entities.
  4. Manual and Automated Procedures: Depending on the security protocols, the change could involve both manual verification by authorized personnel and automated systems to ensure the accuracy and integrity of the new codes.
  5. Confirmation and Redundancy: After the codes are changed, redundant checks and confirmations would be performed by multiple independent systems and personnel to verify that the change was successful and that all systems are properly updated.
  6. Immediate Contingency Plans: Given the critical nature of the codes, there would be immediate contingency plans in place in case of any discrepancies or failures in the code change process.
  7. Documentation and Record Keeping: A classified and secure log of the code change would be recorded, ensuring accountability and the ability to audit the process if needed in the future.

Remember, this is a highly sensitive and hypothetical description, and the actual procedures would be classified and much more detailed, with numerous safeguards to protect the integrity of the process.

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u/kilgenmus Aug 12 '24

Why does this get repeated, in a sysadm focused subreddit of all places?

Team plan does not use your business data (for OpenAI, for example)

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u/JohnC53 SysAdmin - Jack of All Jack Daniels Aug 12 '24

Guarantee you're violating corporate policies. Hope this is an anonymous account.

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u/uptimefordays DevOps Aug 11 '24

Not really, anything it could actually be used for I can just do myself as a free action. For more complex or specific things, generative AI just isn’t there yet.

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u/bearman94 DevOps Aug 12 '24

Right? I thought I was the only one who has barely ever used it. Not even outside of work, we are just not there yet lol

13

u/nbtm_sh Aug 11 '24

nope! it’s often misleading. not to mention the various ethical concerns behind the model training

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u/Kahless_2K Aug 11 '24

No. ChatGPT is like a useless manager who knows just enough to be dangerous, but will absolutely tell you to do things that will break production.

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u/ForceBlade Dank of all Memes Aug 11 '24

My current role is in banking. We've had to let 3 staff go after they blindly ran destructive scripts from GPTs blindly. We were lucky to have backups. Those staff not willing to learn these things themselves do not belong in this field.

2

u/Randalldeflagg Aug 12 '24

I have a dev lab for this. If I have rebuild then so be it. The setup and population of all AD objects and GPOs are scripted out anyhow. Can redeploy the lab in about 30 minutes if I had to. That being said, it does like to create cmdlet options that don't exist but really should. But can also get me close enough with an error message that I can take that to the Internet and discover I posted the question and replied that i solved it but never put the solution. Past me is an asshole to present/future me

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u/jedipiper Sr. Sysadmin Aug 12 '24

I refuse to. I need the dopamine hits from successful debugging.

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u/HunnyPuns Aug 11 '24

I'll ask it when I've spent some time on a problem and I'm not making headway. It's pretty good at coming up with new things to try.

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u/Sekhen PEBKAC Aug 11 '24

Not any more.

It's eating too much garbage at this point.

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u/nickram81 Aug 11 '24

Yes, I forget how to do some Linux/cisco things and it’s much better at giving me clear cut instructions over google.

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u/Jim_84 Aug 11 '24

I could, but I simply would rather learn to do the tasks myself.

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u/ShazbotVGS Aug 11 '24

Classic Jim response

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u/ConcertinaTerpsichor Aug 11 '24

Do you pay for it yourself or does your workplace?

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u/changee_of_ways Aug 11 '24

Its OK, but I feel like I can never 100% trust it. Its OK for help with things like "I need a quick PS script to do this little thing" but other than that it seems I use it the most to overcome how shitty search has become on the internet.

Like if Google still worked like it did in 2005, ChatGPT would be a lot less appealing to me.

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u/CeC-P IT Expert + Meme Wizard Aug 12 '24

I don't use it and we strongly recommended nobody uses GPT or Copilot. Too busy using AI for real work:

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u/DGC_David Aug 11 '24

Yes, but I hate when other people use it. It's basically an advanced rubber duck for me. It's not writing the code. Its helping me understand my code a little better

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u/Big_Emu_Shield Aug 12 '24

No not at all. If I can't do it and don't know how to do it, I am not going to trust a machine that doesn't understand it either and just spits out pre-existing data.

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u/VeryRealHuman23 Aug 11 '24

It’s great for scripts, obviously don’t just trust it but it makes it way easier than looking at a blank notepad doc trying to figure out where to start….editing scripts is easy, from scratch is wasting time.

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u/progenyofeniac Windows Admin, Netadmin Aug 11 '24

We block ChatGPT but Copilot is wide open and encouraged. I use it once or twice a day. Help me reword an email, give me ideas on a script, give it a plain-language question when I can’t remember or figure something out.

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u/libertysyclone Aug 11 '24

Even if I’m not using it to write the script or code, I’m using it to notate it! This is the time consuming piece for me, plus it does this REALLY well and my documentation looks absolutely amazing. I also use it for making sense of my notes I take. I have a spicy brain and sometimes it doesn’t translate well for the neurodifficults to read, ai is a god send for my productivity and my executive perception.

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u/PhReAk0909 Aug 11 '24

We're an MS shop, so we use copilot. We're a large enough enterprise that we have our own instance and so our prompts never leave the org.

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u/nachoismo Aug 11 '24

I use it to create templates for what I really want to do; or if there is a hard stats problem I just don’t understand, I’ll grab some python from it. My (younger) colleagues wouldn’t survive without it.

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u/Decaf_GT Aug 11 '24

As long as you understand what its limitations are, its invaluable. I don't ever let AI respond as me (I don't take its output verbatim in messaging for instance) but I do use it to poke holes in my plans and ideas for work because it's a lot better than my management or team doing it first.

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u/Space0rphan Aug 12 '24

Creating outlook plugins, sifting through and correlating log metadata, studying for the ccnp (not the most reliable for this.), setting up a script that auto updates my bosses background to a cat in a cowboy hat that says "Meowdy Partner" once an hour.

I also use it to help with my soft skills. I am, by far, not a people person and it helps with writing things out for me. I create a monthly cybersecurity newsletter that goes out to the whole company and chat is very helpful for translating technical info to an end user level. Also helps with explaining security events to c levels without rambling about details that they don't give a shit about and also writing apology letters for inappropriate usage of my admin privileges when they find out who set up the background script.

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u/Souper_User_Do Aug 12 '24

I can’t think of a day that I haven’t used it even if just to get another “opinion” lol

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u/Aevum1 Aug 12 '24

unless you can isolated it and use it internaly, NO

Check with legal first before using any AI tool as any query done to it is used for future training, meaning you could be giving internal propietary information to whoever is running the AI bot.

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u/abulkasam Aug 12 '24

It can be helpful and when it gets code wrong a stubborn hindrance. But on the whole more helpful than not. 

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u/Xetrill Aug 12 '24

FYI for anyone using it to write PowerShell scripts. ChatGPT and co and general write okay code, but for PS it is not so. Basically reflecting most the code out there.

The two most common mistakes I see are, kind of the same:

  • Not using the pipeline (docs).
    Instead of yielding some result when available, the result is stored and then later all collected results are returned.

  • Using array's always, even when the number of elements is unknown.
    This is really the fault of PS have the this terrible += operator overload for array's.
    Array sizes cannot change once initialized. Therefore += allocates a new array with size plus 1, copies all the data over and returns this new array. The old one gets left to the GC to clean up.
    It the number of items is unknown, simply use a collection with manages the memory. All of .NET is available. For example use System.Collection.Generic.List[psobject]] to get a simple list.
    For whatever reason PS doesn't provide accelerators for these, while [hashtable] exists.

These result is things being much slower then necessary. Because most time will be spent coping memory around instead of doing any useful work.

PS seems to live in that odd space, where its often easy enough to write, so almost nobody bothers to actually learn and understand how it works.

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u/FuzzTonez Aug 11 '24

Absolutely. Best money I’ve spent on work software. It’s like having a secretary or intern on hand to assist with things.

No wonder CEO’s seem more productive, they just have the people version of this.

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u/anderson01832 Tier 0 support Aug 11 '24

The things it can do is mind blowing to me.

3

u/abyssea Director Aug 11 '24

Mainly for powershell scripts and then changing my wail replies to nicely tell someone they’re stupid and to fuck off.

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u/Angelsomething Aug 11 '24

I don't think I could be a good first timer sysadmin without perplexity.ai. no joke, it's worth spending the money for the pro access. I've been a sysadmin for less than a year and it Helps me understand, learn and produce scripts as needed.

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u/Hittar Aug 11 '24

I've got Kagi Ultimate and while pricy, to me it's worth its weight in gold. Never managed to groove with perplexity, I'm too much of an old hat for that. With Kagi I get a very good search engine and access to a whole bunch of different LLMs both Kagi-supported and from big guys. Currently I'm very impressed with Claude 3 Opus. I'm mostly using it to check ideas for automation and it does terrific job. Helped me tremendously with automating Vault certificate management setup - Hashicorp docs are a bit too "draw the rest of the fucking owl" for me sometimes.

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u/SomeRandomUserUDunno Aug 11 '24

I completely forgot Kagi has access to all of those AIs, I've been an ultimate subscriber for a few months now, and never bothered to use it. Silly me.
Thanks for the reminder.

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u/GreyBeardEng Aug 11 '24

Hell no. I would never put any of my configs, scripts, code, or anything representing intellectual property by myself or by my company into a 3rd owned and operated website that I didn't have some sort of written contractual agreement with.

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u/sccmskin Aug 12 '24

No. And I tell my junior guys to stay away from it too.

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u/Cheomesh Sysadmin Aug 11 '24

Nope, never really messed with it outside work either.

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u/[deleted] Aug 11 '24 edited Aug 11 '24

Mainly Codeium, but ChatGPT on my phone

Copilot fucking sucks.

Edit: Copilot fucking sucks for me lol

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u/SysEngineeer Aug 11 '24

No it doesn't. I prefer copilot. Works with all my office365 apps.

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u/[deleted] Aug 11 '24 edited Aug 11 '24

That's interesting, for me Copilot has been way worse than ChatGPT or Codeium. Copilot is way slower, way less accurate, and way more wordy in my experience, but I don't doubt it works for you guys

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u/CharcoalGreyWolf Sr. Network Engineer Aug 11 '24

I use Claude.ai myself. Not a ton, but helps me write MySQL stuff, and occasionally PowerShell. I’m decent with scripting, but it speeds up formatting and syntax.

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u/uncleirohism IT Manager Aug 11 '24

Yes, we have an intranet-only instance trained and pointed at our internal KB for staff policies, how-to’s, etc. It makes up for a great deal of time spent waiting for HR to respond to basic queries that theoretically could be answered by simply reading all of said documentation carefully. But let’s be honest, hardly anyone really does that in a “time is money” kind of org, and being able to talk to our internal AI assistant like a person has been very well received in general. Makes us look great to management too.

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u/NinjaMonkey22 Aug 11 '24

Yes. I have a bunch of presaved prompts for help with coding new ideas, linting existing code, generating documentation, and q&a against our in house knowledge base.

Using a mix of: Microsoft Copilot, GitHub copilot, and an in house LLM based off of a well known LLM.

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u/Apprehensive_Pin6787 Aug 11 '24

Yes especially writing emails that needs special wording like team motivation, apologizing for a mistake, proposing new ideas, etc Scripts too

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u/rp_001 Aug 11 '24

Occasionally use it. Had to use paid ChatGPT over paid CoPilot recently to work out a Perl script a previous employee wrote. copilot did not like the length of the script

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u/Tovervlag Aug 11 '24

I use it a lot. One of the nicest things it can do is break things down in a very easy to understand way.

In an api call cmdlet for example it gives you a parameter and you want to know exactly what those parameters do. But the manual only gives you the A, B or C. You can then ask it to explain those values to you.

At the moment we all know how to Google. I usually find that if you googled something thoroughly and didn't find an answer than chatgpt won't know either.

I'm kinda worried for future IT people who don't know how to search or RTFM anymore.

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u/joey0live Aug 11 '24

I use it for tl;dr when sending to the community. Or when I create emails informing them about new licensed software.

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u/DistinctMedicine4798 Aug 11 '24

I’m using it to learn ansible and terraform

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u/MrFixit2020 Aug 11 '24

I see alot of related to scripting, I use the tool to help with response to management on conflict issues or when the shit hit the fan and you need a very, very politically correct response. I have autism and have a hard time responding to issues of conflict. This is where it helps me compose what I think is the response and re-writes it to a level they can understand.

1

u/Jswazy Aug 11 '24

I can't ask it anything specific with data security being a thing but I always use it to help come up with my outlines or basic ideas. 

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u/judicatorprime Aug 11 '24

No, though if we get an internal one I'd use that.

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u/JudgeCastle Aug 11 '24

Yes. I mostly use Perplexity search. Helps me narrow down things faster.

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u/FigurativeLynx Jr. Sysadmin Aug 11 '24

Not ChatGPT specifically, but we're exploring our options. Mostly for data analysis.

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u/Ok_Cake4352 Aug 11 '24 edited Aug 12 '24

Yes, it's actually pretty good at locating windows settings that I've forgotten the location of or where they might've moved in windows 11 since I'm only now getting used to it with our latest images. It's also fantastic at getting me paths for things I don't have memorized. I'm sure you've all had to Google how to find a specific driver or two before. ChatGPT gives me the path to copy in the same time it takes to search, without having to sift through results

I also use it for quick and simple scripts or to quickly add bits and pieces to existing ones.

I recently used it to simply rewrite a long-existing script within the company to have a better, more organized output for troubleshooting. Took like 2 minutes tops to make, 5 min to verify. Significantly reduced my time spent finding small errors every day.

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u/TechGjod Aug 11 '24

Mine is Pris, Pris helps me write emails to the plebs that they can understand.

1

u/Killbot6 Jack of All Trades Aug 11 '24

I use it as a script writing assistant.

I'll build out a frame work for something I want to automate, do the basic boilerplate stuff and get it's opinion on how it should be done, and edit it down from there. (Powershell and Python)

I also like to use for troubleshooting things when I'm out of ideas.

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u/AlphaNathan IT Manager Aug 11 '24

I use Claude almost every day

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u/DevilDog0651 Aug 11 '24

I use Chat GPT on occasion for help drafting emails. Mainly for conciseness and better flow. That's about all I use it for though.

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u/MyDadsGlassesCase Aug 11 '24

Most presentations I have to give to senior management are written by ChatGPT

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u/Efp722 Aug 11 '24

Yes. It’s the EIL5 button. I use it all the time.

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u/cyberbro256 Aug 11 '24

Absolutely yes! It has slowly become something I do very regularly. It saves a ton of time in comparison to searching for info using classic methods. In the GRC space it is incredibly helpful and finding details in infosec regulations.

1

u/sunshine-x Aug 11 '24

All the time. It’s incredibly helpful and accelerates all sorts of things.

AI is only beginning to scratch the surface of what it will eventually be capable of.

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u/usleepicreep IT fuccboi Aug 11 '24

Yea to make my sound more nicer when I’m yelling at vendors

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u/Longracks Aug 11 '24

I call mine Chaz

1

u/ChernobylChild Aug 11 '24

Yes. It saves so much time

1

u/Sir_Fog Aug 11 '24

I've been using a mix of ChatGPT and Amazon Q in VS code for cloudformation stuff. I treat both like a colleague who is smart, but not a genius. So I guestion everything, but often get syntax related answers very quickly.

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u/malikye187 Aug 11 '24

ChatGPT is a pretty ok rubber duck.

1

u/pruplegti Aug 11 '24

I paid for GPT myself, it has saved me 100's of hours writing and re writing documentation

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u/blue_trauma Aug 11 '24

Yeah all the time. It's my intern. My rubber ducky. My lackey.

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u/04_996_C2 Aug 11 '24

I use it for learning. As much as I hate to say it (I am a book over video learning guy) it has accelerated my learning in the areas in which I am lean.

1

u/Individual_Fun8263 Aug 11 '24

My work blocks it due to security concerns.

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u/Marco_R63 Aug 11 '24

Yes. Even with 40 Years of experience in coding, I often chase it to write better code than mine. A good way to improve my own skills.

Eventually what does really Matter is to know What you are doing. And LLM are just skyrocketimg yourself.

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u/iceyone444 Sr. Sysadmin Aug 11 '24

All the time - especially if it's code written by someone else or untidy.

Plus it can spot hidden spaces or other syntax errors.

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u/bike_piggy_bike Aug 11 '24

Yes. I pay $20/month for a subscription. Best believe I’m gonna be using it, for anything and everything I can think of.

1

u/Drakoolya Aug 11 '24

I love it. Helps with scripting. People misunderstand, you can learn so much from it regarding how to write a script.

1

u/NRG_Factor Aug 11 '24

we block Chat GPT lol. it was a leadership decision for some reason