Way too many people are applying to jobs using ChatGPT

[c461fbb9]

It's crazy how hard it is right now to find good candidates. I've posted a job and I've been receiving dozens of new applications per hour and I can clearly see that the vast majority is simply ChatGPT generated text.

It's a waste of my time to be evaluating BS candidates.

I don't know how upwork should prevent this but I think there should be a way for us clients to flag these candidates.

[abixbg]

As long as freelancers pay Upwork money for the ability to send crap proposals Upwork has 0 motivation to make them stop.  Sadly when clients like you leave the platform for good it will be too late... 

[michk]

I hate it and am furious about it too. The time wasted alone is worth a ton.

But, it's way worse on freelancer, the other site.

I won't even go there anymore because it's just one spam bid after another. Even on here many don't read the hiring ad & can't answer simple questions. sigh

Anyone who thinks the AI that controls the world (I'm not talking about ChatGBT), is a good thing, has no idea what's going on in the world.

This is way more terrible than what you are experiencing. Just wait.

[fcd3e0a8]

Ma'am If I may 😑

ChatGPT is not controling the world and it can't even come close to that, the only problem is humanity, I wonder what extent we would go with technology to help us with our day to day business 🤔 People dont want to put in the hard work again at all, they keep calling it a smart work, but I don't see what is smart about it when it can't even chnage or adapt on it own except it get updated by human whom it claims to help do smart work.

those bots would never come close to humanity, no matter what 😕

[michk]

No,  you are right, chatGPT isn't controlling the world, the evils are, & they have an AI that is VERY VERY powerful.

I have a video on it, but I can't post it here. It's called Alladin.

If you don't know what's going on and how we are in a digital prison, then none of this will make sense to you. You just have to feel the noose tightening around our necks. I have other examples I won't get into here. Just some are...

Being forced to use toxic cell phones for every site or we can't use their service, being censored on almost every site, that's all AI, it's checking what we are writing. Even now on FB many times my comments are blocked by FB and the group owner doesn't even know it.

Same on YT & Twitter. You don't even know your comments are blocked, but if you log out & then go look, you won't see your comment. They are either sandboxed or shadow banned.

I just put out hiring ads in FB groups, and in work from home type groups they were auto deleted by FB.

It's time to wake up to the fact that everything we do is controlled by AI now.  Don't you see on almost all sites now they use a live chat bot instead of having a human being and it can't even answer our questions?

That's so the data of our conversations is sent to AI.

This isn't about whether it's the right thing to do because of course it's not, it's about what our reality is since we are IN WWIII whether you realize it or not.

So chatGPT is like a little kid AI. 

[spectralua]

Upwork won't prevent this. Bots wasting connects, Upwork happy with that. Also with many bots real freelancers must waste more and more money. So as-is.

[the-right-writer]

Upwork is not going to prevent it, they are doing everything possible to encourage it, including ads running constantly. The chatbot allows people without marketable skills to send proposals. Upwork ceased caring about quality long ago. So, now, the mantra is, sit at your computer, refresh the feed constantly, and bid, then throw connects at every job until some poor client hires the pretender.

Freelancers are supposed to inform the client of any and all use of any AI, including the chatbotGPT, and make sure none of the material is used anywhere on any of the over 100 platforms online. I guess they don't care about things like Open AI's theft of over 500,000 books without notification, consent, or compensation.

Most of the people who use that stuff, don't have the skills to do it on their own. No one addresses the numerous legal issues, including the inability to get a copyright in many circumstances, plagiarism lawsuits, etc. The rest, believe it is the best thing since computers and will revolutionize the world. These people have a basic lacking of understanding about AI. AI is a huge range of ideas and creations, some worse than garbage, like ChatGPT, and others that have revolutionized life-saving medical care. AI has been around even before the old chatbot. You won't convince some that they can live without the chatbots, Jasper, et al. or that it is not "AI." The term is tossed around liberally by those who don't understand it, but buy into the advertising.

Yes, Upwork should take action like the great platforms I use. Unfortunately, for the clients, real freelancers, and ultimately the platform, Upwork will never reverse this issue and indeed, will only add more garbage for free, or to further their income.

[kelly_e]

Ugh. I feel for you!

It's heartbreaking for real professionals to read this—because on the other side, we're spending boatloads of money trying to say a sincere, thoughtful Hi to you, the job lister, and we are utterly unable to break through the noise.

Upwork likes the boatloads of freelancer money and they don't seem to care that the chaos is at the expense of this being a JOB MATCHING platform. So... no apologies & no improvements will come.

[michk]

I decline EVERY freelancer who can't read a simple hiring ad & follow simple instructions. That's about 80-90% of them, depending on the job. It's ALL spam. 

I'm constantly shocked at how a freelancer can apply to a job they didn't even read & I've been hiring since 2004, but I never get used to it. SMH

[yofazza]

4-5 client complaints in a few days?

It's possible Upwork will 'deal' with this specific problem, they must be staring at stats and numbers everyday now due to the 'risky moves'.

[mathgirl]

Hello Guilherme,

As a professional linguist, having worked for years on Upwork, (a service which costed me quite a bit), I have to tell you that despite an impeccable clients' satisfaction and top rated status I don't get contacted anymore by clients (I can't even find myself in the search) and my proposals don't even get looked at most of the time. In order to wind up in the searches, if I have understood it correctly, I need to pay connects. 
I also need to pay connects to apply to most of the jobs, some of  which ask me up to 16 of them. 
The result is that I am switching to other platforms...this is hopeless, at least in my experience.

Wishing you good luck with your search!

Cheers,

Milena

[c7aa1ec0]

Same here. Been on Upwork since it was called "Elance", joined circa 2008, have about 20yrs experience, been freelancing full time for the last three years, am Top Rated Plus in one of the hottest industries, and for the first time ever I'm getting absolute silence, no proposal responses, no search appearances, and no invites. At the same time customers complain about being flooded by low-quality chatgpt cookie-cutter proposals - it seems this platform has completely lost its way.

[michk]

Re: Elance, me too. I was also on Odesk for ages. 

What's circa?

My issue is that most of the other job boards are terrible with terrible customer service. One just told me I had to pay by WIRE TRANSFER to fund my account. I was shocked, responded & he disapeared & then ignored me.

The other is worse.

And the rest either cater to only one industry like programming or graphic design. I need something where I get to pick the types of freelancers I want to hire from different skill sets.

[ijessop]

What platforms are you switching to?

[ladyelexia]

Upwork pushes the "AI Support" feature for writing proposals, Sadly, too many people use this to just send boilerplate proposals. I used to send moderate-length, highly customized proposals but stopped doing it after a client asked me to respond without using Ai (which I never use, and never will). I send two lines max at most and offer a video chat these days. 

[sajal36]

Heather - I believe video chat is wonderful idea. However, it will depend whether job poster is interested in spending time in referring to attachment. Will be keen to know outcome % after you started submitting video chat along with proposal. Although to me this idea looks good.

[ladyelexia]

The shorter proposals have been more effective, no one has actually gone so far as to ask for the video chat once we started conversing in the interview. 

[the-right-writer]

It depends on the job. Not all clients or jobs are OK with a couple of sentences.

[sajal36]

It is all about strategy. If shorter proposals works then thats the strategy. One cannot cover all the jobs but look for job post which suits the freelancer, from freelancer perspective. That was specific and not generalization of the approach. 

[ladyelexia]

She is aware. She finds some weird delight in trolling, for no reason, other than to make noise. 

[ladyelexia]

Oh, it's you. Again. I would appreciate it if you just....avoid me completely. I find your interactions intentionally disingenuous. 

[fcd3e0a8]

Yeah, I'm with you on that one. 

I submitted an ICO promotion proposal to a client with just few lines and offer him a conefrence to meet and discuss my marketing strategy with him, he then replied to my proposal saying "you look genuine and efficient, but is that all you could write, I was expecting something more detailed" then I told him since he had contacted me anyway, I would be glad to break down my marketing startegy plan to him and then comes this enternity of silence 😐

[michk]

LOL, did you tell them you weren't using AI? 

[sajal36]

I believe one way to avoid most of such proposal is to write Job description with to the point skills / job description. Upwork have some filters when freelancer submit the job, in case freelancer profile does not have required skills the proposal will come in other section down below. However, hiring rigth candidate is always time consuming task for recruiter. Its just like any project implementation you put max time in planning and rest is just about executing the plan.

[michk]

I'm glad you know how hard it is to hire freelancers. It's literally a part to full time job if you don't have staff to do it for you. 

[williamtcooper]

Guilherme,

Just curious:

How many proposals did you receive and were the ChatGPT proposals from countries that English was their second or third language?

[colettelewis]

---

Guilherme P wrote:

It's crazy how hard it is right now to find good candidates. I've posted a job and I've been receiving dozens of new applications per hour and I can clearly see that the vast majority is simply ChatGPT generated text.

It's a waste of my time to be evaluating BS candidates.

I don't know how upwork should prevent this but I think there should be a way for us clients to flag these candidates.

---

Upwork is not preventing it - Upwork is embracing it. Sadly it is a bit like like kissing a blind date after the first glass of wine - there's no real future.  When you post a job, specify that all AI responses will be binned, but even then  your work will be cut out. 

[yofazza]

Or do something like this.

[tlsanders]

Since Upwork is actively encouraging everyone to use AI, I doubt that flagging them will do much good.

[7bd0d548]

Please help me, it's seems I'm lagging using this platform because of this issue.

The bots may consumes so much resource on the server, does anyone else face same issue ?

Thank You

This what upworks said :

As for the new feature regarding the AI, we haven't received any report from other users if it affected their browsing experience. So far, everything seems to be in order per our monitoring site: https://status.upwork.com/
 
However, I will make sure to take note of this. 
 
In the meantime, if you have another computer or device, I recommend trying it there to help isolate the issue. This way, we can determine if you'll experience the same on other devices. 
 
If there's anything else that I can help you with, please let us know. Take care!
 
Best Regards,
 

[yofazza]

we haven't received any report from other users if it affected their browsing experience. 

And I thought it was a lot when 4-5 clients wrote the same complaints in a few days. They misunderstand the question or don't really care.

[189fec12]

Hi Guilherme,

I'm very sorry to hear about your experience.  I, being freelancer myself, am sick of this. Imagine, You just come across a job that you think is destined for you but then, before you send your beautifully crafted propsal, there are already 15-20 proposals submitted and credit goes to ChatGPT. 

Also, they sit on the top of high performing candidates, all thanks to Upwork boost option. 

So, this is what we as freelancers are suffering from too.  UpWork must come up with some practical solution.

Tanzeela A. 

[681ec5b9]

Exactly, it is really frustrating, as these chatgpt generated responses makes it hard for good freelancers to reach the client. And sometimes those who get the job looks for the real freelancers to give it to, thus they end up being a middleman. Upwork really needs to mitigate this, and one of such way is to incorporate a technology that checks a proposal for possible AI generated writing, and then segregate them.

[crart]

How can they incorporate technology to check AI usage if their own "writing help" is an AI? They fully embrace lack of human factor and are proud of it. Promoting people lacking basic communication skills is a new quality of this platform. And it concerns both clients and freelancers, I can easily say which job post was written with the "help" of AI and I instantly scroll past it because I won't deal with primitives.

[02b81451]

I completely support you sir because a lot of incompitent canditates are a steep competition to ones that work legit and the competition is so high even to have a spot.

[williamtcooper]

Simon,

Upwork needs to increase the cost to Bid for freelancers more to reduce too many submissions.

[02b81451]

William

I suppose that would work much better. I still don't know why they just ignore the issue.

[williamtcooper]

I brought the issue and solution up about a year ago and Upwork has been moving in that direction with the cost to Bid going up. However, it still needs to go higher.

Another issue which isn't an Upwork problem is that generative AI is reducing the number of jobs that equal the Skills most of the freelancers on this site have.

Every freelancer needs to move in the direction of expert in-demand Skills or will have even a more difficult time obtaining work here especially by 2024.

[atreglia]

---

William T C wrote:

Simon,

Upwork needs to increase the cost to Bid for freelancers more to reduce too many submissions.

---

I don't know why you say that with all your marketing experience.  If you recall connects were once free; then they put a limit on them and that didn't work.  Then they starting charging for them and that didn't work.  Then they increased the number of required connects and that didn't work.  Now they've gone and made an unadulterated cluster with boosting.  Scamming and spamming is a mindset and will continue at varying degrees until Upwork vets their freelancers like they're supposed to.  I mean, it just cracks me that you, of all people, would think that sticking a bandaid over the real problem will just magically make it go away--especially on the heels of the history here.  How about Upwork just do it's job for a change and if they can't manage that, then fold-up.  Enough of this nonsense bandaid stuff.   They need to vet their freelancers.  Bam.  Problem solved.

[tlsanders]

If it cost $20 to send a proposals or there was a flat rate $250/month fee to participate, that's no bandaid--millions and millions of freelancers would weed themselves out overnight. The number of proposals (especially junk proposals) clients received would drop dramatically. Problem solved, entirely, for both freelancers and clients. 

Upwork won't do it because they're raking in millions in connects.