Which I think brings up an important question, is it okay to take short work breaks to send instructions to AI working on your personal projects during work hours?
Do any employers have policies around this? And how does it interact with legal standards?
Are the rules around work-product well suited to the modern AI age?
Does it matter if I'm hourly vs salaried?
Should we do the same thing for work (asking work AI to do things occasionally during personal time)?
- Don't do any of it on work equipment, otherwise your employer may own your works. Do you like being sued?
- Don't discuss it with people at work, otherwise your employer may own your works because: time and IP. Do you like being sued?
Keep your mouth shut, use your own equipment and probably even network (eg: cell) and you should be fine. Or do you like being sued?
If you're an employee and you're at work (contracted/customary working hours, using employer's equipment/facilities) then its reasonable for your employer to want you to work for them. There will likely be a tacit understanding that occasional brief web browsing or life admin tasks are acceptable, for example. But on the whole they'll expect you to be doing employee tasks.
"using AI consists of sending a message a waiting a long time (often an hour or more) before the AI finishes a task."
>>> What on earth are you prompting AI with that it takes so long to finish?!
But anything to do with compiler development tends to leave the AI spinning its wheels for quite a while.
Edit: Checked the time on that one, I confused it with Compress taking 3+ hours for 1 prompt and another couple of hours each for the next few prompts... Cortado was still well over 1 hour for the initial prompt though...
Employer relationships are not much different, if you choose to do it, do it on the sly or suffer the consequence ;)
If you are a contractor (bachelor) situation may be different...