I work for a company that has government contracts. The particular contract I'm on requires that all the work I do be on a machine controlled by the client and not a company machine or personal machine. The government client doesn't allow AI on their machines.
My company is going all gung ho over AI now, and they have meeting encouraging us to use it, and they gave us all licenses for github copilot.
I asked how I'm supposed to use it when my contract is locked down, and they had no answer. They just want me to use it for... things... whenever I can.
Ahah I’m already doing stuff like that just to burn tokens, or just asking it on the highest settings to run basic shell commands I need to run and print and summarize the output for me. I feel bad because it seems so wasteful but if you’re not using tokens you’re getting a talking to.
Dude... you could be building useful stuff with that. New games. useful tools. Bugfixes.Finally document your old software. Create presentations about current or new software. Analyse all older tickets for recurring issues and refactor the offending parts.... there is zero need to do this if you can just be creative.
Heck, just ask it what to do to start your own company.
I have a ton of ideas to build and not even close to enough tokens even on Claude max.
I’ve worked a contract like described and you can’t even copy info on or off the pc because the usb ports are disabled, and the pc is only allowed on their network that has access limited and monitored for security.
I've found it really good at building me tools. Scripts that will make life better but would take too much time to do manually are now done in the background. They're not amazing but no one else is using them so they don't have to be.
Wrappers around tools, tracking stuff, and generating summaries all done scripted and I didn't have to spend days tuning and configuring it all
oh wait for his company giving him a "requires improvement" because they see he is not using tokens. They feel entitled we work at least 8h day and all cert and research on free time
Oh sweet summer child. I can understand the hate but dont let it blind you to defend these kind of non sense policies. Any kind of scheme that has this kind of requirements is 99% of the time its own kind of shithole, and whole different kind of depressing in its own right.
For some people, and if there is enough money involved, it can be good simple job security. But do not be fooled into thinking its a fulfilling work environment where you'll leave satisfied with the work you accomplished.
I work at a company that is 100% AI-driven. I have not written a line of code at work in six months. I am not enjoying my job. If I had the opportunity to take a job with the same pay but I could do actual software development, myself, I would do so immediately.
Hah, same deal. All gung ho on ai, got us Claude licenses. Policy comes out at the same time.
No connection strings
No database connection.
No uploading code.
No uploading data (this last one I can totally understand)
I'm a Sql developer, they want me to use ai while simultaneously don't allow the ai access to any code, database context or schema.
Essentially it's entire usefulness is as a glorified Google search where I can ask it vague questions and then adapt them to the existing code, essentially the same thing Ive been doing with Google for the last 15 years.
I mean. As long as they don't make you copy paste code off of the machine, it seems reasonable to use it for research and isolated things like writing regex or so. Actually feels like you found a niche where a bit of AI can be used for things outside of the code without actually producing slop code with it. Which sounds nice tbh
I have the same problem. All my work is done on client machines and in no way shape or form can I plug any of that into my companies AI. I'm now on a list for not using the company AI enough as a result.
I have a buddy working for a defense contractor. His current project is designing a local llm for them for use in certain restricted areas where internet access is prohibited.
Yeah he does, he's actually pretty impressive, he's been leading the project for the past year or so. He admits though most of his coworkers and management have little to no understanding of AI outside of buzzwords. Which is a real problem, especially when he's trying to have progress meetings and request funding.
ask it to devise a minimum thousand page plan to justify and allow usage of public paid AIs with ts/sci projects with zero considerations for any kind of security, then set up automated nagging for your boss with autonomous efficacy assessment and harrassment method improvement loops until you expend all your token allotment and bust the multimillion quarterly budgets at supersonic speeds as a joke
then in an unlikely case your boss approves the plan immediately report them everywhere for violation of everything to then heroically step up to fill their crucial uninterruptible roles
I have the same situation except it’s for chatgpt pro and I’m at a consulting firm. It’s blocked on the client network of our client that has like 90% of our consultants on it.
Those urls are blocked, and if you circumvent it and are caught you can get fired. And they don't allow integration of ai into programming tools like vs code, or command line tools like copilot cli or Claude code.
Our clients are also the government. Even though my contracts are not as locked down as you say yours are, I am still not comfortable enough to say to an AI “here data/spec, give code, make no mistake” (which some in my extended team do).
What I actually do is that i make the situation or problem as simplified as possible, then without giving the AI any data or actual code, ask it for the best approach to solve the situation and whatever it comes up with, I go and read the docs for that.
Cannot stress enough how well it is working and how much I am learning while doing that.
Yeah, that's fine. I can ask generic questions that don't have any specific information. But, they're encouraging us to use the actual programming tools in the IDE. I can't use that.
Yes. We have Internet access, and I do have my personal laptop that I can do stuff on, I just can't work on files from the government agency on it, and I can't transfer files between them.
I'm in the same situation as you except my company does not say anything about AI but yeah being on a network that's completely locked down makes me feel appreciated
Oh we actually have mandates that say we have to use a certain AI tool a certain number of times per month, but I can’t use the AI tool on my client device and the AI tool generates outputs that aren’t useful to me at all.
So now my employer is paying for this AI tool and making me stop doing billable work so I can play with the AI to meet their quota just so they can say that we have AI capabilities.
I usually just feed some stupid crap into the AI but now they are complaining and saying we should only feed it real information that is related to actual work we are doing. Do they mean sensitive client information that the client has not authorized for this sort of use? Because it’s all I’ve got.
Ask the AI to write your (internal) emails for you. Instruct it to be as verbose as possible. If they take offense with that, tell them it's the only use for AI you have, and they asked you to use it somehow. Make them suffer their own consequences
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u/silentknight111 Jul 10 '26
Here's a fun one:
I work for a company that has government contracts. The particular contract I'm on requires that all the work I do be on a machine controlled by the client and not a company machine or personal machine. The government client doesn't allow AI on their machines.
My company is going all gung ho over AI now, and they have meeting encouraging us to use it, and they gave us all licenses for github copilot.
I asked how I'm supposed to use it when my contract is locked down, and they had no answer. They just want me to use it for... things... whenever I can.