Google Tries To Guess Your Email Responses (blogspot.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Google's research blog today announced a new feature for their Inbox email app: a neural network that composes short responses to emails you receive. For example, if somebody emails you an invitation to an event, the app will detect that by scanning the words in the message and present you with three options for a quick response. Google says, "A naive attempt to build a response generation system might depend on hand-crafted rules for common reply scenarios. But in practice, any engineer's ability to invent 'rules' would be quickly outstripped by the tremendous diversity with which real people communicate. A machine-learned system, by contrast, implicitly captures diverse situations, writing styles, and tones. These systems generalize better, and handle completely new inputs more gracefully than brittle, rule-based systems ever could." Of course, you can skip them entirely, or use them and add your own words as well. How long until our email systems do most of our talking for us?

Comments

So basically they're trying to get rid of me

[wardrich86]

So basically, Google is pushing to completely remove me and replace me with a tiny script. :(

Re:So basically they're trying to get rid of me

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes.

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This post generated by Google's automatic content creation script.

Re:So basically they're trying to get rid of me

[pushing-robot]

Google is only trying to make us more efficient and reduce the amount of time we waste not staring at ads.

Re:So basically they're trying to get rid of me

[rtb61]

No, pretty much Google is trying to fabricate an excuse for being even more private communications invasive. What next an Adroid app that you and a partner share on your phones about the most appropriate sexual manoeuvres to align orgasm. With a remote probe to insert if your nethers should you not be actively using that orifice. So ideas are wildy inappropriate and the real idea behind the gimmick they are claiming is of course hugely wildly inappropriate. So gauging your individual response to communication, where could they be really using that feature, hmm, which advertisement style most effectively distorts your purchasing choices, just perhaps. So advertisements message specifically crafted to target you psychologically in order to produce the required response, buy or die.

Re:So basically they're trying to get rid of me

[Sowelu]

Never thought I'd see the day when someone on Slashdot would need to define BOFH.

Re:So basically they're trying to get rid of me

[IceAgeComing]

Right on! Seriously though, I'd love to have a discussion, if not here then through an "Ask Slashdot" topic, on what all of this extra free time that automation gives us, is for? I feel like it's hitting some kind of tipping point for me, where I actively avoid automation, so that I can have an actual interaction with an actual human being once in a while. It still pains me that these credit card machines exist, which force me to stop talking with the nice checkout person while I figure out how to navigate through the stupid questions on the screen. I avoid self-checkout services. I actively look for reasons to talk to people.

I don't use social media, which is perhaps a big part of why I feel the way I do. Anyone else feel "unclean" by having to turn to social media for their personal relationships?

Clippy

[Culture20]

You know a company is out of ideas when they reinvent Clippy.

Re:Privacy

[grimmjeeper]

You say that as if Google isn't already reading all of our mail to begin with.

Re:Recursive short replies

[myrdos2]

Next up, scripted responses will be responding to each other while we stay back and watch ;)

I've fantasized about this. Imagine a world where every email you flag as spam has an auto-generated reply returned to the sender. The spammers could have a whole conversation with your chat bot. I wonder how many messages back-and-forth it would take for them to realize there's no one on the other end. The value of spam would plummet, because you'd have no easy way to sift through the millions of fake responses to find the real ones.

Mmmm...

Avogadro Corp

[ZeroTrace]

This is literally how the book Avogadro Corp starts. Singularity ensues. http://amzn.com/0984755705?tag=synack-20

Re:Recursive short replies

[Obfuscant]

Unfortunately, I know of no spam emails that don't forge the from address.

I know lots of them. I bought something once from Walmart online and now I get spam from them. I once bought something from GearBest and I'm now on their endless spam list. The number of companies that think "he gave us an email address because we forced him to, with the excuse it was for sending him tracking info on his shipment, so we can now send every bit of advertising we can think of to him" is uncountable.

Re:I auto-generate and macro replies to my boss of

[IceAgeComing]

I agree it's efficient and fun to come up with special shortcuts with individual people. It's a way to forge a unique relationship with a unique person. It's kind of fun to come up with the rules together, or watch the process unfold on its own.

But I don't like the idea of a machine learning algorithm trying to figure this out for me and apply it across a broad spectrum of people. That feels...kind of gross, and all the fun of forming personal idiosyncrasies with individual people is taken right out.

Just have,

[Grand Facade]

Your machine email mine and they can do lunch....

Re:"senior research scientist"

[Big Hairy Ian]

Tired of fucking things up with predictive text? Try new Google Predictive Email the total cockuperator!

Fallacious

[Tenebrousedge]

Could you have constructed a more ridiculous Slippery Slope fallacy? Let's try:

Google Health: What's next, Google Death Camps?

Google Translate: What's next, mandatory voice implants?

Google Wallet: What's next, the overthrow of capitalism?

Project Loon: What's next, orbital mind control platforms?

Google Doodles: What's next, Lovecraftian horrors, the very sight of which induces madness?!

Hmm, not quite zany enough. Oooh, I know!

Google's self-driving car: What's next, Google Sex Bots?!

(And the answer is, "Yes please!")