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Gmail Smart Replies and the Ever-Growing Pressure to Email Like a Machine (newyorker.com)
An anonymous reader shares an article: I don't use the phrase "Will do!" much in daily conversation, but lately it has been creeping into more and more of my e-mails. An editor asks me to get a draft back to her tomorrow? Will do! A friend heading back to Los Angeles from New York sends me a quick note telling me to enjoy living in the "best city in the world." Will do! The hosts of a panel I'm moderating need me to send over a three-line bio? Will do! "Will do!" is just one of many Smart Replies that Google now provides as a default feature in Gmail, there to assist you in your message composition unless you choose to manually turn them off. In October, the e-mail service, which one analytics firm suggests hosts about a quarter of all the e-mails sent worldwide, made this feature standard on its 1.4 billion active accounts, along with a menu of other innovations.
These include Smart Compose, a feature that finishes your sentences for you with the help of robot intelligence, and Nudges, a feature that bumps unanswered e-mails to the top of your in-box, making you feel increasingly guilty with every sign-in. As with many technological updates that are suddenly imposed on unsuspecting users, the new Gmail interface has been met with much annoyance. When my in-box started offering me Smart Replies, I felt a little offended. How dare it guess what I want to say, I thought. I -- a professional writer! -- have more to offer than just "Got it!" or "Love it!" or "Thanks for letting me know!" (Smart Replies are big on exclamation points.) I started to resent the A.I., which seemed to be learning my speech patterns faster than I could outsmart it. Just as I decided that I'd thwart the machine mind by answering my messages with "Cool!", the service started offering me several "Cool" varietals. Suddenly, I could answer with "Sounds cool" or "Cool, thanks" or the dreaded "Cool, I'll check it out!"
These include Smart Compose, a feature that finishes your sentences for you with the help of robot intelligence, and Nudges, a feature that bumps unanswered e-mails to the top of your in-box, making you feel increasingly guilty with every sign-in. As with many technological updates that are suddenly imposed on unsuspecting users, the new Gmail interface has been met with much annoyance. When my in-box started offering me Smart Replies, I felt a little offended. How dare it guess what I want to say, I thought. I -- a professional writer! -- have more to offer than just "Got it!" or "Love it!" or "Thanks for letting me know!" (Smart Replies are big on exclamation points.) I started to resent the A.I., which seemed to be learning my speech patterns faster than I could outsmart it. Just as I decided that I'd thwart the machine mind by answering my messages with "Cool!", the service started offering me several "Cool" varietals. Suddenly, I could answer with "Sounds cool" or "Cool, thanks" or the dreaded "Cool, I'll check it out!"
I try and stay away from the so-called "smart" replies. It feels insincere to have an algorithm write my response for me.
I'm ok with canned responses, but I wish they'd drop the damn exclamation mark from every freaking option. I don't scream "THANK YOU!!!!!" or "WILL DO!!!!!" when I talk. Every damn option they give me has an exclamation mark.
Oh, while I'm bitching, they should also add a newline break after their responses. It looks rather dumb without a line of white space between your signature and their canned reply. I've been secretly hoping that GOOG machine learning notices I remove the ! from every reply and add that line of white space myself...this is machine learning...right?
The danger from computers is not that they will eventually get as smart as men, but that we will meanwhile agree to meet them halfway. (Bernard Avishai)
No, sorry Google, I'll write my own fucking emails, in my own writing style, with words of my choosing ... I'm not interested in your bullshit predictive algorithms trying to inject themselves into my communications.
This is literally one of the dumbest and annoying features I've ever fucking seen in a while.
Sorry, but I can type fast enough and have a good enough grasp of English that I don't need your goddamned fucking help.
Google really are becoming assholes.