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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.
The things you miss when you actually have an email client. :)
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?
What would they prefer? *Fuck you*?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Me too.
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)
I'll wait until the 'Done' version.
How about a "smart pickup line" feature I can use at the singles bar tonight?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
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.
I think this is what lead to the borg. The Hive Mind of auto-complete.
Personally I think an AI is smart enough to have suggested phrases in your reply, you really shouldn't be saying this over email at all, or just plain shouldn't be saying it.
In other words, automated response convey so little information, why say it in the first place?
Because software can't clean toilets?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Composition suggestions, piss off.
This is where having a mail client, be it Thunderbird, mail.app, or even Outlook comes in handy. This completely bypasses these types of shenanigans and psychological tricks.
Was your post a Gmail smart reply?
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
I don't feel any pressure to make my emails seem as if they were written by a machine. At least not according to my current configuration parameters.
Sent from my Commodore 64
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Try these:
Suck my water flooded basement using your wet vac.
Blow it out your port 8080 in the form of UDP.
Fuck you and the other persons invited to this event for that specific purpose.
Make America get educated again.
Trump is a illiterate jacka55 who cares only about himself.
Hillary is a irrelevant person no longer running for political office.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
> The dreaded "k."
You need two additional K's for it to be dreaded.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Lord Refa: Ink on a page!
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
How do I set my default reply to "Up yours!"
Have gnu, will travel.
Just what I needed: another reason to avoid gmail like the plague. It's the email account I use when I fear that I might receive spam from a new contact or a vendor (that wants me to set up an account to receive "special offers"--which are almost certainly not that special). I wonder if Samsung or Comcast will be impressed with replies to their special offers littered with snazzy "Cool!!!" exclamations?
If this is what being a near-monopoly thinks is innovation, bring on the anti-trust legal eagles.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
and look over the cliff, you'll see the packaged on: and best before: dates.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Just tried it though, and google composition suggestions is limited to the most bland cliches imaginable.
It will take a lot to get a poetic masterpiece out of it.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Rather saddens me, actually. I'm trying to remember the last time the google had a good idea without 10 bad ideas piled on top. Email is an especially sore wound, since there' so much room for improvement there.
I've given up wondering how the google profits from supporting scammers and spammers. Makes as much sense (= zero) as wondering why they don't fix the moderation on Slashdot.
The specific email feature I actually want the most right now is an email system that will bounce any confidential-mode email that anyone tries to send me.
Excuse me, but I have to get back to grading my student's homework in email. I know that this new quick-response is supposed to be time-saving rather than dehumanizing, but it certainly is useless to me and I think I will pledge NEVER to use it. Just like the confidential-mode BS.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Q: How many software engineers does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: None, that's a hardware problem!
Q: How many hardware engineers does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: We assumed you were going to handle that in software!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
and run your own server at home.
Or in a bathroom closet!
I don't even like autocorrect turned on, I sure as fuck don't want the gods-be-damned computer to finish sentences for me.
Blow it out your
Ass, motorcycle man!
I am the devil, do you understand?
Just what will you give me for your
Titties and beer?
I suppose you noticed this little
Contract here...
You're goddam right, you son-of-a-whore,
That's about the only reason I learned writing for
Gimme that paper, bet ya ass I will sign
'Cause i need a beer, 'n it's titty-squeezin' time
You don't have to use Gmail. You can get your own hosting ...
How nice for you.
But some of us are stuck with what our employers picked for the company's standard. (And we must use that, rather than going around it, because of the Sarbanes Oxley act's email retention requirements.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Just this week I was pondering the same thing with the choices offered by Google's SMS message App on my Android phone.
I came to the conclusion we are training Google's natural language AIs to understand the message we are responding to. The response we make allows the algorithm to categories the original message. If we type something new, we've just told the AI it got the choices wrong.
Actually choosing the dumb responses is confirming the AI natural language understanding, the positive feedback stimuli, typing something new is training stimuli.