The demo gif is too long. Gave me the feeling that this product would force me to waste a lot of time waiting for it to load
Show HN: Say Less – AI summarization tool in the Gmail compose window
21–30 of 58 posts
Re: Show HN: Say Less – AI summarization tool in the Gmail compose window
#22Have you tested this in marketing emails? that seems to be the profitable marketplace. Even if you can prove 5% increase in roi that's worth a lot to a lot of people!
There are some interesting studies showing short emails perform better but we haven't found that to be true it seems the message is the biggest factor. Some way to improve the message is even more valuable but also likely a much harder ML task
Re: Show HN: Say Less – AI summarization tool in the Gmail compose window
#23Nice job doing the last mile and making it a usable service.
Just guessing: SMMRY or Quillbot with a little enhancement to preserve the salutation?
Re: Show HN: Say Less – AI summarization tool in the Gmail compose window
#24Super cool. Would add this as a company gmail feature. However, I also write emails to reduce time spent in conversation, so while I have learned to be more terse, when I'm not, it's to provide references so that I can shorten or preclude a conversation. An ML email shortener is a fantastic idea for business comms, with the caveat that short email culture can also reward vagueness.
Shortness shouldn't be the goal. Clarity should be the goal. The problem is that clarity is a much harder thing to test for.
I would pay money for a tool that checks my technical writing for reading level and warns me when passages go above Nth grade. Most people in the US graduate high school with an 8th grade reading level, and some people may not be able to read above a 5th grade level. That means tiny words and short sentences are king.
There are also metrics for clarity and simplicity that proxy on number of syllables. Those are really useful and don't require a complex ML model.
Re: Show HN: Say Less – AI summarization tool in the Gmail compose window
#25I think there is still a way to go here. For example, the "really" in "really appreciate" isn't useful. Also the last sentence in the "summarized" version reads: "If for any reason you haven't let, let me know..." I would also that that the "for any reason" is not useful, it is again implied. You don't need "by now", it is implied.
Yep. It's missed some low-hanging fruit despite being very aggressive at removing other content
It's also deleted the important part of a sentence actually requesting feedback whilst retaining the largely content-free 'We're working hard to make life easier for developers and site owners' clause.
And if it was a human editing, I'd expect them to concatenate 'Thanks for joining' and 'I really appreciate you signing up' into 'Thanks for signing up' long before they started deleting links...
I think there's massive potential in the idea, but I'd hope at least the demo video could show something which is more tersely written and easier to read, rather than something which is merely shorter and less useful. That said, I might install it anyway since I can always reject edits I don't like.
Re: Show HN: Say Less – AI summarization tool in the Gmail compose window
#26Seriously. I already write short mails and put bullet points which makeout much smaller. This year one of things I want to do is write big emails like paragraphs atleast two.
Re: Show HN: Say Less – AI summarization tool in the Gmail compose window
#27I'm excited to see where this goes -- both this product and the general idea of using ML to reduce noise in interpersonal communications.
A human can read the shorter summary and add personal touches as they wish, but the first pass of what the model considers to be extraneous is interesting by itself.
I just put in a 300 word personal email and it spit out a 60 word summary that actually did extract the one concrete piece of news I was sharing, and just cut everything else. That's not precisely what I wanted in this case, but it wasn't a bad guess at all.
Side note: just finished a rewatch of Silicon Valley, I like that the sample text is from someone at Hooli, I wonder if it will change my .... to ... :)
Re: Show HN: Say Less – AI summarization tool in the Gmail compose window
#28The issue with efficient summarization is the necessity of context. For a message to be effectively summarized you require a bit of "theory of mind"[0], you need to have at least a decent idea of what the receiver already knows. This is something that, especially when done for a single message at a time (with no other info), likely doesn't have a global solution.
Edit: I should be clearer, I believe that the solution shown here does not have this capability, and the effort of using ML to do message summarization is flawed in the general case.
Re: Show HN: Say Less – AI summarization tool in the Gmail compose window
#29The issue with efficient summarization is the necessity of context. For a message to be effectively summarized you require a bit of "theory of mind"[0], you need to have at least a decent idea of what the receiver already knows. This is something that, especially when done for a single message at a time (with no other info), likely doesn't have a global solution. Edit: I should be clearer, I believe that the solution…
Your edit and summarization is quite clear. Thank you for that.
Re: Show HN: Say Less – AI summarization tool in the Gmail compose window
#30If this could convert passive voice to active voice, or underline it as an error, this could be a great technical writing tool for inexperienced writers. Good technical writing is hard, a tool similar to this could be useful.