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DeepBreath: Preventing angry emails with machine learning

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Re: DeepBreath: Preventing angry emails with machine learning

#41
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anytime someone has a scary thought about ML it all comes down to control problems - eg. the machine having the final say about what happens without human being able to override it. In gmail now, if you say "attached" in your email but don't attach something, you can still send the message, it just gives you a warning. You're consistently shown improved interfaces and content because of ML, yet those aren't scary and…

Look at red lights as an example. Those are just primitive robots. Yet, when I'm sitting at an empty intersection at night, even though I have excellent, advanced sensors in my eyes, I'm not allowed to just run a red light. Red lights aren't just a "helpful warning." The robots already have the final say in that arena, because human law (for now) backs them up. It's not based on scary movies... primitive robots alrea…

> Red lights aren't just a "helpful warning."

The town where I grew up has a red light which only changes when a weight sensor is tripped. But weight sensors are expensive, and the approaching two-lane road only has a sensor in one lane. Worse, it's calibrated for cars, so motorcycles never trip it.

Yes, only. If you ride up late at night on a motorcycle, you have a choice between committing a serious traffic offense and waiting several hours for the light to change. No, this problem isn't ever going to be addressed.

I think it's damned reasonable to be scared of what we'll get when people hand authority to machines. Not for Terminator reasons, but for simple bureaucratic stupidity.

Re: DeepBreath: Preventing angry emails with machine learning

#42
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at red lights as an example. Those are just primitive robots. Yet, when I'm sitting at an empty intersection at night, even though I have excellent, advanced sensors in my eyes, I'm not allowed to just run a red light. Red lights aren't just a "helpful warning." The robots already have the final say in that arena, because human law (for now) backs them up. It's not based on scary movies... primitive robots alrea…

That's a terrible example. He's talking about control and overrides; in that context, a red light is a literal counterexample of your point. You can violate systems with overrides, and doing so might have consequences, but that's distinct from systems you can't override which was kemendo's point on our fear of where the control lies. (If tomorrow we decide to swap the meaning of red and green, that control is still h…

A driver cannot control nor override a light -- they can't make it change quickly colors when an intersection is obviously empty. They can only ignore it entirely. That's different.

You wouldn't be "overriding" killer robots by hiding in underground tunnels. You'd just be avoiding them entirely.

My main argument though is that people's distrust comes from extrapolation of negative real life experiences, not just from the world of fiction.

Re: DeepBreath: Preventing angry emails with machine learning

#43
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at red lights as an example. Those are just primitive robots. Yet, when I'm sitting at an empty intersection at night, even though I have excellent, advanced sensors in my eyes, I'm not allowed to just run a red light. Red lights aren't just a "helpful warning." The robots already have the final say in that arena, because human law (for now) backs them up. It's not based on scary movies... primitive robots alrea…

That's a terrible example. He's talking about control and overrides; in that context, a red light is a literal counterexample of your point. You can violate systems with overrides, and doing so might have consequences, but that's distinct from systems you can't override which was kemendo's point on our fear of where the control lies. (If tomorrow we decide to swap the meaning of red and green, that control is still h…

[deleted]

Re: DeepBreath: Preventing angry emails with machine learning

#44
post #4

I wonder if machine learning will lead to worsening of the echo-chamber problem. "Error: The message cannot be sent because it does not conform to accepted groupthink."

Anytime someone has a scary thought about ML it all comes down to control problems - eg. the machine having the final say about what happens without human being able to override it. In gmail now, if you say "attached" in your email but don't attach something, you can still send the message, it just gives you a warning. You're consistently shown improved interfaces and content because of ML, yet those aren't scary and…

> I think people have seen way too many scary movies about AI, and it's tainted our whole discipline.

I think this is ridiculously unfair. My concerns about policies like this have nothing at all to do with strong AI. We don't need scary movies to see examples of software decisions made with no access to human overrides.

A simple and extremely topical example: years ago, my Google account somehow got screwed up. It decided I was 13, and never aged. Six years after I made it, I was still 13.

It turned out there was no way to fix that. If you were under 13, they would close your account for ToS violation. Then, after closure, you could fax proof of age and get your account fixed. But if your account was listed at 13, forever? No such luck. There was no way whatsoever to fix the problem. No phone number, and (as with all Google problems) lengthy support forum threads amounting to "deal with it".

I have no idea how this happened. But it was completely irreparable, until one day the bug got fixed and my age was right. That's the stuff I worry about - simple rules being applied absolutely, with no recourse to human judgement.

Re: DeepBreath: Preventing angry emails with machine learning

#45
post #16

Kind of crazy the Google Cloud team is using gmail.js to build this extension. Gmail.js is a side project by Kartik Talwar who just graduated college and the codebase isn't exactly active. I guess even Google can't find a good way to extend Gmail with their own APIs...

Google isn't a monolith. The author is on one team that wanted a way to encourage use of its services. They used an open source project to achieve it. Doesn't seem _that_ crazy to do rather than wait for some other team to build you an API.

Re: DeepBreath: Preventing angry emails with machine learning

#46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True story: I sent a technically correct, succinct email to someone in another division. They complained up to their VP, who talked to my VP, and then the s t rolled downhill on me. Allegedly, the problem was that I hadn't apologized that they were having a bad experience with a service that we offer.

I've also started questioning how I phrase my own work related e-mails. Yesterday I was sent one from a partner saying that some files we were to transfer to their FTP server (yeah, I know it's 2017) were missing. So I logged into the server manually and checked -- the files were there, created at 5 AM, just like they are everyday when the cron job that generates them was run. So I started my response by saying, "I j…

well in this case your reply IS very condescending. lmao. "I just checked the server manually and the files were there. Could you check again and let me know if they still aren't showing up for you?" would probably be a better way to phrase what you're saying.

Re: DeepBreath: Preventing angry emails with machine learning

#47
post #16

Kind of crazy the Google Cloud team is using gmail.js to build this extension. Gmail.js is a side project by Kartik Talwar who just graduated college and the codebase isn't exactly active. I guess even Google can't find a good way to extend Gmail with their own APIs...

I also think the Chrome team might be unhappy that the blog post confuses the terms "plugin" and "extension". So yea, Google is not a monolith.

Re: DeepBreath: Preventing angry emails with machine learning

#48
post #16

Kind of crazy the Google Cloud team is using gmail.js to build this extension. Gmail.js is a side project by Kartik Talwar who just graduated college and the codebase isn't exactly active. I guess even Google can't find a good way to extend Gmail with their own APIs...

Google isn't a monolith. The author is on one team that wanted a way to encourage use of its services. They used an open source project to achieve it. Doesn't seem _that_ crazy to do rather than wait for some other team to build you an API.

The original comment is meant as an observation rather than an attack. It's great to see the author of the post use gmail.js to quickly get the sentiment analysis working with 30 lines of code.

The library was a fun side project and has been used by many companies (big and small) over the past few years. Its always nice to see someone make a cool extension on top of gmail.

Here is another one that came out a while ago (uses gmail.js) and on the same theme as this original post:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2015/12/29/new_chrome_a...

Re: DeepBreath: Preventing angry emails with machine learning

#49
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anytime someone has a scary thought about ML it all comes down to control problems - eg. the machine having the final say about what happens without human being able to override it. In gmail now, if you say "attached" in your email but don't attach something, you can still send the message, it just gives you a warning. You're consistently shown improved interfaces and content because of ML, yet those aren't scary and…

Look at red lights as an example. Those are just primitive robots. Yet, when I'm sitting at an empty intersection at night, even though I have excellent, advanced sensors in my eyes, I'm not allowed to just run a red light. Red lights aren't just a "helpful warning." The robots already have the final say in that arena, because human law (for now) backs them up. It's not based on scary movies... primitive robots alrea…

That's not the machine though, that's the inflexibility of the human legal process. It's more than possible technologically to manage that exact problem (and is implemented elsewhere): sensors to detect a car and turn light or blinking yellows after a certain time of day.

So it's not the machines, it's humans ceding power to them voluntarily.

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