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No Thanks, Google. I'll Speak for Myself

tomshardware.com

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Re: No Thanks, Google. I'll Speak for Myself

#2
I see their point about "your" voice being sucked out of your emails if you use autocomplete for 90% of them.

I don't really care about that though. Most people I know have moved on from using email for personal communication and only use it for business. In that situation, I don't really care if my email sounds like me or not. It's just performing a function. It's not a creative expression. It's not any different than Visual Studio completing a line of overly verbose C# for me.

Re: No Thanks, Google. I'll Speak for Myself

#3
post #2

I see their point about "your" voice being sucked out of your emails if you use autocomplete for 90% of them. I don't really care about that though. Most people I know have moved on from using email for personal communication and only use it for business. In that situation, I don't really care if my email sounds like me or not. It's just performing a function. It's not a creative expression. It's not any different th…

[deleted]

Re: No Thanks, Google. I'll Speak for Myself

#5
I like to be clear on whether I'm interacting with a human or a bot because different social conventions apply. If you're human, I'll treat you like one, and that means giving you some consideration at the expense of expediency. If you're a bot, let's just cut to the fucking chase. So a bot that acts like a human (with hems and haws) is just wasting my time. Ditto a human being that has been reduced to a bot by following a script.

Re: No Thanks, Google. I'll Speak for Myself

#6
The art of letter writing has been declining for a century. Most people don't even use email for most daily communication, but instant messaging. And it seems a lot of instant messaging boils down to pictures, emoji, memes, and short responses ("I'll be there at XXX")

The ship has really already sailed on longform communication, perhaps out of laziness or cost/benefit.

Part of what we're seeing with the automation going on is giving ordinary people some semblance of what the elite have had for a long time: administrative assistants/personal assistants. "Take a memo for me, write up an invitation letter and send it to my wife's sister" For much of the uber powerful and wealthy, gruntwork communications have taken the original person out of the message.

We could argue whether or not everyone getting their own AI admin assistant is good or bad for society (will everyone just have their assistants talk to each other, and no one will talk directly anymore?) But I must admit, I hate dealing with non-friends/family in communications that involve transactions. There's nothing I hate more than having to book stuff, call customer service, or write emails to service departments.

Re: No Thanks, Google. I'll Speak for Myself

#7
I find myself surprisingly agreeing with this article. The "everyone's voice begins to sound the same" aspect of it is something I hadn't even considered, and does feel a little bit unnerving to me. Maybe unnerving isn't even the right word, but I can't think of a more appropriate one. Luckily though, soon I'll be able to ask google for the correct one.

Re: No Thanks, Google. I'll Speak for Myself

#10
post #2

I see their point about "your" voice being sucked out of your emails if you use autocomplete for 90% of them. I don't really care about that though. Most people I know have moved on from using email for personal communication and only use it for business. In that situation, I don't really care if my email sounds like me or not. It's just performing a function. It's not a creative expression. It's not any different th…

> Most people I know have moved on from using email for personal communication and only use it for business.

That experience completely differs from mine. Maybe I just prefer email to text or Facebook messages, but the same principle applies to wherever you are writing something to friend or family. Wouldn't you get the same problem, just elsewhere?

Responding to my mother's birthday wishes does seem like it's a different kind of activity than autocompleting C# code, even though both can be executed with autocomplete to get a good valid output.

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