> Not a single person detected they were corresponding with an AI. Some asked how I found their email, but no one questioned the authenticity of the messages.
... shall we tell him?
I Received an AI Email
551–560 of 597 posts
Re: I Received an AI Email
#552Earlier quoted context omitted.
Based on the response upstream, I assume they were talking about the latter. There's no art to door to door sales reading a boilerplate. There is an art to researching a customer and curating a proper response to make them feel good.
They said artists. Artists means people who make art commonly. Not everyone with a non scientific skill. The word was incorrect no matter what they meant.
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Re: I Received an AI Email
#553Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sales people were never artists. Cold calling is not art.
cold calling isn't an art, but smooth talking/networking is. There's no exact science to making people feel good and wanting to form a relationship with you (despite centuries of literature claiming that there is).
Programming and just about every other job is an art as well with that argument. If we aren't allowed to automate away that then we aren't allowed to automate anything.
Re: I Received an AI Email
#554Earlier quoted context omitted.
In an optimistic POV of this, eh, why not? if models handle my day to day minutia so I have more time, why the hell not... (I know this is very optimistic POV and not realistic but still)
Because spam is incredibly selfish. You're trying to take the time and attention of as many people as possible, without regard for whether or not they'll benefit. One safeguard people have is knowing that it costs something to send in some way to contact them. I'm this case, the sender's time and attention. LLM spam aims to foil that safeguard,. intentionally.
If an LLM will take care of other LLM emailing me, their last point comes true, no? I never have to deal with spam.
Re: I Received an AI Email
#555The author links to the somewhat dystopian blog where the email sender is quite proud of their work. Their words (or perhaps that of an LLM): > Could an AI agent craft compelling emails that would capture people's attention and drive engagement, all while maintaining a level of personalization that feels human? I decided to find out. > The real hurdle was ensuring the emails seemed genuinely personalized and not spam…
I remember seeing a talk from Jonathan Blow where he made a comparison: in the 1960s top engineers worked for NASA and put a man on the moon in a decade, basically doing computations by hand. Today, we have super advanced computers and tech companies enjoy 100× times more of the top engineers than NASA ever had, and they are all working toward making you click on ads more.
No wonder. Have you seen the Federal government’s debt? It’s existential. At least your grandparents got to live a nice life.
usdebtclock.org
Re: I Received an AI Email
#556Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Until _that_ company gets overrun by MBAs who are profit-driven then they start injecting ads into the results. Found companies with people that share your values. Hire people that share your values. Reject the vampires. Build things for people.
Unfortunately it turns out that at the end of the day one of the most common values is the love of massive piles of money. Vampires don't catch on fire in sunlight like storybook villains, they will invite themselves in, sidle up beside you, and be your best friend. Then in the moment you are weak they will plunge their fangs in. Competing with bad actors is very, very hard. They will be fat with investor money, they…
Someone has to pay off the $1 Trillion per year in Interest on the U.S. Federal Debt. Who’s that going to be? Either it’s them or it’s you. At least your grandparents got to live a nice life.
Re: I Received an AI Email
#557Earlier quoted context omitted.
Based on the response upstream, I assume they were talking about the latter. There's no art to door to door sales reading a boilerplate. There is an art to researching a customer and curating a proper response to make them feel good.
They said artists. Artists means people who make art commonly. Not everyone with a non scientific skill. The word was incorrect no matter what they meant.
I don't always have perfect grammar on Hacker News either. Charitable interpretation.
Re: I Received an AI Email
#558Earlier quoted context omitted.
cold calling isn't an art, but smooth talking/networking is. There's no exact science to making people feel good and wanting to form a relationship with you (despite centuries of literature claiming that there is).
Programming and just about every other job is an art as well with that argument. If we aren't allowed to automate away that then we aren't allowed to automate anything.
It'll all vary based on what and who is automated. I'm sure there'd be less(but non-zero) fuss if we were trying to automate plumbing. I'm sure there'd be entire riots over trying to automate professional sports leagues.
I'd say the art industry is somewhere in-between because of
1. Being a traditionally disrespected but non-trivial skill to acquire 2. A skill valuable for advertisement (good art -> pretty ads -> more money 3. A valuable skill, but not one many industries need full time work from 4. Due to #1, a "vulnerable" industry. There won't be too many millionaire artists to fight back against the AI Overlords compared to, say, Politicians or businessesmen.
But it's not like I have any say on who or what gets affected.
Re: I Received an AI Email
#559Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't really think that AI is the central issue here. The issue is that Kurt, the founder of Wisp, is a liar. He misrepresented himself as a big fan of all these blogs, who's read their posts etc. and that's how he achieved such a high response rate. In effect he deceived people into trusting him enough to spend their time on a response. Now ordinarily this would be a little "white lie" and probably not a huge deal…
Wisp founder Raymond Yeh is a spammer and liar. Kurt was a victim of Raymond Yeh's fraud.
Thank you I got the names confused!
Re: I Received an AI Email
#560Earlier quoted context omitted.
And you're qualified to declare this because? Are we supposed to silently suffer because capitalism says so? Spammers and salespeople are pretty much on the same level as criminals in my book. Heck, whenever someone calls me for some sort of unsolicited survey or similar, I think "these people have such low standards, they would also sell heroin on the street if they had any source."
Suffering is "the state of undergoing pain, distress, or hardship". Having to delete the occasional marketing or sales email that get past your spam filter is hardly any of these. Annoying or frustrating, yes. Suffering? Really?
Are you working in marketing, perhaps?