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I Received an AI Email

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Re: I Received an AI Email

#131

Post by devjab »

cpach wrote: post #122
namanyayg wrote: post #2

This is going to become more common everywhere. If the dead internet theory isn't already true, it is going to be soon. Such "personalized" cold outreach is seen as the next holy grail by marketers and will be a common sight on LinkedIn, Twitter, Email etc, soon.

Recruiters on LinkedIn already used automation for outreach even before LLMs became popular.

LinkedIn is already on this. The reason they had their little “skills tests” is because what they used to sell was the collection of “skills” listed on your profile. I say skills because I’m not sure what the English word for knowing C# and listing it on your linked in profile is and I can’t seem to find it.

Anyway, I assume that the reason they are dismantling the skills system (and their verification quizzes) and moving things into personal “projects” is because it’s too easy for marketers to skip the LinkedIn tools if it remained the way it was. Now, however, with Microsoft own LLMs trundling through our data, they’re going to maintain their monopoly on easy access to professionals that meet certain requirements.

I guess it could also be because those skill quizzes had their answers readily available all over the interwebs.

Re: I Received an AI Email

#132

Post by eru »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #82
eru wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [...] while his boss sends even more spam and possibly makes even more money due to automation? Wouldn't the exact argument apply to that boss as well?

unless this is a big multinational spam organization probably the boss of the person sending the email is the highest up, but no matter what there will be someone on the top who does not get fired and will be able to reap all the rewards of the AI automation, at least until the AI revolution puts them up against the wall.

There's presumably heavier competition from other spammers, until everything is in equilibrium again. The wallets of potential spam victims only have so much total cash.

Re: I Received an AI Email

#133

Post by okal »

saturn8601 wrote: post #94
castigatio wrote: post #17

It's a sign of things to come. We're going to have our own AI agents that filter and respond (or not respond) to these kinds of messages. Agents interacting with other agents. The bar to get hold of a real person is going to become that much higher. It is going to be messy for some time as agents war with other agents to reach the human eyeball. Some assholes are going to make a ton of money in the short term exploit…

Technology ruins everything it touches doesn't it? I was recently thinking about this Ozempic fad and how it will lead to no one being overweight but just be dependant on Ozempic...until food producers that made everyone fat in the first place with their processed junk will produce Ozempic resistant foods...and then we are really in a world of hurt.

What incentive do they have to make Ozempic resistant food? Ozempic resistance seems like an odd thing to optimize for. Or are you suggesting it will happen accidentally?

Re: I Received an AI Email

#134

Post by bpfrh »

slhck wrote: post #110
zandert wrote: post #37

Really makes me appreciate that unsolicited emails are illegal in some European countries like Germany

Unfortunately, not in a business context, where marketers can claim "legitimate interest" in various ways. Also, in which way would it matter that they are illegal? Random companies keep sending them anyway; there are virtually no legal repercussions here.

Curious, do you mean in business to business?

Otherwise I don't think you can argue any legitimate interest.

Re: I Received an AI Email

#136

Post by cpach »

staunton wrote: post #126
cpach wrote: post #114

If John Doe crafts a message himself and sends it to 100000 recipients, or if he uses ChatGPT to generate a message and then send it to 100000 recipients, what’s the difference? Both are unsolicited emails, i.e. spam. I feel confident that Gmail’s spam filter will be able to handle this quite well. I’m betting that the introduction of LLMs will not change the fundamentals of spam-fighting. https://paulgraham.com/spam…

Using a language model, one can craft an individually targeted email for each of those 100000 recipients. How do you "handle" this without doing anything current spam filters don't? Can you prevent an individual from sending 100000 emails a week? Can you make it cost them money?

Using an LLM to generate 100000 letters is hardly free, is it?

And AFAIK, Bayesian filtering (by the recipient) doesn’t require any knowledge of what other people has received.

Re: I Received an AI Email

#137

Post by simion314 »

ChilledTonic wrote: post #6

I’m actually thrilled by this, as it means all the hack marketers that spam my inbox incessantly with whatever product they’re hucking - this time for sure perfect for my business, in spite of the fact I’ve ignored their last ten emails - are all out of a job, and good riddance. The author sounds unfamiliar with this brand of marketing email, so I can see why it would come off disquieting to find it’s all AI - but it…

If this works those spammers will make more money and send more emails scamming more people. Maybe some politician would fall for soemthing like this, be public ally embarrassed and lose a lot of money and then something more will be done to address this spammers and scammers .

Re: I Received an AI Email

#138

Post by leobg »

cpach wrote: post #114

If John Doe crafts a message himself and sends it to 100000 recipients, or if he uses ChatGPT to generate a message and then send it to 100000 recipients, what’s the difference? Both are unsolicited emails, i.e. spam. I feel confident that Gmail’s spam filter will be able to handle this quite well. I’m betting that the introduction of LLMs will not change the fundamentals of spam-fighting. https://paulgraham.com/spam…

Interesting article. Thanks for posting.

> Assuming they could solve the problem of the headers, the spam of the future will probably look something like this: > > Hey there. Thought you should check out the following: > http://www.27meg.com/foo

Funny. 20 years later, that’s indeed how many spam messages look like.

Re: I Received an AI Email

#139

Post by bowsamic »

jstummbillig wrote: post #120
kazinator wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you know it isn't exactly the same people, with zero reduction in headcount? Designing the content of spam e-mails sounds like a small aspect of the "job". If AI spams start fooling people more reliably, that's not something to celebrate. This blogger thought, at first, that it came from an actual reader. I can't remember the last time I thought that a spam was genuine, even for a moment. Sometimes the subject…

If you do nothing that is discernible from noise (be that manually or through AI), unless your explicit goal is to generate noise, your ROI is 0. Sure, AI spam can severely disrupt peoples attention by competing with "real" people more competently. But people will not have twice the attention. We will simply shut down our channels when the number of real-person-level-ai-spam goes to infinity, because there is no othe…

The emails are discernible from noise though. They literally have a signal to noise ratio higher than one. Noise would be pure rng output. So I don’t know what you’re getting at

Re: I Received an AI Email

#140

Post by prmoustache »

gambiting wrote: post #107
prmoustache wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well it is quite easy. No real humam has been using email anymore in the last 5 years or so. Even in the workplace it is now common for most people to have a signature saying "only contact me via ms teams". I am pretty sure that sooner or later the spam will find its way on teams/slack/discord the same way it does on whatsapp but at the very least they are easier to block permanently.

>>No real humam has been using email anymore in the last 5 years or so Wow, that's some extrapolating from a personal bubble if I've ever seen one. Plenty of workplaces still have email as their default communication method.

There is obviously a little bit of exaggeration but when I open my email at the workplace the bulk of the mails are:

- semi automated reminders (you haven't filled your timesheets!), usually sent by humans but that do not expect answers - internal newsletters - general HR news - special news: electrical issues at the office, stay at home! - spam

Bottom line: none is addressed to you as a particular human, nor require answers.

I am sure it changes for people who have interactions with people outside of the company but I would hate having their job and don't understand why companies haven't adopted XMPP widely to make those kind of interactions. I can theorically receive spam via XMPP, but it requires at the very least that I approve the relationship before hand so if it comes from a domain I don't expect I have no reason to accept that trust.

But on personal side, I haven't received anything from a human for years. People I know usually know my phone number and contact me via instant messaging.

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