Now where did they get all that training data...
Write Emails Faster with Smart Compose in Gmail
191–200 of 200 posts
Re: Write Emails Faster with Smart Compose in Gmail
#192Smart reply/compose might be the most dystopian thing I've seen come out of Google, which is saying something. Beyond the obvious reduction in conversational authenticity, it threatens to homogenize our voices themselves. I would imagine that after you've been saying "close enough" for a while, the smart replies start to warp the way you phrase things mentally, instead of the other way around.
This comment already seems quaint after having seen the Duplex demo.
Re: Write Emails Faster with Smart Compose in Gmail
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sending me robot-generated messages is quite antisocial!
See scrollaway's response above. A lot of the text you already read is robot-generated. More than half the words in this comment were generated via autocorrect or auto complete in some fashion. It's still useful and thoughtful though.
> A lot of the text you already read is robot-generated. More than half the words in this comment were generated via autocorrect or auto complete in some fashion. It's still useful and thoughtful though.
Just to be clear, I don't find these things reassuring, it just makes me think you don't care about communicating very much. Please accept that some people find machine-generated communication to be gross and don't want to be subjected to it, whether or not you understand.
Re: Write Emails Faster with Smart Compose in Gmail
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
See scrollaway's response above. A lot of the text you already read is robot-generated. More than half the words in this comment were generated via autocorrect or auto complete in some fashion. It's still useful and thoughtful though.
> A lot of the text you already read is robot-generated. More than half the words in this comment were generated via autocorrect or auto complete in some fashion. It's still useful and thoughtful though. Just to be clear, I don't find these things reassuring, it just makes me think you don't care about communicating very much. Please accept that some people find machine-generated communication to be gross and don't w…
On the other hand, I care about communicating so much that I want to focus solely on the thoughts, not the form. So I defer the form (such as spelling and completing phrases) to a tool, so that I can focus on the content. This is essentially the same thing that writing tools like Hemingway do. They force you to focus on content, whereas autocomplete lets you focus on content.
Saying you don't want to be subjected to machine generated communication to me says that you don't want to read anything written in the past 10 or so years. Practically everything written in that time frame is in some way machine generated or edited.
Like I said, just because something is in part machine generated doesn't make it not thoughtful.
Re: Write Emails Faster with Smart Compose in Gmail
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
> A lot of the text you already read is robot-generated. More than half the words in this comment were generated via autocorrect or auto complete in some fashion. It's still useful and thoughtful though. Just to be clear, I don't find these things reassuring, it just makes me think you don't care about communicating very much. Please accept that some people find machine-generated communication to be gross and don't w…
On the other hand, I care about communicating so much that I want to focus solely on the thoughts, not the form. So I defer the form (such as spelling and completing phrases) to a tool, so that I can focus on the content. This is essentially the same thing that writing tools like Hemingway do. They force you to focus on content, whereas autocomplete lets you focus on content. Saying you don't want to be subjected to…
I think trying to suggest spellcheck and your email client writing sentences for you as the same thing is incredibly disingenuous. One fixes the content, one generates it.
Re: Write Emails Faster with Smart Compose in Gmail
#196This is basically autocorrect on the level of phrases. If that's true, this will have an enormously homogenizing effect on the way we speak (spell check alone has caused an actual shrinkage of the English lexicon [1]). I wrote extensively about this for Mondo 2000: ( http://www.mondo2000.com/2018/01/17/pink-lexical-goop-dark-s... ) [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/srep00313#references
This is happening everywhere. We're being made more and more homogeneous. The same applies to other aspects of our life, e.g. music, films etc. The general rule is what is popular is safer, so it's being promoted more. In this case what is less popular is not even given a chance to surface - no matter if it's popular radio or YouTube recommendations.
Maybe now that you are older and wiser you are seeing the patterns.
Re: Write Emails Faster with Smart Compose in Gmail
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
On the other hand, I care about communicating so much that I want to focus solely on the thoughts, not the form. So I defer the form (such as spelling and completing phrases) to a tool, so that I can focus on the content. This is essentially the same thing that writing tools like Hemingway do. They force you to focus on content, whereas autocomplete lets you focus on content. Saying you don't want to be subjected to…
I think trying to suggest spellcheck and your email client writing sentences for you as the same thing is incredibly disingenuous. One fixes the content, one generates it.
I'm suggesting that autocomplete of words and autocomplete of short phrases aren't substantively different, yes. Especially given that a lot of mobile keyboards already essentially do this.
I can type "I" and then my phone's keyboard will suggest "be there at" as the phrase completion it does this a single word at a time, but in practice it does let me complete a phrase. If I don't want to say that, I'm capable of not using the autocomplete suggestions. There's no substantive difference with Smart Compose except that I don't have to confirm between every word, so its slightly more efficient.
I'm not sure what you think smart compose is doing, but "writing sentences for you" isn't it.[1] So no, I think you're either misunderstanding what this is, or perhaps you're being disingenuous by describing it as something that writes sentences for you.
[1]: Granted given the Duplex demo and other work in the NLP space, I expect that in certain contexts a tool that given an instruction like "set up a meeting with John this week" that schedules it over emails (like x.ai[2], which has been around for quite some time) is totally possible, but Smart Compose isn't it.
[2]: https://x.ai/
Re: Write Emails Faster with Smart Compose in Gmail
#198Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is happening everywhere. We're being made more and more homogeneous. The same applies to other aspects of our life, e.g. music, films etc. The general rule is what is popular is safer, so it's being promoted more. In this case what is less popular is not even given a chance to surface - no matter if it's popular radio or YouTube recommendations.
I feel like we are becoming less homogeneous. When I was a kid everyone watched cable television after dinner and everyone watched all of the same shows. Thursday night was Friends. Friday night was Full House and Family Matters, etc. Now I find everyone I know watches all kinds of shows, many of which I've never even heard of. Not to mention YouTube which is whole new layers upon layers of content. In an odd way, I…
Thanks for this. Sometimes I feel like I'm taking crazy pills when I read something about how some thing or another is worse today than it was "back in the day". It basically never meshes with my experience of that time.
Re: Write Emails Faster with Smart Compose in Gmail
#199Earlier quoted context omitted.
> A lot of the text you already read is robot-generated. More than half the words in this comment were generated via autocorrect or auto complete in some fashion. It's still useful and thoughtful though. Just to be clear, I don't find these things reassuring, it just makes me think you don't care about communicating very much. Please accept that some people find machine-generated communication to be gross and don't w…
On the other hand, I care about communicating so much that I want to focus solely on the thoughts, not the form. So I defer the form (such as spelling and completing phrases) to a tool, so that I can focus on the content. This is essentially the same thing that writing tools like Hemingway do. They force you to focus on content, whereas autocomplete lets you focus on content. Saying you don't want to be subjected to…
> I want to focus solely on the thoughts, not the form.
I think this is a dangerously stupid way to think about linguistics.
Re: Write Emails Faster with Smart Compose in Gmail
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
On the other hand, I care about communicating so much that I want to focus solely on the thoughts, not the form. So I defer the form (such as spelling and completing phrases) to a tool, so that I can focus on the content. This is essentially the same thing that writing tools like Hemingway do. They force you to focus on content, whereas autocomplete lets you focus on content. Saying you don't want to be subjected to…
> I want to focus solely on the thoughts, not the form. I think this is a dangerously stupid way to think about linguistics.
I mean in certain contexts absolutely. I certainly wouldn't use smart compose to write a novel, but then I don't think it would be very helpful for creative writing where or writing where my focus is on tone.
But for otherwise mechanical things ("hey can we set up a meeting tomorrow", "do you want to grab lunch at ____ today"), the form is mostly irrelevant. It's the kind of thing where if we weren't in a formal context, I'd write as "hey u wanna grab fud at ____ later". I'm not losing anything by having a tool formalize that to "Hey do you want to eat lunch at ____ today." Again, we already do that a lot. As far as I can tell, this is just doing that a bit faster.