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Gmail thinks I'm stupid, so I left

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Re: Gmail thinks I'm stupid, so I left

#281

Post by insane_dreamer »

apparent wrote: post #5

What surprises me most about gmail and AI is that they seem really quite bad at filtering out obvious spam. I get so many messages from people I have never heard from, on relatively new domains, with endings like "if this isn't relevant for you right now, say "not now" and I'll not circle back" (a clear attempt to allow unsubscribe without using the word). How is it that they haven't figured out how to stop these mes…

I get spam in my gmail all the time. And worse. Just minutes ago received a very official looking email from Bank of America telling me I had received a wire transfer.

Re: Gmail thinks I'm stupid, so I left

#282

Post by carlosjobim »

xp84 wrote: post #107
tim-tday wrote: post #50

The key point here is not that they think you’re stupid but that they refuse to let you say no. One of the Google founders (Sergei I think) read the book “nudge” and fell in love with it. What Google product managers fail to realize is that a hard nudge is called a shove. And removing the ability to say no is theft of consent. They continue to do it because it works and there’s nobody left there with enough courage t…

> "nobody left there with enough courage to stop them" I'd add it's also that there's nobody left to compete with them, either. They own the only desktop browser that matters, and basically the entire concept of the mobile phone itself outside the US (Android), and it seems like 50% or so of the corporate email market, 80% of the consumer email market, a high percentage of the advertising market. I don't think pre-19…

> I'd add it's also that there's nobody left to compete with them, either.

Except for the largest and most profitable company in the world, that is.

Re: Gmail thinks I'm stupid, so I left

#285

Post by programmertote »

Not related to using LLMs for writing email, but something that bothers me about using Gmail lately.

There were a couple of lass action lawsuits (like this one: www.GoogleWebAppActivityLawsuit.com) against Google. The emails from both lawsuits went straight to my Gmail account's 'Spam' folder. I'm glad I review my spam box regularly. Hopefully, it's just the false positive effect of the Gmail's spam filter.

Re: Gmail thinks I'm stupid, so I left

#286

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

why_at wrote: post #151

I can appreciate LLMs for some use cases, but writing emails for the user is the one that really baffles me. It's one thing if you don't speak English well and could use some help making yourself understood, but the amount of native speakers using this is so strange to me. How does this help you? If you can write to the LLM telling it what kind of email to write, you might as well just write the email.

Ronny Chieng's speech at Harvard's Class Day that went viral put it well, something along the lines of "AI can write emails and summarize threads for you. You know who else can do that? Me."

Re: Gmail thinks I'm stupid, so I left

#287

Post by monkpit »

munk-a wrote: post #210
sebmellen wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most frustrating thing to me is to receive a 5-paragraph-plus email that was clearly written with some AI that filled in the email with vapid and useless talking points, like "Let me know if you need any other blah blah blah; While there is clearly a need for system improvement, we are working hard to address the underlying and fundamental issue; This is a lesson that it's not just a feature, it's a critical path…

Specifically, lets imagine LLMs as compilers - you're passing your prompt through to get some pretty language at the end. Don't send me your compiled code, send me your prompt. Let it be rude, if the wording is awkward I guarantee I can understand it just as well as an LLM, ignore the fact that my daughter just graduated and offering hallucinated platitudes. Send me the actual question, don't make me try and decompil…

Either rely upon everyone else changing their behavior, or give up and use your LLM to re-compress incoming messages to be informationally dense as you see fit.

Re: Gmail thinks I'm stupid, so I left

#288

Post by phyzix5761 »

dude250711 wrote: post #190
phyzix5761 wrote: post #170

I haven't used the Gmail UI in almost a decade now; I connect using my own email client. But this sounds terrible. I think the incentives at Google haven't changed. Engineers want promotions and in many teams how you achieve that is through pushing features with tons of user engagement. The features tend to include few options to opt out.

Did you mean investor engagement perhaps? Or some promotion committee engagement? AI is Google+ 2.0.

No I meant the internal culture at these big tech companies is to push out features that get mass adoption in order to get promoted. If you push out a feature that is hard to turn off and is forced on 100% of users then you're on your way to that goal.

Re: Gmail thinks I'm stupid, so I left

#289

Post by 0x59 »

A gmail expat, I've been over at posteo for about a decade. Couldn't imagine a reason to go back for my personal account.

I've used gmail for corpo email since, but I don't have a choice there.

Re: Gmail thinks I'm stupid, so I left

#290

Post by neuropacabra »

True, search took a shot too. I am on DDG - not perfect, but at least I can I don't know...search the internet and not talk to LLMs about it? I am not anti AI, I am using AI a lot - I also search things occasionally in ChatGPT, but when I go to search the internet I want to go to search to the internet. Gmail I don't use for very long time, having my own domain and using email elsewhere...only YouTube is something I keep returning back.
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