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Write Emails Faster with Smart Compose in Gmail

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Re: Write Emails Faster with Smart Compose in Gmail

#61

Post by rocqua »

dmazin wrote: post #36
baxtr wrote: post #23

I don’t understand the sentiment of the comments here (I’m no google fan!). Isn’t that just the natural evolution of word prediction like on a smartphone?

Yes. But let's extend that evolution -- if an AI can pretty much write a solid email, don't we basically become like a safety driver in a self-driving car? Not alluring.

Let the AI handle the form, let the human handle the content. If this leads to better or more efficient communication, all the better.

In the car analogy, as long as people get where they want to be, what is the issue?

Re: Write Emails Faster with Smart Compose in Gmail

#62

Post by dmazin »

rocqua wrote: post #61
dmazin wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. But let's extend that evolution -- if an AI can pretty much write a solid email, don't we basically become like a safety driver in a self-driving car? Not alluring.

Let the AI handle the form, let the human handle the content. If this leads to better or more efficient communication, all the better. In the car analogy, as long as people get where they want to be, what is the issue?

But here we're letting AI handle the content.

The issue is agency -- like the God of the margins, our agency being relegated to margins at the very least raises some questions for me!

Re: Write Emails Faster with Smart Compose in Gmail

#63

Post by dvfjsdhgfv »

dmazin wrote: post #33

This 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.

Re: Write Emails Faster with Smart Compose in Gmail

#64

Post by black_puppydog »

dmazin wrote: post #33

This 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

That looks like a nice page! As feedback: it lacks any kind of meta-information in human-readable form about what it is. The best I found was

Which was actually more helpful than the twitter or facebook bio texts :P

Re: Write Emails Faster with Smart Compose in Gmail

#66

Post by brlewis »

amelius wrote: post #56

I want this for code, not email ...

I'm actually not opposed to this feature in gmail. For code, it already exists, and it's terrible. "Hey, don't you want to catch this error?" Then people catch an error without actually doing anything about the error condition, causing another error to occur later, harder to diagnose.

In code, this sort of thing makes it easy to write programs that are skimmed, not read, with lots of tiny cracks for bugs to hide in.

Re: Write Emails Faster with Smart Compose in Gmail

#67

Post by astura »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #45
scrollaway wrote: post #21

So why exactly are people suddenly up in arms about this? How's it different from opening up your android phone and using google's spellcheck, with algorithms that predict your next word when you're typing? Never seen such atrociously negative comments to what's essentially a cool feature you can disable. PS: How many of the outraged people here are actually voting with their wallet and paying for something like Fast…

I pay for FastMail. Voted with my wallet two years ago. If I get any impression someone is writing me messages with this feature, I'll filter them into my trash. I want to speak to people, not Google.

>If I get any impression someone is writing me messages with this feature, I'll filter them into my trash. I want to speak to people, not Google.

This seems like an extreme overreaction and quite antisocial.

Re: Write Emails Faster with Smart Compose in Gmail

#68

Post by kazinator »

dmazin wrote: post #33

This 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

If you write a word your spellchecker doesn't like, and you accede to the spellchecker, then it's not actually a word. Not to you. An utterance is only a word if you believe it in it and are confident enough to defend it against the opinion of a dumb machine.

So this alleged culling of the lexicon by the spellchecker is largely a shakeout of non-words.

Firefox's edit widget is underlining "spellchecker" in red, but I'm hitting [reply] anyway. I don't think it needs a hyphen that badly.

Re: Write Emails Faster with Smart Compose in Gmail

#69

Post by toomuchtodo »

peatmoss wrote: post #58
_bxg1 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point the only reason I haven't ditched Gmail is because that's the email address I've used everywhere. Changing email addresses is even more problematic than changing physical addresses these days. The reason people are so upset is that it has a negative effect on the world even if people have the option to turn it off (and don't), and it has virtually no real benefit. It's the latest in the trend of tech co…

I've recommended it elsewhere in similar threads, but a nice middle ground between self-hosted email (lots of work), and a straight-up Gmail/Yahoo/Fastmail/Hotmail/Etc account is to buy your own domain and set up your MX records in accordance with Fastmail's (or whoever's) instructions. I've ported my email address / domain across several hosting providers now. I don't have to retrain anyone. Obviously this doesn't h…

The best time to start using your own domain for email was 10 years ago. The second best time is today.

Re: Write Emails Faster with Smart Compose in Gmail

#70

Post by ocdtrekkie »

_bxg1 wrote: post #46
scrollaway wrote: post #21

So why exactly are people suddenly up in arms about this? How's it different from opening up your android phone and using google's spellcheck, with algorithms that predict your next word when you're typing? Never seen such atrociously negative comments to what's essentially a cool feature you can disable. PS: How many of the outraged people here are actually voting with their wallet and paying for something like Fast…

At this point the only reason I haven't ditched Gmail is because that's the email address I've used everywhere. Changing email addresses is even more problematic than changing physical addresses these days. The reason people are so upset is that it has a negative effect on the world even if people have the option to turn it off (and don't), and it has virtually no real benefit. It's the latest in the trend of tech co…

Get your own domain, set up an email forwarder on it that points to your Gmail, and start shifting your contacts and accounts over to it. Then if down the road, you decide you want to switch, most of the work will already be done. I spent about 18 months on Gmail using my own domain before I switched to FastMail, and it made the transition much less painful.
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