Comment by why_at

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 for our users, etc."

My theory is that people are fundamentally averse to the thought and effort it takes to write a good quality email. Then there’s probably some underlying belief that more volume shows more effort, which people will perceive positively. And finally, there's the worry that if you write the email yourself, you might make some embarrassing wording, grammar, or spelling mistake.

It’s the protocol of the brave new world, you and the recipient need a single sentence to communicate but the culture dictates using certain language and politeness + personal flavor so your AI helps you write culturally appropriate fluff and the person who receives it is using their AI to get rid if the fluff so you are both optimized for productivity through stripping the culture away making your interactions faceless and yourself fungible.

You can imagine this spread into dating as well, so you just have sex efficiently to optimize the breeding and hedonism.

At some point the protocol of expanding and then compacting with AI will also be removed to optimize the unneeded inference and people will again talk to each other but using the caveman language, stripped away from centuries of culture.

Youtube implemented the same sort of thing for channels. If you have a youtube channel and someone comments on one of your videos, there is an AI-generated "reply" that you can click to avoid having to actually think about interacting with commenters on your videos.

The weird thing is, if I commented on a channel and they sent me an AI-generated reply, I'd just hate them forever.

It's insecurity. They worry they might be saying something dumb and the LLM gives them assurance that it sounds "better" and "more professional."

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."

It is no surprise to me at all that some people reach to bots for help with writing email.

I've seen some very incomprehensibly-written communication in my time, including from people who speak English as a first language.

The most frustrating group of consistent offenders I've seen was comprised of folks who absolutely should know better: School teachers.

21% of Americans are functionally illiterate. 54% of Americans read below a 6th grade level.

Things that seem trivial to someone well-read can be insurmountable tasks for millions of people.

Those people may do fine day to day, you don't need to write all that many emails for many if not most jobs, but when they do need to get their intentions across, things might get dicy.

Or course this solution is far from perfect. If you use LLMs to word your message because you're not very proficient in reading or writing, you may not understand what the output is saying, so you can't verify that it didn't misinterpret you.

I don't use gmail but often get an LLM to write certain emails. The benefit is that it can pull in context and typically one-shot the email without me prompting it at all.

For example, a tenant emails me about some issue relating to a specific property. It can go through my leases, find the right one, check other emails to see I ordered a new appliance to that specific address, track shipping/install, all that, then reply appropriately.

More pointedly, instead of prompting the AI to write something, just send the prompt. It will be concise and pointed, exactly what a message should be.

> It's one thing if you don't speak English well and could use some help making yourself understood

If someone reading does this, please, do not. Imperfect English is a lot more pleasant to read than AI slop. It will not sound better, it will sound worse.

I think it's a case of projection. Megatech CEOs feel that avoiding interactions with peons is the most important thing, so they add this feature assuming that everyone else also wants that.

speaking is faster than typing. My current process is:

1. Use Google Eloquent or directly into ChatGPT to dictate the email.

2. Then ask AI to polish, simplify, summarize, and I provide my writing style [0].

That gets sent to the user. I am very careful to not allow the AI to write too much.

The alternative is I spend 20+ minutes writing and re-writing the email.

[0] - https://www.kcoleman.me/writing/slack/2023/03/11/writing-sty...

Normies love this shit because it makes them fit in the crowd effortlessly. Same reason why corporate slop was a thing even before AI.

Personally, when I message people I respect I either don't use AI or ask it "please fix typos only", but if it's someone I don't give a fuck about, then AI-generated slop it is, because assuming that the recipient is a random person, AI-generated slop has the highest chance of actually getting shit done.

Honest answer, I’m sort of not neurotypical, not formally diagnosed but enough people in my life have gone out of their way to inform me, and so while I do still write emails myself, if it’s for work I usually dump my email into an LLM before sending it and just ask for some minor edits where I could be misconstrued as being rude or offensive. It’s stuff I would normally not notice, but other people take issue with my overtly direct nature of speaking.

Wife is a GP and has to frequently write emails to either insurances or lawyers/judges. All done in french which is a messy language full of obsolete over-the-top completely dishonest empty fluff, but native speakers tend to get quickly offended if its missing, done by non-native speaker. Mistakes can easily have legal consequences.

She uses chatgpt for such with appropriate checks afterwards, all the time. It saves her tons of time, and time is money, time is life spent with kids instead of useless bureaucratic work.

I have tons of similar stories, friends (surgeons, radiologists, all non-native speakers) using chatgpt to write some official application for work permits, motivation letters etc. Just because you don't have certain way of working or work situation doesn't mean its valid for all of us.

I think you might be suffering from a little bit of bias concerning your own comfort with written english with regard to the general population's comfort with written english.

I had a high school teacher (algebra II), my favorite coincidentally, who was actually functionally illiterate. He knew some words, and had a solid understanding of the alphabet, but ask him to parse a sentence or god forbid an essay, and he was completely lost.

He was a native born american, english as only language, and simply could not interact with the written language. If he could have written (in 2009) "give 20 question test for week 1 algebra II student with answer guide" he'd have gotten (based on the prompt I just submitted):

Week 1 — Algebra II: 20 Practice Questions

    Simplify: 3(x + 4) − 2(2x − 5).
    Solve for x: 5x − 7 = 2x + 11.
    Solve: 2(x − 3) = 3(x + 1).
    Solve and check: (x/4) + 5 = 11.
    Factor: x^2 + 5x + 6.
    Factor: 4x^2 − 9.
    Factor completely: x^2 − 6x + 9.
    Multiply and simplify: (2x − 3)(x + 4).
    Expand: (x + 2)^2.
    Solve quadratic by factoring: x^2 − x − 12 = 0.
    Use the quadratic formula to solve: x^2 + 4x + 1 = 0.
    Simplify: (3x^2y)(2xy^3).
    Simplify: (x^5)/(x^2).
    Solve for x: 2^(x+1) = 16.
    Evaluate: f(x) = 2x^2 − 3x + 1; find f(2).
    Write equation of a line in slope-intercept form with slope 3 and y-intercept −2.
    Find slope of the line through points (1, 4) and (5, −2).
    Solve the system by substitution: y = 2x + 1 and 3x − y = 4.
    Solve the system by elimination: 2x + 3y = 7 and 4x − 3y = 5.
    Simplify and write in simplest radical form: sqrt(50).

Answer Key

    3x + 12 − 4x + 10 = −x + 22
    5x − 2x = 11 + 7 → 3x = 18 → x = 6
    2x − 6 = 3x + 3 → −6 − 3 = x → x = −9
    x/4 = 6 → x = 24
    (x + 2)(x + 3)
    (2x − 3)(2x + 3)
    (x − 3)^2
    2x^2 + 8x − 3x − 12 = 2x^2 + 5x − 12
    x^2 + 4x + 4
    (x − 4)(x + 3) = 0 → x = 4 or x = −3
    x = [−4 ± sqrt(16 − 4)]/2 = [−4 ± sqrt(12)]/2 = [−4 ± 2√3]/2 = −2 ± √3
    6x^3y^4
    x^3 (assuming x ≠ 0)
    2^(x+1) = 16 = 2^4 → x + 1 = 4 → x = 3
    f(2) = 2(4) − 3(2) + 1 = 8 − 6 + 1 = 3
    y = 3x − 2
    slope = (−2 − 4)/(5 − 1) = (−6)/4 = −3/2
    Substitute y: 3x − (2x + 1) = 4 → 3x − 2x − 1 = 4 → x = 5 → y = 2(5)+1 = 11
    Add equations: (2x+3y)+(4x−3y)=7+5 → 6x = 12 → x = 2. Then 2(2)+3y=7 → 4+3y=7 → 3y=3 → y=1
    sqrt(50) = sqrt(25·2) = 5√2

I'm sure there are many more accesibility stories surrounding these fancy auto-completes.

As a non native English speaker, letting an LLM translate my emails is actually a sweet trap that’s all too easy to fall into. But Gemini in Gmail DOESN’T SUPPORT non English input. What’s the point of this thing?

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If i write a bad email because i'm frustrated to some company or whatever and want them to change their behavour, i think a llm can write an email, which triggers these people a lot more than my 'polite' way of convincing others.