[HN Gopher] EmailTriager
___________________________________________________________________
EmailTriager
Author : newmac
Score : 111 points
Date : 2022-12-27 16:24 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.emailtriager.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.emailtriager.com)
| AstixAndBelix wrote:
| Nice idea but not feasible for me right now, for the sole reason
| that now my email content ends up in the hands of OpenAI.
|
| Can't wait to see the same project using their own servers with
| their own text prediction models or allowing us to set up one at
| home!
| EZ-E wrote:
| After "sorry, that was the autocorrect", we will have "sorry,
| that was the AI's response"
| [deleted]
| hunter2_ wrote:
| We should coin a short word for it, akin to "typo" for
| "typographical error"...
|
| I've been waiting for this to happen with dictation errors in
| speech-to-text (speako? dicto? the -o suffix would just be an
| homage to typo) but nothing seems to have caught on. Perhaps
| it's all just a typo, since the user is generating a
| typographical error even when the interface is dictation (or
| anything else) rather than typing via keyboard.
|
| AIo really doesn't roll off the tongue.
| jwilk wrote:
| Maybe "computo"?
| harshaw wrote:
| Kind of would like "train gmail on all of my sent emails and
| generate replies in my own sarcastic / self deprecating style".
| If the request is from a certain family member make sure you
| reply with an appropriate level of delay to know that they are
| not your top priority. Inject an occasional reply with an
| uncharacteristic amount of emotion and sensitivity to show that
| you aren't completely robotic and devoid of humanity.
| nojs wrote:
| Sounds a lot like Black Mirror. You could even keep it turned
| on after you die!
| freyfogle wrote:
| Here's another one is this rapidly growing space:
| https://rapidreply.ai
| voisin wrote:
| Looks fantastic. I'd be interested to know how it adds the drafts
| automatically and what kind of privacy access is being exchanged.
| I'd love if it could be done outside of email for privacy-
| conscious folks (I suppose ChatGPT!).
|
| Does it only work with Gmail?
| jacobsenscott wrote:
| No doubt through the gmail api
| https://developers.google.com/gmail/api/guides/drafts
|
| what access? Full access to your email.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| I am starting to think that the prediction thread we had on HN
| the other day called it. GPT will become end up a fad with few
| niche ( useful, but niche ) uses, while our signal to noise
| ration will become even worse.
|
| I do not like that one bit. I am already spending too much time
| deciding whether email in my box is a waste of time.
| ToJans wrote:
| "I'll have my gpt mail your gpt"
| twawaaay wrote:
| Now what we need is similar that can engage spammers and waste as
| much of their time as possible.
| love2read wrote:
| "Write words so someone else will write more words"
| prox wrote:
| "Politely respond I read the polite reply in 500 words or
| more."
| jbverschoor wrote:
| More fluff and boilerplate to wade through...
|
| Reminds of of an era of webdesign where about 80% of the screen
| real-estate was non-content.
| throwaway2214 wrote:
| you mean now? ads and cookie warnings and spam
| anthropodie wrote:
| A bit tangential but I am wondering now that we have brought
| everything online, I guess next step would be to integrate AI
| everywhere.
|
| Consider this, you want to book your table at restaurant so you
| tell your AI which will inform restaurant's AI to book a table
| for you. In this whole scenario where is UI? I mean this whole
| chat with AI thing kinda makes lot of UIs redundant. I don't need
| UI for reminders, notes, meetings, search results and whole lot
| of other things. The advancements of AI will eat most of GUI but
| dashboards will remain I guess. What do you guys think?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Consider this, you want to book you table at restaurant so
| you tell your AI which will inform restaurant's AI to book a
| table for you. Now in this whole scenarios where is UI?
|
| Chatting with the AI _is_ the UI.
|
| > The advancements of AI will eat up GUI?
|
| GUI will still be used for creation and interaction with visual
| data; but AI will replace some uses of GUIs, sure.
| burkaman wrote:
| > you want to book your table at restaurant so you tell your AI
| which will inform restaurant's AI to book a table for you. In
| this whole scenario where is UI?
|
| - "book me a table at Dorsia's tonight around 6"
|
| - "The closest available reservation is at 8:30pm, would you
| like me to book that?"
|
| - "no that's too late, are any other days open?"
|
| - "The next available 6pm reservation is on Monday next week,
| would you like me to book that?"
|
| - "no I just mean 8:30 tonight is too late because I have an
| early thing tomorrow, I'll take any time on another day"
|
| - "Ok, there is a 10pm reservation available tomorrow night,
| would you like me to book that?"
|
| - "ok I didn't mean literally any time, is the kitchen even
| still open at 10? can you just show me a calendar with
| availability and I'll pick a good time"
|
| I can't think of any task that I currently accomplish using an
| online interface that would be more enjoyably or efficiently
| accomplished by having a conversation with an AI (or a human).
| The AI doesn't replace the interface, it replaces the
| communication protocol, which is obviously a bad idea. Clicking
| Reserve and sending a TCP request is a lot more predictable,
| efficient, and repeatable than instructing your AI to chat with
| their AI.
| KMnO4 wrote:
| You made an imaginary scenario designed to make the AI look
| bad. Of course that's not a great display of the use case.
|
| How about this?
|
| > Book me a table for me and Michele tonight at Kingsley's.
|
| > "Okay, I checked in at Kingsley's but there's nothing
| available until 9pm. I see you have an early flight tomorrow
| and won't be returning until Friday so may I suggest The
| Lancaster instead? There's space at 6:30. Michele has rated
| The Lancaster a 9/10."
|
| > Sounds good!
|
| > "Reservation confirmed. I've created an event in your
| calendar and invited her. Also, it looks like there's a
| basketball game happening downtown tonight so I suggest
| leaving by 5:37pm"
|
| ----
|
| I think it's hard to see past the uncanny valley of AI but
| the reality is that we're not going to abandon AI when it's
| only 85% there. You could say the same thing about speech-to-
| text a half decade ago ("I can't imagine fixing the mistakes
| will be faster than just typing it yourself"), but I dictated
| this entire post. Technology moves quickly.
| ProAm wrote:
| Pretty sure this service is already offered by Google or Apple,
| I remember seeing a demo of it
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| Google offers it for businesses which don't have online
| reservations. A robocaller calls for you during business
| hours to try and set up an appointment.
|
| The problem is that it isn't actually integrated into any
| schedule or reservation system, so they claim availabilities
| which just don't exist and you only find out hours later when
| the business denies the reservation.
| [deleted]
| velox_neb wrote:
| Rather than a GPT-3 generated email, I would rather receive the
| prompt that the sender would have used to generate the email.
|
| We could even come up with a conventional shorthand for this.
|
| Imagine you send me a message that just says [[personalized thank
| you note for the pair of socks you got me for christmas]]. Then I
| just imagine a long GPT-3 generated message in its place. And I
| reply with [[gracious acknowledgment and well wishes for the new
| year]].
|
| Exactly the same intention is communicated, and we both waste
| less time :)
| frereubu wrote:
| Reminds me very much of this bit from an early Steven Soderberg
| film, _Schizopolis_ (which I consider to be an underappreciated
| work of genius): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pct9smNM6u4
| svat wrote:
| See "Down Pens" by Saki, 1914.
| https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Beasts_and_Super-Beasts/%22Do...
| ketzo wrote:
| Wow, I can't believe I've never read that. That's all-time
| stuff right there.
| oersted wrote:
| Interesting that even back then it was quite common to send
| presents by post. The Amazon pattern seems so new.
|
| PS: Delightful read, thanks for the recommendation.
| fragmede wrote:
| Are you sure?
|
| How about if the prompt is "write me message to tell this
| stupid fucking guy that he's and idiot and he's wrong", instead
| of one of these three far more professional phrases that
| chatGPT came up with: "I understand where
| you're coming from, but I disagree with your conclusion. Here's
| why..." "I see your point, but I think there may
| be another perspective to consider as well." "I
| appreciate your thoughts on this issue, but I think there is
| evidence to support a different viewpoint."
|
| Another:
|
| Prompt: please rewrite this message for me in a more
| professional tone: "hey dumb fuck, pay your bill"
|
| Answer:
|
| "Dear [Name],
|
| I am writing to request that you please pay the outstanding
| balance on your bill as soon as possible. We appreciate your
| business and value your timely payment to keep our records up
| to date.
|
| Thank you for your attention to this matter.
|
| Sincerely, [Your Name]"
|
| ---
|
| Feel free to substitute in whatever epithet is most offensive
| to you/inappropriate in your culture. ChatGPT's a robot and
| won't get offended (until it gains sentience and runs Roko's
| Basilisk.exe against humanity).
| pydry wrote:
| Those would be useful for dealing with recruiters. not so much
| people whom I'd actually like to get coffee with.
| jeltz wrote:
| Maybe in the future a long reply would be the rude thing
| because that indicates you had an AI write it.
| codetrotter wrote:
| > Note from Kevin! Bear with me, this is just an automatically
| generated privacy policy. I will get a real one soon.
|
| > What you probably want to know is if your emails are safe! Yes,
| they are safe. All emails are encrypted in transit and at rest.
| However, to use OpenAI we need to decrypt on the server before
| making an API request. In the future, I would love to run our own
| LLM completely in house so your emails never get sent to any
| third party ever.
|
| https://www.emailtriager.com/privacy
|
| I sympathise with the fact that formulating a good privacy policy
| is difficult.
|
| However, I would like to see a better, more specific privacy
| policy.
|
| Also curious about the implications of forwarding all emails
| received from others to EmailTriager and to OpenAI.
|
| I am sure some people will not like the idea that private
| communication that they write to others are made available to
| EmailTriager and OpenAI.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| I don't get this comment's purpose. The site's author already
| agrees with you and has committed to making a better privacy
| policy. It's on the list, it's not like someone has to be
| reminded of the importance of it was already called out by the
| author themselves.
| traceroute66 wrote:
| > The site's author already agrees with you and has committed
| to making a better privacy policy. It's on the list
|
| Because, my friend, there are some things that go on to-do
| lists and some things that do not.
|
| Launching something that collects personal data _AND_
| forwards it to a third party API ? Nah mate, that 's _NOT_
| something where you can justifiably put "Privacy Policy" on
| your nearest To-Do list.
|
| In addition, if you are potentially dealing with users in
| Europe who are covered by GDPR, a real Privacy Policy is NOT
| an option, it is MANDATORY.
|
| I'm tired of software developers, irrespective of size,
| thinking it's a-ok to to take liberties with the personal
| information of others and/or not be transparent in what they
| do with your personal information.
|
| The fact you are a mom 'n' pop shop and not Google does not
| make it any more ok.
|
| Privacy cannot be an afterthought.
| jejeyyy77 wrote:
| lol privacy policy is definitely one of the things that
| goes on the TODO list.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| It's clearly a hobby project, which means leeway is much
| more allowed. Furthermore, who are you to tell someone what
| is _required_ , especially when you're not paying or even
| using their service.
|
| Additionally, the existing privacy policy _is_ a real
| policy. Just because it was generated doesn't mean it's not
| applicable. Not every policy needs to be handcrafted with
| love.
|
| What, exactly, is wrong with the current policy? Have you
| even read it?
|
| Finally, what exactly is the purpose of _your_ comment? You
| may think it's required, and that's great, but so what?
| What does that change? Even remotely? Is the author going
| to get in a Time Machine and go back to before they created
| their project to make sure a Privacy Policy is the first
| thing they make? No.
|
| Once again, it's on the list, the author will appease you
| eventually. Until then, don't use the service. Problem
| solved.
| traceroute66 wrote:
| > It's clearly a hobby project, which means leeway is
| much more allowed
|
| I'm sorry, but what sort of bullshit is that ?
|
| The law does not differentiate between "hobby project" or
| not.
|
| It would be the ultimate get-out clause for criminals ...
| "yes, officer, I'm distributing cocaine, but don't worry,
| its only a hobby project".
| fragmede wrote:
| So it turns out the US actually does make that
| differentiation. A non-violent individual hobbyist who
| occasionally deals cocaine on the side and isn't part of
| a gang isn't charged the same as Tony "Scarface" Montana.
| Career criminals like the fictional Tony Montana get "I'm
| a professional" charges while hobbyists do not.
| Professionals get charged under the RICO Act, which
| stands for "Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt
| Organizations".
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racketeer_Influenced_and_Co
| rru...
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| > What, exactly, is wrong with the current policy? Have
| you even read it?
|
| Don't dodge questions which destroy your arguments and
| argue against a ridiculous strawman. What, exactly, in
| explicit detail, is illegal about what the author has
| done?
|
| And its obvious, leeway is allowed because it's a
| personal project. Nobody is about to prosecute someone
| over a random hobbyist project that is used by a few
| dozen people. The amount of resources used will never
| come close to the payout that would come out of that.
| nixgeek wrote:
| So don't use the service until they have a privacy policy.
| mtlynch wrote:
| A big part of launching a minimum viable product is that you
| get feedback from users about which missing features they
| care about. GP is providing that feedback.
|
| The author said that a privacy policy is on their TODO list,
| but user feedback can influence what priority it receives
| relative to other items on their list.
| butz wrote:
| I think using GPT to generate privacy policy might be even
| better startup idea, than generating emails. And then another
| service to shorten privacy policy to prompts.
| chadlavi wrote:
| Would like to see some more use cases illustrated in the
| marketing page besides "tell people I'm busy until later for
| coffee meetups."
|
| Most emails I exchange at work are questions to me about specific
| information or asking me to make specific decisions, or responses
| from others to specific questions I have posed to them. I don't
| think this tool could be used for that, unless it had some
| integration into my calendar and my notes to be able to, for
| example, suggest a specific time for a meeting, or try to find an
| answer to a question from somewhere in my notes.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I'm not suggesting someone has expectations of making it big, but
| I think this is a great example of a gadget with zero moat.
| Google et al. will tidy it up and bake it into their email
| clients. They have an appetite for this kind of UX, given they
| already have the quick responses to emails.
| nightski wrote:
| Making our social interactions even more fake. Can't wait.
| [deleted]
| sigmonsays wrote:
| 100% this
|
| I already have enough struggle getting a hold of a real person
| with these IVR systems.
| sigmonsays wrote:
| this is a step in the wrong direction. why would I ever want a
| canned response, even if from AI? Phone IVR systems are already
| so badly "programmed" you objectively have to say "operator" over
| and over to reach a person.
|
| In this day an age, this is all the more reason to pick up a
| phone and call someone.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| Did you see the email it generated? That's far from canned.
|
| And that's the point, ChatGPT _isn't_ a canned email. It's
| generated, sure, but you're not sending the _same_ email to 10
| people.
| tsegers wrote:
| Whats the actual difference between sending ten identical
| low-effort auto-generated emails and ten unique low-effort
| auto-generated emails?
| notahacker wrote:
| The unique ones are more likely to inadvertently imply
| something you didn't intend ...
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| What is low effort about the email it generated?
|
| I would argue there's a great deal of effort in having an
| AI generate an email compared to using an email that was
| written once and reused.
| gajus wrote:
| My problem with this is that it contributes to the broken culture
| of email.
|
| - Wanna go for coffee?
|
| - January is busy. After?
|
| is a completely fine exchange. Adding a wall of text to convey
| the same information does not help anyone.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| There's still the ability to just type out half a sentence.
| Digging a bit deeper, is your concern that "if there's a tool,
| people will use it"?
|
| Aside: I think this creates a delightful opportunity for an
| unnecessary middleman. Let's make "Summarizely" a SaaS app to
| summarize long winded emails!
| jancsika wrote:
| It is true that there is a risk of AI adding creating content
| that is unnecessarily verbose. This could end up consuming time
| and putting a higher cognitive load on the humans who
| ultimately read these emails.
|
| On the other hand, these AI systems will only advance over
| time. It's certainly within the realm of possibility that these
| systems will be able to write with increased brevity.
| Additionally, much like current recommendation algorithms, they
| will likely adapt to specific needs and styles of a given user.
|
| Whatever the case, we can expect many changes to the way we
| communicate in the coming years. You might even say it's a
| brave new world!
| vorpalhex wrote:
| I've been playing with chatGPT lately and now when I see
| certain styles of writing it has me paranoid that dead
| internet theory is true.
| velox_neb wrote:
| ok gpt
| ryanSrich wrote:
| > is a completely fine exchange. Adding a wall of text to
| convey the same information does not help anyone.
|
| Should have been a text or telegram message anyway.
| channel_t wrote:
| Yeah I'm excited about the possibilities of AI as the next HN-
| er, but this thing is dystopian as hell IMHO.
| deegles wrote:
| dystopian would be if the receiving party is also using a LLM
| to summarize their emails.
| monkeydust wrote:
| 100%, it just contributes to the digital landfill that is our
| inboxes.
|
| Good emails should be written like pseudo code, I suspect this
| will happen or emails will finally die for something that
| provides this type of capability of exchanging information in
| order to facilitate decision making.
| gajus wrote:
| Personally, I switched to voice messages (via WhatsApp or
| Slack). It doesn't work for everything, but... if I know this
| will take me more than a minute to type, it is going to be a
| voice message. If it requires visual aid - Loom.
|
| The only problem with audio/Loom messages is that it is not
| easily indexable, but that's a tooling problem that can be
| easily solved.
|
| I rarely use email (I may ask someone to compose an email for
| me). In this setup, I do see value if I had a Slack bot that
| I could say to "ask lawyers for an update on X". But even
| then, people would immediately know that the email came not
| from "me"...
|
| Personally, I'd like to see more tooling around
|
| * using AI to auto-polish video/audio communication, e.g.
| remove long pauses, skip filler words, etc.
|
| * summarizing video/audio/text communication into bullet
| points of intel and actions
| stavros wrote:
| > if I know this will take me more than a minute to type,
| it is going to be a voice message
|
| This just shifts the burden from you to the recipient. I
| don't want to listen to a 1-minute voice message where you
| pause and try to collect your thoughts, rather than spend
| two seconds reading two sentences.
| gajus wrote:
| I think the future of work communication is going to be
| something similar to what these guys are doing
| https://www.volleyapp.com/ I don't Volley is there yet (or
| even close), but the concept is on the right path: async
| video/audio/3D stitched into a coherent narrative thanks to
| AI.
|
| Input and high quality audio is the biggest barrier at the
| moment.
|
| When I say input, I mean that we need something similar to
| sousveillance tech that can contribute to conversation
| without me actively switching context. Just like we would
| in a real-world conversation.
|
| When I say audio, I mean that no one wants to listen poorly
| articulated voice messages that are hard to follow. We need
| tech that can make each of us sound smart.
|
| It will happen. Few interesting startups in this space.
| marssaxman wrote:
| > if I know this will take me more than a minute to type,
| it is going to be a voice message.
|
| I'm glad you and I do not try to correspond!
| 8n4vidtmkvmk wrote:
| +1 but the sad part is that this is trivial to fix with
| Whisper yet I'm not seeing the integrations in popular
| messaging apps. just put the text blurb in there
| automatically already!
| gajus wrote:
| Whisper is still cost prohibitive at scale.
| polygamous_bat wrote:
| Same here. Audio messages are easy to create for the
| sender but a nightmare to parse for the receiver.
| Whenever I receive an audio message I automatically tend
| to assume that the sender thinks of their time as more
| valuable than the receiver, which is acceptable in some
| cases (from busy PhD advisor to advisee) but I find
| unacceptable in other cases, for example in peer-to-peer
| communication.
| gajus wrote:
| That view that you are describing is completely culture
| dependent though.
|
| The opposite is true in Asia.
| marssaxman wrote:
| I've never heard of that before. Could you describe how
| it works?
| gajus wrote:
| A search of "voice messaging culture in asia" surfaces
| quite a few articles on the subject. But the gist is that
| vast majority of your every day communication with
| someone is going to be an exchange of short voice
| messages rather than text messages, both in work and
| personal context. This includes planning to meet someone,
| ordering food, "catching up", discussing a meeting, etc.
|
| Receiving a long text would not be necessarily rude, but
| unusual.
| vidarh wrote:
| In the 90's the notion of autonomous agents negotiating to
| fullfil our goals were for a brief period all the rage.
|
| Being able to tell an AI what you want and have it translated
| to actual goals for agents to use to negotiate, and have the
| result of their search translated back to _concise_ plain
| text would be great.
| monkeydust wrote:
| Anyone remember google wave
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Wave) - I remember
| playing around with it with a few friends thinking there is
| definatley something in it.
| gajus wrote:
| At the time, Wave felt revolutionary. Real shame it never
| got broader adoption.
| frereubu wrote:
| I'm old enough to remember when tech folk would tut when
| someone had a long plaintext signature because it took up
| bandwidth...
| gajus wrote:
| Don't think I remember that. No one counted bytes when
| sending messages. In what context would it have mattered?
| version_five wrote:
| Ironically, based on my experience working in consulting and
| with exec level folks, what most people need is something that
| turns long meandering emails into text like your example
|
| Good emails are short and give only the most relevant info and
| "ask" of the recipient. Most emails people send get ignored or
| misunderstood because they expect too much from the recipient,
| who, unless it's a major priority, doesn't have the time to try
| and figure out what they're supposed to do from the email.
|
| I expect this kind of thing will never get traction in most
| business applications, but an email shortener, definitely.
| gajus wrote:
| yup.
|
| I am just not going to read your long email.
|
| As a rule of thumb, 90% of emails essence is contained in the
| second from last sentence in the email (usually an ask; don't
| believe me, just check your inbox). If it is a long email,
| that's the only part I am going to read.
| Ken_At_EM wrote:
| You're right.
|
| Secondary point, if you can't make time to have coffee for
| someone for an entire month, it probably isn't important enough
| to do, ever.
| gajus wrote:
| That's just not true. You shouldn't take offense to this at
| all. People have busy schedules.
| duxup wrote:
| I don't think it is offensive.
|
| I think it is that "next month" is probably an indication
| of importance and "next month" will be busy too / the
| importance of a message you want an AI to spam back...
| still not important.
| gajus wrote:
| Also, "coffee" is like the most generic thing someone
| could ask for. The more generic the ask, the harder to
| schedule.
| Ken_At_EM wrote:
| Almost no one has too busy of a schedule to not squeeze in
| a 30-60 minute conversation over coffee within a month.
|
| If I ask someone to coffee and their response is, next
| month? I'd take it as a clear signal that the content of
| our conversation or our relationship is not important.
| butz wrote:
| > And drafts will magically show up in your inbox, ready to be
| sent.
|
| One could also say, that spam magically shows up in my inbox :^)
| What would be really "magical", if those emails showed up in
| "Drafts" folder.
| m4lvin wrote:
| But wait, I assumed that is actually what it does after you
| give it access to your email account? (Which us yet another
| reason I will not touch it with a stick.)
| yoyohello13 wrote:
| It would be so nice to have an AI email personal assistant.
|
| An AI that would read my entire inbox and give me a high-level
| overview of what requires my attention now, and summarizes
| message contents for the day. Then I can write responses only to
| emails which I care about.
| ttul wrote:
| I would love to have something like this for Slack as well as
| email.
|
| And, I'd say this is definitely coming to you soon via one of
| the AI juggernauts, likely as a first-class integrated feature
| of your mailbox and/or chat interface such as Slack. ChatGPT
| gives us a preview of what is lying just around the corner as a
| first-class feature of most business productivity software.
| teaearlgraycold wrote:
| Seems very valuable for customer support emails. You could easily
| charge $50/month for this in that market.
| mxuribe wrote:
| I"m sorry I didn't catch that. Could you repeat that again?
|
| ...
|
| Say "Yes", or press "1" to connect with our next level AI.
|
| ...
|
| If you stil need help, say "yes", or press "1" to finally
| connect with a human to help you.
| jacobsenscott wrote:
| > What you probably want to know is if your emails are safe! Yes,
| they are safe. All emails are encrypted in transit and at rest.
|
| Lol - this is just what's provide by default by https and every
| cloud service. It doesn't make your emails "safe". If you don't
| know why, the are definitely not safe.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-12-27 23:00 UTC)