AI email from a friend
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OK, so I'm not good about handwritten cards or notes, and tend to chat more via email. But I don't think I'll be using AI to do the talking for me...
Recently I received an AI-written email from a friend. It wasn’t sent to test AI, or to show it off, as in “ha ha check this out”; my friend had a question to ask me, and the email asked it over the course of a few paragraphs. It then disclosed that, oh by the way, I used AI to write this. My reaction to this surprised me: I was repelled, as if digital anthrax had poured out of the app. I’m trying to figure out why.
https://mrgan.com/ai-email-from-a-friend/?utm_placement=newsletter
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That question would be very low priority. I would take a few days to answer it if I answered it.
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I’d use AI to answer it. And tell them.
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Years from now, could an AI that was trained on all of my friend’s emails and texts and personal documents sound convincingly like them? Could it be so advanced that I wouldn’t even be able to tell that my friend hadn’t written to me at all? Possibly. And that idea saddens me the most.
This.
There's a meme going around that's quite apt:
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@ShiroKuro
Yes!! -
@ShiroKuro said in AI email from a friend:
Years from now, could an AI that was trained on all of my friend’s emails and texts and personal documents sound convincingly like them? Could it be so advanced that I wouldn’t even be able to tell that my friend hadn’t written to me at all? Possibly. And that idea saddens me the most.
This.
There's a meme going around that's quite apt:
It’s one of those purportedly “witty” quote that’s actually just ignorance.
We have machines that do laundry and dishes.
They are called “washer,” “dryer,” and “dishwasher.”
No AI needed, but some vendors put AI into these machines anyway (or at least claim to have done so in marketing materials). -
Ax, how do clothes and dishes get into those machines?
I mean, you’re right, but I think you’re missing the “spirit” of the meme.
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@ShiroKuro said in AI email from a friend:
Ax, how do clothes and dishes get into those machines?
The art/writing counterpart is how does AI know what art/writing to generate — you still need some human efforts initially to get the machine to write/draw/paint something.
The situation we have now is this: writer/artist can use the 1~2 hours of time when waiting for the washer/dryer/dishwasher to complete a cycle to type a few prompts to generate a fair amount of “writing” or “art.”
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@Axtremus said in AI email from a friend:
you still need some human efforts initially to get the machine to write/draw/paint something.
Right, the point of the meme is, let’s use that human effort on creative endeavors, and get AI to do the mundane tasks. I think people are seeing that, at least for now< the promise of AI has not materialized in terms of making life easier, and instead people feel like AI is taking away all the fun things and leaving humans with the short end of the stick.
That’s an over-simplification of course, but that’s the meme.
