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Comment by ACow_Adonis | Hacker News Reader

Are you tired of having a personality, original thought, or actual conversation?

Are your friends selfishly taking up time trying to talk to you when you could be adding more people to your friends list instead?

Do you have a craving for increased amounts of non-genuine social interaction?

Has your life become so depressingly repeatable that our algorithms can accurately represent your superficial chatter?

If so, we've got something for you: SMART REPLIES!

SMART REPLIES! For when your communication is so valuable and necessary it doesn't need you!

SMART REPLIES! Yum clams! So cute!

SMART REPLIES!...if you thought twitter and social-networking was inane, you ain't seen nothing yet...

Edit: I apologise, i just had a reflex reaction. Wow...this is the world we're making for ourselves...

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I registered this account just to say that you just gave me a little bit of hope that I'm not the only human alive who hasn't completely lost my mind. Thank you. Really.

I'm sure this will be downvoted (edit: maybe I was wrong, which makes me feel better yet) because it doesn't really add anything to the discussion, but I've been increasingly depressed about this stuff lately, and hearing/seeing someone else basically put the words in my brain down here, helped a lot.

Being surrounded by people who think that anything involving computers or technology is automatically good and something to be supported and defended no matter the cost to our freedom, humanity or privacy, is incredibly frustrating. As someone who first pushed many of these people towards the internet and technology in general, I almost feel responsible for what they've become.

As someone who has done very well as far as careers go, thanks to an early start with computers and technology as a child in the late 70s / early 80s, I know without a doubt that I'm partially responsible for some of what I hate now, whether directly by way of cash-induced moral ambiguity, or indirectly thanks to projects I've contributed to.

I love technology and progress. I just wish that progress actually meant doing important things, rather than finding newer, more invasive ways to surveil and manipulate people as it has for the past decade or more.

As a programmer, I hate the modern world in general. None of these technologies are for the good of humanity. I once went on a survival camp for a month out in the middle of nowhere. It was the best time in my life. This really is a profound observation. I am sure technology can enrich people's lives. Even out in the middle of nowhere I was using primitive forms of technology. But our modern world is not full of the kinds of experiences that enrich our lives - quite the opposite.

Mobile phones may sound like a good technology until you realise that people are using them because all of their friends are miles away, or because they have to and their boss calls them all the time, or they are so bored at work that they would rather browse facebook.

Cars are something that could allow you to travel long distances but we mostly use them to sit in traffic or travel long distances simply because we have paved over everything around us and nature is so far away. Cars have contributed to pollution and cities that resemble car parks.

To me, and this is obvious from my experience in the jungle, the modern world is a complete failure that has not improved our lives at all.

My best experience in life was away from the modern world. I mean my mental and physical health ended up being completely different by the third week. My experience of life.... I was actually living. I have never felt that since. I feel like I know a secret about the world that others who have never had that experience will ever know.

I have a feeling that modern technology and life is guided by corruption, not by what is best for humanity.

Something that terrifies me, which I'm guessing probably does the same to you, is hearing people talk about how they can't wait to be able to "experience" things in VR instead of having to travel.

That's only one step away from justifying destroying the rest of our planet because we can just "experience" it with technology anyway.

Yes I agree and it shows you understand my point. When I was working at a boring job, I would spend a lot of time using google street view in different countries. It was a coping mechanism as the job was driving me crazy and I couldn't afford to travel to any of those countries. It is not a substitute for the real thing though. I am sure with virtual reality, it will be a replacement for holidays as nobody will be able to afford holidays anymore. Just as processed food is becoming a replacement for real food.

I agree with you in general -- all this stuff Google is doing with data really weirds me out -- but VR is actually really cool! You should try it sometime if you get the chance.

I don't dislike VR. I have a DK1, DK2, CV1, and a Vive. I think it's awesome, and has a lot of potential, but it scares me to see companies like Facebook and Google getting involved, and makes me sad to think about what the future of VR might become as a result. It also makes me sad for the people who will become wrapped up and "live" in VR, thinking that it's a 1:1 substitute for experiencing things in real life, which I'm sure shares at least some overlap with the people who haven't seen the outdoors unless forced since they became a part of WoW. The thing that worries me most in this regard, is that there are people openly talking about how they want this, and how they hope technology makes it so they never have to leave home again.

What's funny is that I'm sure there are people who make lots of money working for Facebook, Google, and others reading this thinking "we're not evil, our slogan even said so! This person is nuts!", but nobody really thinks what they're doing is wrong while they're doing it -- or they wouldn't be. Hindsight is 20/20 and all that..

Why do you live in the modern world after this experience?

Should we now have an existential crisis when the smart reply is exactly what we were going to say? Should we type it anyway just to teach the machine it was right?

Should we save our outrage for something more then a feature in an announced chat app?

All i can do is make you ask the question, not answer it for you :P

So is it just me who types a reply even when the app knows exactly what I was going to say.. just because I find it morally repulsive.

..and still feel a little bit guilty for being so bloody shallow.

Are you shallow? Or is Google's "Intelligence" deep?

Not every part of every conversation needs to be genuine and engaging. I've found smart replies to be quite helpful for transactional conversations, like setting up dentist appointments and lunch meetings. It's almost like having an assistant pen a response for you when getting the gist of the intent is simple and not every word matters.

Letters to friends, or letters with significance (e.g. a resignation letter) will of course always be written by hand, word for word, but there's room for smart replies to be useful without having it diminish the human race

I guess I just don't get the hate. A large portion of my communication is all about getting the intent across without any need to be a wordsmith. If that can be automated, why not?

If someone sends me a picture of their cute dog, I'll happily acknowledge it. But I don't see the difference between picking a somewhat simple, canned response over writing essentially that same thing out myself. It's about acknowledging that you received their picture and agreeing that it is cute.

There are many things where automating stuff feels wrong. But most of these involve some kind of manipulation: help with writing a sweet message to your lover, optimizing your email response to the particular personality of the person you're talking to so that they'll 'like it more'. Stuff like that.

But automating away things that are kind of inane to begin with doesn't seem like such a big deal to me. It's no different from the 'hello how are you' and 'how was your weekend' talk. It's not quite pointless (in my view), but it's also not something so authentic that any protocol or automation in the matter is a bad thing (in fact, we already do this).

Lazy people are lazy. Why do we even use spell checkers? This is just a glorified keyboard with suggestions.

Why even use keyboards? They're just a lazy, creativity-free version of writing by hand. We should be having this discussion by sending each other postcards, with REAL doodled faces, every one of them unique, none of this ASCII ":)" nonsense :P

Don't apologise. You're spot on.

Nice comment!

I am working!

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