AI-powered communication coach
poised.com
poised.com
- feels to good to be free
- it targets a problem that we all sense and fear when we interact with other people
- the privacy and security policy is legally invalid in California and the EU (missing both is quite weird as they’re very well known privacy standards)
- the email address listed inside the privacy and security policy is invalid
Before trying their service I attempted to request a proper privacy policy via their listed email address which returns me an error saying that this address doesn’t exist.
As Slack is listed as a company that backs this service, I just reached out to their support team to cross-check the authenticity of this new service. This is getting exciting..
> Trusted by professionals from
This is a growing trend I’ve noticed - it’s a bit of a fake call to legitimacy
It works, but makes sponsoring open source, events, etc a lot more painful due to the approvals needed.
- See and download any calendar you can access using your Google Calendar
- See, edit, share, and permanently delete all the calendars you can access using Google Calendar
Are all these needed? Why would you need to delete a calendar from my account?
Looking at the Google Calendar API, it seems like if you want to grant an app the ability to add new events, you need to give permission to view all events and delete events as well.
https://developers.google.com/calendar/api/v3/reference/acl/...
https://developers.google.com/identity/protocols/oauth2/scop...
So it's kind Google's fault for that. Still that's a lot of permissions to request, I'd be uncomfortable even letting them have the ability to add or view events. Does it have a way to work if you don't allow it access to Google Calendar?
(By the way, it's not lost on me that you probably already do have such a setup, it's just, I know far too many folks who don't!)
Is there a correct way to be friends? No. And there is not a correct way to publicly speak either.
Improving communication skills is about avoiding massive pitfalls while allowing your unique voice to develop through practice.
"Do you even still love me?" "Umm..."
"Do you think Jack deserves this promotion?" "Umm..."
"Do you think this software solves the problem?" "Umm..."
"Surely you realise Donald Trump is the true incarnation of the coming messiah?" "Ummmm....."
Those Ummms may well be massive pitfalls. Alternatively, those ummms might accurately indicate that the entire premise of the question is dubious or flat-out false, depending on your delivery.
A person who uses ummm too much may well have severe problems communicating effectively, and a tool to help them only use ummms deliberately and meaningfully might be useful. A person in a presentation may wish to give an air of humility and approachability, in which case the ummms may be helpful - or they may wish to give an air of authority and certainty, in which case that meta-message is shattered by excessive umms.
Intent-based communication is subjectively valid, and one can argue that expecting and requiring perfectly honed communication might be a form of implicit bias and prejudice. I appreciate the idea that, as a societal issue, reducing our dependence on homogenised thought delivery is worth a wider conversation, but I'd say this is the wrong level from which to attack that systemic change. You don't attack scalpel manufacturers for the proliferation of plastic surgery.
Yet one could argue that a communication is - objectively - only as good as the way it is received. And while the majority of your communication might not need that level of certainty, for many people practice is the only thing they require to achieve the appearance of confidence. And democratising the ability to learn that skill doesn't seem to me a bad thing.
You cannot evaluate “effectiveness” of speech if you don’t know what your goal is.
You see, a lot of humans do. In public speaking, in meetings, in the pub or meeting people unexpectedly on the street.
The brain hears a question and is on a go-slow, either too little coffee, too much coffee, too much stimulus or churning bigger questions, like why the hell did I wear this shirt and how am I gonna hide that massive grease stain and damn I wish I had a spare jumper in my "Oh, hi -- umm - uhyeah, no, it's umm... it's, well, it's umm going well thanks -- yes I am, thank you -- yeah, it's only been oh, umm, a month, umm... oh three months actually -- umm, yeah, she's umm, no I mean sure, she's not the, umm, I mean she's got, umm, a lovely"
(And then the car-crash of a conversation ends with them pointing to your starbucks cup and saying "Anyway, I gotta go - enjoy your coffee!" and you shout back "Yeah, you too" then realise they haven't got any kind of drink in their hands but at that point you really don't want to care, you just want to be walking. Away.)
Because in situations where the brain feels rushed, the brain tells itself "YOU NEED TO ANSWER NOW" and so, without any training otherwise, usually says umm or other filler rubbish in the (not-so-conscious) hopes that the other person won't realise that you're frantically scrabbling to find real content and coming up woefully short. And the real content that does come up, if it does come up, arrives in the most unhelpful way, and you end up saying horrible things and wish you'd just stuck with "umm".
Even in a presentation, where you've practised a million times and your cat is frankly bored of hearing about your financial projections for the 15th time in a row, but you get in that room and you see the slide and you realise it doesn't tell you as much as it told you when you wrote it, your mind fills with.... "ohhhh... I know this.... this was the one, about.... ohhhhhh....." and your mouth says "Right. Umm... so we, uhhh, on this one, ummm, so as you may be aware, well some of you.... ummm..."
Maybe some people's hesitations aren’t communication failures but successes. But some hesitations are not about truth. And often they compound themselves, making more little hesitation babies as you hate yourself a little more for the unintended hesitation that sounded meaningful that just passed out of you.
And maybe the answer is stupidly simple: Cut yourself some slack. Allow pauses. Learn to ride the awkward silence. Learn to laugh at yourself under pressure and practice witty things to say to replace the filler.
But that's not as easy as, well now you have the answer so what's the problem. That actually boils down to "retrain every neuron in the linguistic centres of your brain that have been growing since the age of 6"
That takes some practice, and as annoyed as your cat may be that it's having to listen to yet another presentation, it can't replace the pressure of real life. Hence, I guess, a tool that helps you measure your progress in real life.
Because sometimes "your goal" is just to get through one day without feeling like an absolute muppet.
Humans aren't born with a natural ability to speak. They learn it over time. All the way from producing sounds to forming sentences to using principles such as a rhetorical triangle.
IMO communication is a skill involving verbal and non-verbal communication. If a robot suggests that you maintain eye contact while communicating, it might help someone be aware of that and improve. There's usually always important guidelines to follow that you're free to break at your own risk.
https://www.grammarly.com/tone
When I was in high school there was an amazing teacher that said um while giving written speeches. I started counting instead of listening to the actual speech.
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=communication+skills
Would it have been better if they didn't create this tool because communication isn't a skill and because there isn't one objectively correct way to say good or bad
What is it you know I talk of
I wish I could be like that all the time so that people could see the real potential and enthusiasm in me, but unfortunately I'm mostly reserved and don't initiate conversations especially with strangers. Aside from love life, it affects my professional life as well—lots of professors thought of me as a low-profile, shy student, but sometimes they'd get a glimpse of what I could be during my presentations and changed their mind.
Recently I started to start having some conversations with people I don't know and man, it feels great! I feel more confident just by talking to and asking peoples' names in the building. I guess the key is that I don't expect these convos to go anywhere. When you're introvert, the circle of friends is so small that people have so much value/influence on you. When you broaden your scope, you start to see other people as points on a sphere—as their value (being special) decreases, so does the fear of saying the wrong thing to them, so you are more likely to start conversations and have fun and see where things go instead of stressing over what you should say and whether they will be offended or not.
Why not have my videostream analyzed and the coach synthesize a better communicating videostream?
Cut out the feeble middle men and let the machines negotiate with a shopping list of interests ?
I dont want to be socially ept, cunning and able, if a machine can do that for me.
I think you're on the money as to where that's headed.
However, your understanding of technology seems to be entirely as weapons to gain advantage over others. Is that a fair observation?
Might technology have other uses?
Why should be a social apex predator be a inherent save role in human society? Nothing of value there, that cant be reproduced by machines.
> Why should be a social apex predator be a inherent s(l)ave role in human society?
If you truly believe what you say about "nature" it becomes;
Why would a social apex predator, knowing the love of Jesus, the insights of Einstein, Penrose, Hofstadter, being a greater warrior-poet than Colonel Kurtz, then create and unleash another more potent agent than itself (ostensibly for amusement)?
Three possibilities come to my mind.
- Hubris
- Self-loathing/suicide
- Extraordinary stupidity (misjudgement of our own intelligence)
Do you have a preference?
Why would the "machines" "negotiate" (presumably with other machines) using human tools like conversation and presentations? There are multiple algorithms and mediums at which this can be done more efficiently (and is being done more efficiently).
We are at peak singularitarian delusion in these threads already. 'Humans do something, machines can (deus ex machina enters) do it better, machines will do it in the exact same way but instead of humans". Can't wait for the next AI winter, we desperately need it in light of these idiotic takes.
Read.ai focuses more on cutting down meetings and provides recommendations to reduce workload (which includes improving communication). Read works on meet, zoom, teams or webex and just joins the meetings as a bot.
Otter.ai focuses on transcription and making notes very accessible and searchable.
From the demo poised seems to require you to use their video chat, I'm not sure how I feel about that. It's a commodity, but seems like it would be hard to get people to switch to and trust. I recall zoom had several trust issues in the past (related to routing to China).
Most companies don't want their interviews logged for liability reasons.
An antidote for this would be an OSS alternative for the rest of us to identify dishonesty/inconsistencies and fact-check in real-time.
Right. Soon, everybody will just assume you're using one, without knowing.
Also ad tech is the epitome of AI applications that ride on human weakness ;)
Yes it is a negative value judgement. I am not trolling or being unnecessarily provocative. I think that, on balance, some technologies are likely to make things worse. Not in general, but to specifically counter the very aim they set out to solve.
> the human weakness, insecurity and disconnection is already there
I disagree with this. On several levels. Some people have different abilities and personality for sure. But the insecurity and weakness I speak of is societal (weak interpersonal relations in a single-serving microwave meal culture), and is caused by precisely such disconnecting technologies. This kind of technology creates less incentives to develop human interpersonal skills and ultimately saps confidence. The user learns to simulate confidence.
> I think it's good to be skeptical of instances of this kind of work in terms of the details like how it respects the users privacy and treats their data sensitively, and whether or not it's selling an effective method,
I think it's important to be sceptical generally. That makes one a good technologist and not merely an implementor of random ideas that we do "because we can". All the things you mention are hot topics, and I agree they need scrutiny. But there are wider and more complex factors to remain sceptical of, such as the social impact of technologies.
> but at least it's sort of aimed towards good.
I have great faith and optimism in human beings, these things are always "aimed toward good". I make no judgements about the motives of the developers (which I think is already a few steps more charitable than some of the insinuations I've seen in comments). I'm getting down-voted because I dare to commit a heresy of asking deeper questions.
> Also ad tech is the epitome of AI applications that ride on human weakness ;)
That's true.
Regarding societal weakness/insecurity stemming from disconnecting technologies, I view that as something that's happened to a large degree, and it shapes chunks of the modern landscape as I see it.
Technologies that help to correct that are valuable. Dependencies on others force the development of interpersonal skills, and maybe something like this discourages someone from joining an association like toastmasters or similar. That would be a shame. But on the other hand, depending on the users own flavor of neuroses it may help them feel comfortable enough or develop the interest to prompt them to do something more social. I really don't know, I could see it nudging my past selves either way.
Regardless, thanks for your response. I did need a reminder to take a wider perspective in this context, I appreciate it.
> depending on the users own flavor of neuroses it may help them feel comfortable enough or develop the interest to prompt them to do something more social.
Absolutely. I agree this is real utility. I guess I'm concerned that these are actually outliers used to justify a more troubling project. And maybe more people have crippling anxiety disorders only treatable by machines than I care to admit. It actually reminds me of the arguments around anti-depressants as a gateway to proper therapy. I do hear you.
You're right. That would just be mean and rude. But I'm not doing that. I'm telling confident people (like the developers and fans of this software) that they ought not to mislead people who lack confidenve into beleiving a web application can substitute for real friends.
Your friends don't want to spend fulltime analyzing all your presentations, providing you with trends over time and actionable feedback.
Or are you paying your friends to do this work?
With respect you've no idea what my friends will or won't do for me, or what I will do for them. Maybe your friends won't.
> Or are you paying your friends to do this work?
It's precisely because we're friends that we don't have to pay each other. People can have genuine interests in one another beyond money.
Would be great if this combined with PowerPoint Online with Speaker Coach somehow. Then both deck, pace, clarity and word use are addressed. PowerPoint does some of it, but not to the depth that this seems to do it.
The only reason this is a problem is because we rely on computers for communication too much.
So the issue is less the service and more the fact that we live in a world with a lot of texting applications and emails being sent?
I would understand if you're claiming that it would make us speak more "robotic"
Doing the work of spending time with people in real life is the best possible solution for learning how to communicate meaningfully and effectively. We can’t offload all our problems to AI. We’re just creating different problems.
Case and point: this comment thread, while giving us the ability to transfer sterile information is devoid of all the nuance of an in person conversation.