The Gmail app will now create AI summaries
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
It is hard not to assume just this with anything Google does.
I'm not sure at all why, but there seems to be some economic incentive to push for AI features. Is it because it's a buzzword? Is it because selling GPU time gives good margins? Is it because the all knowing efficient market demands it? I don't know, but users don't want it.
I do see lots of potential AI to improve my workflows, but this ain't it.
I am also very annoyed by google chromes dev tools recent new AI features. Don't need them, Don't want them - but I cannot get really rid of them. They are in the way. And they are in the way, so people use it, so some internal metrics make someone happy. Just not me.
That's all theoretical anyway. I'm not on GMail; I technically have this feature in the e-mail client on my phone, but I never even use it.
EDIT: The article mentions those summaries would apply to email threads too. I think that could be helpful. I've got tons of threads from some mailing lists that tend to grow large (10-20+ messages); catching up with them or revisiting old ones is tedious; an AI TL;DR of such threads actually sounds useful.
Also I'd love for e-mail clients to have a feature reminding normies when they've "forgotten" to address some questions from the sender.
At this point in time though an LLM summary would not be guaranteed to contain all the points or to focus on the stuff you care about, so it wouldn't be reliable anyway.
For this task, AI summary doesn't need to be 100% reliable anyway. I'm fine with it missing some points; it's better than me missing all the points. I'm fine with it hallucinating or reporting the opposite of some claim - the very mention of that claim tells me the article talks about it in some way.
Also, it's not like there exists an alternative. You cannot do this task any other way - and in particular, there's no economical way to get humans involved in it.
I don't think people really appreciate that last point. Everyone's quick to complain that LLMs don't give you signed, notarized guarantees of being more thorough and accurate than a team of scholars studying a text for a year; few stop to think that they're already better than average person and few could afford to hire a human to do this job even at worst possible quality.
(I might continue to use my gmail address using POP3 to third-party client software.)
I'm a fairly heavy user of LLM services, but don't see the value of "help me write" or "summarize this" or "happening soon" (Gmail's attempt to insert itself into my relationships with shippers and delivery services).
The web or PWA Gmail has more features and settings than any third-party desktop app would offer when using IMAP or POP. Gmail is a custom-designed first-party app. If you read mail from Google through Outlook or Thunderbird, it will have lowest-common-denominator features through the lens of a different vendor's structure.
Now you may consider it a superior advantage if the Gemini AI isn't available, but probably won't be able to create custom filters without the PWA.
My theory is that a lot of companies are starting to use Ai to draft up responses. These Ais don't understand the question, but picks the closest in concept space, and assumes that question.
It is horrible, because I need to all caps and explicitly ask customer service to read my messages, and I need to become incredibly rude to break out of it.
On the positive side, I don't feel bad for having iPhone without Apple Intelligence.
Talk about fragmentation and lack of trust/hope in your product.
Interestingly, Cook is said to be a huge believer in AI, yet he was unable to execute on it, even by making an ideal hire in John Giannandrea. JG toiled at Apple for years, unable to make groundbreaking progress due to Apple's corporate culture. It's an ol' boys club of forceful execs who have worked together for decades, and they all opposed spending what JG wanted.
If JG couldn't make an impact, no one will. What disappoints me the most is that Apple's "Not Invented Here" syndrome is so severe that I suspect they'll never admit full defeat and let users replace the rotten-to-the-core "Siri" assistant with a competent one, no matter how far behind they fall.
Right now it's Google's game to lose. Once Android devices are doing the kinds of things that should be easy for current models to do, real things as useful as a human assistant could do, it'll be the first meaningful challenge to Apple's dominance on the high end of the market. Things like "Answer all my calls while I'm in meetings, tell all sales calls I'm not interested, and for all others, if it isn't an emergency, take a message and tell them I'll call them back, and book 15 minutes on my calendar within the next day to do it."
https://stuff.sigvaldason.com/email.html
(Hint: Emacs)
:-)
imo the article's rather negative tone is not justified here, when I only have a small screen I think I would welcome an AI summary
in any case I'm willing to see what it looks like before panning it
worst case: it is mostly ok, and only the few emails have opposite summaries. So you are nornally fine, until that "meeting NOT cancelled" email is summarized "meeting is cancelled", and everyone is wondering where you are.
Go with a provider who's actually focused on email, you'll thank yourself.
I do wish it had the ability to respond to emails for me though with a prompt.
The fact that Google doesn't even provide an option to disable this one feature is telling. That strongly implies that Google managers agree with most of this thread and think this is more about juicing AI metrics than providing real value to users.
Perhaps it's time to just start sending the prompt and skip the round trip through a verbose formal message.
?
and plzhdlthx
I'd rather have "plzhdlthx" over "Action this."
That is absolutely a valid request. But both parties should at least acknowledge that the requester is scraping shit off their plate.
> Ultimately a lot of this generative tech stuff is just counterfeiting extra signals people were using to try to guess at interest, attentiveness, intelligence, etc.
> So yeah, as those indicators become debased, maybe we'll go back to sending something [...] all boiled down to bullet points.