4 ms·

I'm the PM for this and the author of the article. Happy to answer any questions, with the exception that I can't comment on future roadmap.

mbanerjeepalmer 8y ago
Hi, thanks for offering to answer questions. Did you consider the language homogenisation question and if so, how did you answer it?
- prlambert 8y ago
  It's a great question and one of my early concerns as well. For most people email is a utility. The diversity of language in the middle chunk of the distribution isn't very high today and the biggest complaint most people have about email is how much time it takes. Most of our users aren't writing poetry, they are doing every day business transactions and we can help them be much more productive. Think how many times you've written "hope to hear from you soon", or some equivalent. For the tails of the distribution Smart Compose is not helpful. We address this primarily with a triggering model, we aim to only show suggestions when we're quite confident that you're in the 'just getting things done' mode. And if you're the type of person who always has a lot of personality in your emails, the feature probably isn't a great fit for you. Today it's opt-in, and there will always be a setting even if we turn it on by default.
  - mbanerjeepalmer 8y ago
    Okay interesting. Did you get stats on how diverse the majority of users' language is? I think there's also a second aspect. If I understand correctly, you're referring to the homogenisation of a single user's language (where 'Hope to hear from you soon' loses variation). I think the second aspect is homogenisation of language across many people. Did you look at tailoring the suggestions? In England there must be 30 ways to say goodbye, and this slang arguably is part of regional identity (although I don't know how much made it across to email).

4 ms·

I'm the PM for this and the author of the article. Happy to answer any questions, with the exception that I can't comment on future roadmap.

by prlambert 8y ago

mbanerjeepalmer 8y ago
Hi, thanks for offering to answer questions. Did you consider the language homogenisation question and if so, how did you answer it?
- prlambert 8y ago
  It's a great question and one of my early concerns as well. For most people email is a utility. The diversity of language in the middle chunk of the distribution isn't very high today and the biggest complaint most people have about email is how much time it takes. Most of our users aren't writing poetry, they are doing every day business transactions and we can help them be much more productive. Think how many times you've written "hope to hear from you soon", or some equivalent. For the tails of the distribution Smart Compose is not helpful. We address this primarily with a triggering model, we aim to only show suggestions when we're quite confident that you're in the 'just getting things done' mode. And if you're the type of person who always has a lot of personality in your emails, the feature probably isn't a great fit for you. Today it's opt-in, and there will always be a setting even if we turn it on by default.
  - mbanerjeepalmer 8y ago
    Okay interesting. Did you get stats on how diverse the majority of users' language is? I think there's also a second aspect. If I understand correctly, you're referring to the homogenisation of a single user's language (where 'Hope to hear from you soon' loses variation). I think the second aspect is homogenisation of language across many people. Did you look at tailoring the suggestions? In England there must be 30 ways to say goodbye, and this slang arguably is part of regional identity (although I don't know how much made it across to email).