4 ms·

Now this entire process could be (is?) automated. Send an email to your favorite author, some computer references earlier answers and ships it off within secon

Now this entire process could be (is?) automated. Send an email to your favorite author, some computer references earlier answers and ships it off within seconds. If this does not yet exist it would be a nice SAAS startup? (You owe me 1% of profits) For an add-on cost the bot will wait a random period of time to make it appear that someone had read it, and responded personally.

rdlw 3y ago
Luckily I'm pretty sure no one I admire would use this service, because it would be devastating to find out they are a user and instantly lose all respect for them, probably also irrevocably casting a shadow on their work.
- ilaksh 3y ago
  That's ridiculous. Celebrities receive a mountain of emails, most of which are repeats of the same question, comment or request. In that context, requiring them to reply personally to every one is unreasonable.
  - andrewflnr 3y ago
    Requiring personal replies is ridiculous, yes. Doesn't that make faking them even more so?
  - rdlw 3y ago
    Of course personal responses are not 'required', like you say they receive a mountain of emails. What you're saying is that rather than respond with a completely acceptable boilerplate email explaining that they get too much correspondence to write a personalized response, or allow an assistant to explain that and respond in their stead, they should deceive their biggest fans--the people who care enough to actually reach out to them, pretending that they did read and personally respond, which is an outright lie.
- ThinkBeat 3y ago
  All arguments in regard to the original article apply though. It doesn't matter if it is Heinlein's wife checking a box on an FAQ and mailing it, or a script running on a computer doing the same thing?
ilaksh 3y ago
I assume there are multiple startups working on something like this for people who have a high volume of email to get through. I think you would just use a SOTA LLM. Probably a critical function of a filter or sorting and auto responding system like that is identifying email that requires the actual attention of the real person. But I think that famous people get a massive amount of the same questions over and over again. Another aspect of this is reproducing the writing patterns or "voice" of the person. This can be accomplished to some degree with a few of the best LLMs and some examples. There are definitely startups where the intention is to create a digital representation of yourself for fans to have a dialogue with. So it skips over the email and straight into a conversation. This can be pretty convincing with something like Eleven Labs voice cloning and the best prompting or tuning for playing roles. If Heinlein was around today, he might have cloned himself on character.ai or used one of the new AI services marketed for that. Actually with HeyGen, there might be a website talktoheinlein.com that costs $20/month and you can do a live conversation with his digital twin.

rdlw 3y ago

Luckily I'm pretty sure no one I admire would use this service, because it would be devastating to find out they are a user and instantly lose all respect for them, probably also irrevocably casting a shadow on their work.

ilaksh 3y ago
That's ridiculous. Celebrities receive a mountain of emails, most of which are repeats of the same question, comment or request. In that context, requiring them to reply personally to every one is unreasonable.
- andrewflnr 3y ago
  Requiring personal replies is ridiculous, yes. Doesn't that make faking them even more so?
- rdlw 3y ago
  Of course personal responses are not 'required', like you say they receive a mountain of emails. What you're saying is that rather than respond with a completely acceptable boilerplate email explaining that they get too much correspondence to write a personalized response, or allow an assistant to explain that and respond in their stead, they should deceive their biggest fans--the people who care enough to actually reach out to them, pretending that they did read and personally respond, which is an outright lie.
ThinkBeat 3y ago
All arguments in regard to the original article apply though. It doesn't matter if it is Heinlein's wife checking a box on an FAQ and mailing it, or a script running on a computer doing the same thing?

ilaksh 3y ago

I assume there are multiple startups working on something like this for people who have a high volume of email to get through. I think you would just use a SOTA LLM. Probably a critical function of a filter or sorting and auto responding system like that is identifying email that requires the actual attention of the real person. But I think that famous people get a massive amount of the same questions over and over again. Another aspect of this is reproducing the writing patterns or "voice" of the person. This can be accomplished to some degree with a few of the best LLMs and some examples. There are definitely startups where the intention is to create a digital representation of yourself for fans to have a dialogue with. So it skips over the email and straight into a conversation. This can be pretty convincing with something like Eleven Labs voice cloning and the best prompting or tuning for playing roles. If Heinlein was around today, he might have cloned himself on character.ai or used one of the new AI services marketed for that. Actually with HeyGen, there might be a website talktoheinlein.com that costs $20/month and you can do a live conversation with his digital twin.