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If John Doe crafts a message himself and sends it to 100000 recipients, or if he uses ChatGPT to generate a message and then send it to 100000 recipients, what’

by cpach 2y ago

If John Doe crafts a message himself and sends it to 100000 recipients, or if he uses ChatGPT to generate a message and then send it to 100000 recipients, what’s the difference? Both are unsolicited emails, i.e. spam. I feel confident that Gmail’s spam filter will be able to handle this quite well. I’m betting that the introduction of LLMs will not change the fundamentals of spam-fighting. https://paulgraham.com/spam.html https://paulgraham.com/spam.html

throwaway2037 2y ago
John Doe is probably very good a generating sales leads! By definition, most sales leads are generated from unsolicited communications -- email, phone, etc. I expect the very best sales people will be using a combination of ChatGPT and genuine personalisation for unsolicited communications.
staunton 2y ago
Using a language model, one can craft an individually targeted email for each of those 100000 recipients. How do you "handle" this without doing anything current spam filters don't? Can you prevent an individual from sending 100000 emails a week? Can you make it cost them money?
- cpach 2y ago
  Using an LLM to generate 100000 letters is hardly free, is it? And AFAIK, Bayesian filtering (by the recipient) doesn’t require any knowledge of what other people has received.
  - staunton 2y ago
    > Using an LLM to generate 100000 letters is hardly free, is it? No, but with further advances it might easily get cheap enough that spammers think it's worth it. > Bayesian filtering (by the recipient) doesn’t require any knowledge of what other people has received. Agreed. However, assuming people don't individually configure those filters -- which they currently do not and scaling this up would be something quite novel --, this seems quite gamable
leobg 2y ago
Interesting article. Thanks for posting. > Assuming they could solve the problem of the headers, the spam of the future will probably look something like this: > > Hey there. Thought you should check out the following: > http://www.27meg.com/foo http://www.27meg.com/foo Funny. 20 years later, that’s indeed how many spam messages look like.
_xivi 2y ago
> what’s the difference? The key difference here is personalization. Traditionally, if a message was personalized it fell under 'cold outreach' and users were more likely to interact and play along. Just like what happened with the author (the same applies for everyone). It's like the difference between receiving a flyer vs being contacted by a sales representative. Even if it's they advertise the same product, the perception is different, the results are different. If you're mean the difference from a pure technical spam detection perspective, I'm not familiar, but would love to read more about the subject and the state of the art techniques if anyone has some resources to recommend.
- nottorp 2y ago
  Do you read/answer cold outreaches then? Why? Unless you're specifically looking for unsolicited offers, in which case you probably have a process for them, they seem like a waste of time.
  - _xivi 2y ago
    > Do you read/answer cold outreaches then? Why? Do you only read emails from recognized addresses? No new communication whatsoever unless it's initiated by you?
    - nottorp 2y ago
      Not if they're trying to sell me something...
      - _xivi 2y ago
        > Not if they're trying to sell me something... How do you know they're trying to sell you something without even reading the email? Your question was "Do you read/answer cold outreaches then? Why?" which doesn't make much sense. For me, and I imagine the same applies for most people: 1. You read until you find a clue that its content is not of interestt. Usually the email subject doesn't say much. 2. You only reply if you need. Cold outreach are genuine emails that covers colleagues, new clients, job opportunities, someone reaching out to collaborate, etc. How you deal with it depends on your profile and who you've given your email address to. Personally, I have many email addresses, for some I don't even check my inbox.

by cpach 2y ago

throwaway2037 2y ago

John Doe is probably very good a generating sales leads! By definition, most sales leads are generated from unsolicited communications -- email, phone, etc. I expect the very best sales people will be using a combination of ChatGPT and genuine personalisation for unsolicited communications.

staunton 2y ago

Using a language model, one can craft an individually targeted email for each of those 100000 recipients. How do you "handle" this without doing anything current spam filters don't? Can you prevent an individual from sending 100000 emails a week? Can you make it cost them money?

cpach 2y ago
Using an LLM to generate 100000 letters is hardly free, is it? And AFAIK, Bayesian filtering (by the recipient) doesn’t require any knowledge of what other people has received.
- staunton 2y ago
  > Using an LLM to generate 100000 letters is hardly free, is it? No, but with further advances it might easily get cheap enough that spammers think it's worth it. > Bayesian filtering (by the recipient) doesn’t require any knowledge of what other people has received. Agreed. However, assuming people don't individually configure those filters -- which they currently do not and scaling this up would be something quite novel --, this seems quite gamable

leobg 2y ago

Interesting article. Thanks for posting. > Assuming they could solve the problem of the headers, the spam of the future will probably look something like this: > > Hey there. Thought you should check out the following: > http://www.27meg.com/foo http://www.27meg.com/foo Funny. 20 years later, that’s indeed how many spam messages look like.

_xivi 2y ago

> what’s the difference? The key difference here is personalization. Traditionally, if a message was personalized it fell under 'cold outreach' and users were more likely to interact and play along. Just like what happened with the author (the same applies for everyone). It's like the difference between receiving a flyer vs being contacted by a sales representative. Even if it's they advertise the same product, the perception is different, the results are different. If you're mean the difference from a pure technical spam detection perspective, I'm not familiar, but would love to read more about the subject and the state of the art techniques if anyone has some resources to recommend.

nottorp 2y ago
Do you read/answer cold outreaches then? Why? Unless you're specifically looking for unsolicited offers, in which case you probably have a process for them, they seem like a waste of time.
- _xivi 2y ago
  > Do you read/answer cold outreaches then? Why? Do you only read emails from recognized addresses? No new communication whatsoever unless it's initiated by you?
  - nottorp 2y ago
    Not if they're trying to sell me something...
    - _xivi 2y ago
      > Not if they're trying to sell me something... How do you know they're trying to sell you something without even reading the email? Your question was "Do you read/answer cold outreaches then? Why?" which doesn't make much sense. For me, and I imagine the same applies for most people: 1. You read until you find a clue that its content is not of interestt. Usually the email subject doesn't say much. 2. You only reply if you need. Cold outreach are genuine emails that covers colleagues, new clients, job opportunities, someone reaching out to collaborate, etc. How you deal with it depends on your profile and who you've given your email address to. Personally, I have many email addresses, for some I don't even check my inbox.