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If that's the case, you can easily only write messages to your wife yourself. But for the 99 other messages, especially things that mundanely convey informatio
by pizzathyme 1y ago
If that's the case, you can easily only write messages to your wife yourself.
But for the 99 other messages, especially things that mundanely convey information like "My daughter has the flu and I won't be in today", "Yes 2pm at Shake Shack sounds good", it will be much faster to read over drafts that are correct and then click send.
The only reason this wouldn't be faster is if the drafts are bad. And that is the point of the article: the models are good enough now that AI drafts don't need to be bad. We are just used to AI drafts being bad due to poor design.
- allturtles 1y agoI don't understand. Why do you need an AI for messages like "My daughter has the flu and I won't be in today" or "Yes 2pm at Shake Shack sounds good"? You just literally send that. Do you really run these things through an AI to burden your reader with pointless additional text?
- _factor 1y agoThey are automatically drafted when the email comes in, and you can accept or modify them. It’s like you’re asking why you would want a password manager when you can just type the characters yourself. It saves time if done correctly.
- sanderjd 1y agoHow would an automated drafting mechanism know that your daughter is sick?
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- contagiousflow 1y agoI can't imagine what I'm going to do with all the time I save from not laboriously writing out "2PM at shake shack works for me"
- djhn 1y ago100% agree. Email like you’re a CEO. Saves your time, saves other people’s time and signals high social status. What’s not to like?
- bluGill 1y agoMY CEO sends the "professional" style email to me regularly - every few months. I'm not on his staff, so the only messages the CEO sends me are sent to tens of thousands of other people, translated into a dozen languages. They get extensive reviews for days to ensure they say exactly what is meant to be said and are unoffensive to everyone. Most of us don't need to write the CEO email ever in our life. I assume the CEO will write the flu message to his staff in the same style of tone as everyone else.
- sethhochberg 1y agoI think you might be misunderstanding the suggestion - typically when people say "email like a CEO" they're talking about direct 1:1 or small group communications (specifically the direct and brief style of writing popular with busy people in those communications), not the sort of mass-distribution PR piece that all employees at a large enterprise might receive quarterly. For contrast: "All: my daughter is home sick, I won't be in the office today" (CEO style) vs "Hi everyone, I'm very sorry to make this change last minute but due to an unexpected illness in the family, I'll need to work from home today and won't be in the office at my usual time. My daughter has the flu and could not go to school. Please let me know if there are any questions, I'll be available on Slack if you need me." (not CEO style) An AI summary of the second message might look something like the first message.
- bluGill 1y agoThe problem is your claim is false in my experience. Every email I've got from the CEO reads more like the second, while all my coworkers write things like the first. Again though I only get communications from the CEO in formal situations where that tone is demanded. I've never seen a coworker write something like the second. I know what you are trying to say. I agree that for most emails that first tone is better. However when you need to send something to a large audience the second is better.
- wat10000 1y agoBeing so direct is considered rude in many contexts.
- recursive 1y agoIt's that consideration that seems to be the problem.
- taormina 1y agoThe whole article is about AI being bullied into actually being direct
- wat10000 1y agoYeah, the examples in the article are terrible. I can be direct when talking to my boss. "My kid is sick, I'm taking the day off" is entirely sufficient. But it's handy when the recipient is less familiar. When I'm writing to my kid's school's principal about some issue, I can't really say, "Susan's lunch money got stolen. Please address it." There has to be more. And it can be hard knowing what that needs to be, especially for a non-native speaker. LLMs tend to take it too far in the other direction, but you can get it to tone it down, or just take the pieces that you like.
- skyyler 1y ago>When I'm writing to my kid's school's principal about some issue, I can't really say, "Susan's lunch money got stolen. Please address it." There has to be more. Why? I mean this sincerely. Why is the message you quoted not enough?
- bigstrat2003 1y ago> But for the 99 other messages, especially things that mundanely convey information like "My daughter has the flu and I won't be in today", "Yes 2pm at Shake Shack sounds good", it will be much faster to read over drafts that are correct and then click send. It takes me all of 5 seconds to type messages like that (I timed myself typing it). Where exactly is the savings from AI? I don't care, at all, if a 5s process can be turned into a 2s process (which I doubt it even can).
- ARandumGuy 1y agoHow would an AI know if "2pm at Shake Shake" works for me? I still need to read the original email and make a decision. The actual writing out the response takes me basically no time whatsoever.
- bluGill 1y agoAn AI could read the email and check my calendar and then propose 2pm. Bonus if the AI works with his AI to figure out that 2pm works for both of us. A lot of time is wasted with people going back and forth trying to figure out when they can meet. That is also a hard problem even before you note the privacy concerns.