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> This demo uses AI to read emails instead of write them LLMs are so good at summarizing that I should basically only ever read one email—from the AI: You rec
by teeray 1y ago
> This demo uses AI to read emails instead of write them
LLMs are so good at summarizing that I should basically only ever read one email—from the AI:
You received 2 emails today that need your direct reply from X and Y. 1 is still outstanding from two days ago, _would you like to send an acknowledgment_? You received 6 emails from newsletters you didn’t sign up for but were enrolled after you bought something _do you want to unsubscribe from all of them_ (_make this a permanent rule_).
- throwaway290 1y agoWhat is the reason to unsub ever in that world? Are you saying the LLM can't skip emails? Seems like an arbitrary rule
- joshstrange 1y agoWhat system are you using to do this? I do think that this would provide value for me. Currently, I barely read my emails, which I'm not exactly proud of, but it's just the reality. So something that summarized the important things every day would be nice.
- namaria 1y agoI have fed LLMs PDF files, asked about the content and gotten nonsense. I would be very hesitant to trust them to give me an accurate summary of my emails.
- HdS84 1y agoOne of our managers uses Ai to summarize everything. Too bad it missed important caveats for an offer. Well, we burned an all nighters to correct the offer, but he did not read twenty pages but one...
- namaria 1y agoI don't know if this is the case but be careful about shielding management from the consequences of their bad choices at your expense. It all but guarantees it will get worse.
- kortilla 1y agoLetting a thing implode that you could prevent is a missed opportunity for advancement and a risk to your career because you will be on a failing team. The smarter move is to figure out how to fix it for the company while getting visibility for it.
- namaria 1y agoYou are right. I don't think the only alternative to shielding management from the consequences of their bad choices is letting things implode and going down with the ship.
- bluefirebrand 1y ago> Letting a thing implode that you could prevent is a missed opportunity for advancement No matter how many times I bail out my managers it seems that my career has never really benefit from it I've only ever received significant bumps to salary or job title by changing jobs
- kortilla 1y agoThat means you’re not getting visibility for it. When I say “get visibility”, it means to your manager’s boss and peers.
- spookie 1y agoyup, an employee is more than just a gear, better keep the motor running than explode along with the other parts.
- stavros 1y agoI don't know what your experience is, but mine is the opposite. Nobody ever notices people who put out fires, and it's hard to should "hey guys! There's a fire here that John started, I'm putting it out!" without looking like a jerk for outing John.
- HPsquared 1y ago
- BeetleB 1y agoDid he pull all nighters to fix it? If not, it wasn't "too bad" for him. I doubt he'll change his behavior.
- pjc50 1y agoWhere's the IBM slide about "a machine cannot be held accountable, therefore a machine should never make a management decision"? Of course, often it's quite hard to hold management accountable either.
- checkyoursudo 1y agoIsn't a solution to assign vicarious liability to whomever approves the use of the decision-making machine?
- nradov 1y agoLLMs are terrible at summarizing technical emails where the details matter. But you might get away with it, at least for a while, in low performing organizations that tolerate preventable errors.
- imp0cat 1y agoThis. LLMs seem to be great for 90+% of stuff, but sometimes, they just spew weird stuff.
- HDThoreaun 1y agoIf I get a technical email I read it myself. The summary just needs to say technical email from X with priority Y about problem Z
- koolba 1y ago> LLMs are so good at summarizing that I should basically only ever read one email—from the AI This could get really fun with some hidden text prompt injection. Just match the font and background color. Maybe these tools should be doing the classic air gap approach of taking a picture of the rendered content and analyzing that.
- meroes 1y agoDo you ever check its work?
- FabHK 1y agoI got an email from the restaurant saying "We will confirm your dinner reservation as soon as we can", and Apple Intelligence summarizing it as "Dinner reservation confirmed." Maybe it can not only summarize, but also see the future??
- rcarmo 1y agoWell, at least it doesn’t make up words. The Portuguese version of Apple Intelligence made up “Invitaçāo” (think “invitashion”) and other idiocies the very first day it started working in the EU.
- amrocha 1y agoI fed an LLM the record of a chat between me and a friend, and asked it to summarize the times that we met in the past 3 months. Every time it gave me different results, and not once did it actually get it all right. LLMs are horrible for summarizing things. Summarizing is the art of turning low information density text into high information density text. LLMs can’t deal in details, so they can never accurately summarize anything.
- n_ary 1y agoYou should try with lowered temperature(0.1 or even 0.0). Usually accuracy improves dramatically.