4 ms·

I can appreciate LLMs for some use cases, but writing emails for the user is the one that really baffles me. It's one thing if you don't speak English well and

by why_at 4mo ago

I can appreciate LLMs for some use cases, but writing emails for the user is the one that really baffles me. It's one thing if you don't speak English well and could use some help making yourself understood, but the amount of native speakers using this is so strange to me. How does this help you? If you can write to the LLM telling it what kind of email to write, you might as well just write the email.

goodmythical 4mo ago
I think you might be suffering from a little bit of bias concerning your own comfort with written english with regard to the general population's comfort with written english. I had a high school teacher (algebra II), my favorite coincidentally, who was actually functionally illiterate. He knew some words, and had a solid understanding of the alphabet, but ask him to parse a sentence or god forbid an essay, and he was completely lost. He was a native born american, english as only language, and simply could not interact with the written language. If he could have written (in 2009) "give 20 question test for week 1 algebra II student with answer guide" he'd have gotten (based on the prompt I just submitted): Week 1 — Algebra II: 20 Practice Questions Simplify: 3(x + 4) − 2(2x − 5). Solve for x: 5x − 7 = 2x + 11. Solve: 2(x − 3) = 3(x + 1). Solve and check: (x/4) + 5 = 11. Factor: x^2 + 5x + 6. Factor: 4x^2 − 9. Factor completely: x^2 − 6x + 9. Multiply and simplify: (2x − 3)(x + 4). Expand: (x + 2)^2. Solve quadratic by factoring: x^2 − x − 12 = 0. Use the quadratic formula to solve: x^2 + 4x + 1 = 0. Simplify: (3x^2y)(2xy^3). Simplify: (x^5)/(x^2). Solve for x: 2^(x+1) = 16. Evaluate: f(x) = 2x^2 − 3x + 1; find f(2). Write equation of a line in slope-intercept form with slope 3 and y-intercept −2. Find slope of the line through points (1, 4) and (5, −2). Solve the system by substitution: y = 2x + 1 and 3x − y = 4. Solve the system by elimination: 2x + 3y = 7 and 4x − 3y = 5. Simplify and write in simplest radical form: sqrt(50). Answer Key 3x + 12 − 4x + 10 = −x + 22 5x − 2x = 11 + 7 → 3x = 18 → x = 6 2x − 6 = 3x + 3 → −6 − 3 = x → x = −9 x/4 = 6 → x = 24 (x + 2)(x + 3) (2x − 3)(2x + 3) (x − 3)^2 2x^2 + 8x − 3x − 12 = 2x^2 + 5x − 12 x^2 + 4x + 4 (x − 4)(x + 3) = 0 → x = 4 or x = −3 x = [−4 ± sqrt(16 − 4)]/2 = [−4 ± sqrt(12)]/2 = [−4 ± 2√3]/2 = −2 ± √3 6x^3y^4 x^3 (assuming x ≠ 0) 2^(x+1) = 16 = 2^4 → x + 1 = 4 → x = 3 f(2) = 2(4) − 3(2) + 1 = 8 − 6 + 1 = 3 y = 3x − 2 slope = (−2 − 4)/(5 − 1) = (−6)/4 = −3/2 Substitute y: 3x − (2x + 1) = 4 → 3x − 2x − 1 = 4 → x = 5 → y = 2(5)+1 = 11 Add equations: (2x+3y)+(4x−3y)=7+5 → 6x = 12 → x = 2. Then 2(2)+3y=7 → 4+3y=7 → 3y=3 → y=1 sqrt(50) = sqrt(25·2) = 5√2 I'm sure there are many more accesibility stories surrounding these fancy auto-completes.
- minitech 4mo ago
  This comment is confusing to me on so many levels. What’s with the tangent(?) about a math test your algebra teacher could have generated? Did you bring up an illiterate teacher (extreme outlier) as evidence that the general population has low comfort with written English, or…? (I’m going to resist getting into the rest of the tangent, but it’s really impressively densely perplexing.) (edit: I’m not going to resist) > If he could have written (in 2009) "give 20 question test for week 1 algebra II student with answer guide" Is the “could” here just about AI not existing back then, or does “could not interact with the written language” imply that he could not have written this prompt? Why would he need the output, given that most of it is math? (If we assume he can speech-to-text the prompt, why can’t he do the same for other writing?) If the level of writing of “Write equation of a line in slope-intercept form with slope 3 and y-intercept −2” is the challenge, is he able to read it? What if the output is wrong – who’s going to verify it? Are you presenting this as a good thing? How did/would he grade handwritten written-answer questions?
- al_borland 4mo ago
  People won’t get better if they don’t use it. These LLMs are a crutch that will not just not people from getting better, but any skills they do have will atrophy without use. How can anyone even write a proper prompt, or understand if the answer is correct, without being literate? I’ve been noticing on YouTube where people are delivering scripts that are clearly AI written. It makes me question if they are able to read something, understand it, and put it in their own words. This seems like a fundamental skill any adult should have, especially if they are trying to make a living giving advice to others, as was the case with these videos. I’d also think literacy should be a basic requirement for a teacher, regardless of the subject. If we don’t hold that standard for our teachers, how can we expect it of our students? Continuously lowering standards is not helping anyone in the long run. It hurts the individual and society as a whole.
- Dylan16807 4mo ago
  What does this have to do with emails. The comment you replied to didn't say to purge all LLMs so I see basically no connection.
sebmellen 4mo ago
The most frustrating thing to me is to receive a 5-paragraph-plus email that was clearly written with some AI that filled in the email with vapid and useless talking points, like "Let me know if you need any other blah blah blah; While there is clearly a need for system improvement, we are working hard to address the underlying and fundamental issue; This is a lesson that it's not just a feature, it's a critical path for our users, etc." My theory is that people are fundamentally averse to the thought and effort it takes to write a good quality email. Then there’s probably some underlying belief that more volume shows more effort, which people will perceive positively. And finally, there's the worry that if you write the email yourself, you might make some embarrassing wording, grammar, or spelling mistake.
- munk-a 4mo ago
  Specifically, lets imagine LLMs as compilers - you're passing your prompt through to get some pretty language at the end. Don't send me your compiled code, send me your prompt. Let it be rude, if the wording is awkward I guarantee I can understand it just as well as an LLM, ignore the fact that my daughter just graduated and offering hallucinated platitudes. Send me the actual question, don't make me try and decompile a big blob of empty text to the ten word prompt that contains all the actual meaning. AI is a useful tool for a variety of purposes, what it is not useful for is expanding a short statement to an essay and reducing an essay to a short statement. Either the communication deserves to be an essay or ten words will get it done.
  - ikrenji 4mo ago
    Just because you yourself are OK with being talked to rudely, doesn't mean others are. In fact I'd wager most aren't consciously or unconsciously...
    - not_kurt_godel 4mo ago
      Yeah that attitude will not get you far in life unless you're Steve Jobs, and it'll sink your ship unless you're obnoxiously rich. And even if you're either/both of those things: A. you can and should act better, and B. people will always attach an asshole-asterisk to your name for the rest of your life and probably even a good while after.
mrtksn 4mo ago
It’s the protocol of the brave new world, you and the recipient need a single sentence to communicate but the culture dictates using certain language and politeness + personal flavor so your AI helps you write culturally appropriate fluff and the person who receives it is using their AI to get rid if the fluff so you are both optimized for productivity through stripping the culture away making your interactions faceless and yourself fungible. You can imagine this spread into dating as well, so you just have sex efficiently to optimize the breeding and hedonism. At some point the protocol of expanding and then compacting with AI will also be removed to optimize the unneeded inference and people will again talk to each other but using the caveman language, stripped away from centuries of culture.
- munk-a 4mo ago
  My ADHD rejects modernity. I shall type novels when engaged in discussions about feature design decisions and if your question has an easy answer I will give it to you shortly. I absolutely agree with your opinion and I loathe it.
  - bigiain 4mo ago
    I (mostly) welcome _people_ writing medium to long form emails, slack posts, and pull request comment (and the like). What really grinds my gears is when the clearly desired response is a few words or a single sentence, and what I get is a link to an obviously llm generated 3 page pdf full of em-dashes and emoji bullet pointed lists with very little relevance or context about the question. If I wanted Claude or ChatGPT's response, I would have asked them. If I'm going to bother a cow orker with a question, it's because I want domain specific knowledge or workplace experience that might be important. I'm more and more often internally reacting with "if you didn't bother writing it, I don't need to bother reading it". I would welcome your 30 min or half day turnaround with a well written and thought response, over lazy/disrespectful colleges who are just doing the instant 2026 version of "just fucking google it".
    - munk-a 4mo ago
      Hey, speaking of gear grinding - have you run into LLM generated comments? I have always loathed JavaDoc and friends as I think it encourages vapid space filling comments that are inherently knowable from the code - when it's connected to a renderer (as was the original JavaDoc) so that the comments can be exposed without the code that is fine-ish - it serves a purpose and I can comprehend the rational but in most cases I've seen those comments committed without any intent to ever render them separately. In the modern world we've got comments written by LLMs because "You've got to write a comment, of course, it's required!" but now the actually significant comments (the Why comments - as opposed to the What ones) are lost in a sea of LLM slop so no one will read them. Considering it'd be just as easy for the reader to point a conversational LLM at the codefile if they want the LLM interpretation of what's happening why are we bothering committing it at all? Gosh that really grinds my gears. It's definitely a tangent but that being encouraged is a huge red flag for me.
0x3f 4mo ago
I don't use gmail but often get an LLM to write certain emails. The benefit is that it can pull in context and typically one-shot the email without me prompting it at all. For example, a tenant emails me about some issue relating to a specific property. It can go through my leases, find the right one, check other emails to see I ordered a new appliance to that specific address, track shipping/install, all that, then reply appropriately.
- altmanaltman 4mo ago
  I think your example is just customer support and not something that requires a personal touch anyway. Like your tenant doesn't care about your tone in that context, just the information. (It does seem like email is the sub optimal channel for this task anyway). But if you're writing to someone with the intention of communicating personally, using AI anyway shows a lack of effort.
Almondioco 4mo ago
If i write a bad email because i'm frustrated to some company or whatever and want them to change their behavour, i think a llm can write an email, which triggers these people a lot more than my 'polite' way of convincing others.
- deleted 4mo ago
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jrowen 4mo ago
It's insecurity. They worry they might be saying something dumb and the LLM gives them assurance that it sounds "better" and "more professional."
- boelboel 4mo ago
  And they will just get worse at writing anything by depending on it. Soon enough practically nobody will be able to write.
- al_borland 4mo ago
  It’s a false assurance. LLMs say dumb things all the time.
AlienRobot 4mo ago
Youtube implemented the same sort of thing for channels. If you have a youtube channel and someone comments on one of your videos, there is an AI-generated "reply" that you can click to avoid having to actually think about interacting with commenters on your videos. The weird thing is, if I commented on a channel and they sent me an AI-generated reply, I'd just hate them forever.
hn_throwaway_99 4mo ago
Ronny Chieng's speech at Harvard's Class Day that went viral put it well, something along the lines of "AI can write emails and summarize threads for you. You know who else can do that? Me."
anal_reactor 4mo ago
Normies love this shit because it makes them fit in the crowd effortlessly. Same reason why corporate slop was a thing even before AI. Personally, when I message people I respect I either don't use AI or ask it "please fix typos only", but if it's someone I don't give a fuck about, then AI-generated slop it is, because assuming that the recipient is a random person, AI-generated slop has the highest chance of actually getting shit done.
ssl-3 4mo ago
It is no surprise to me at all that some people reach to bots for help with writing email. I've seen some very incomprehensibly-written communication in my time, including from people who speak English as a first language. The most frustrating group of consistent offenders I've seen was comprised of folks who absolutely should know better: School teachers.
andrekandre 4mo ago
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mcphage 4mo ago
> It's one thing if you don't speak English well and could use some help making yourself understood If someone reading does this, please, do not. Imperfect English is a lot more pleasant to read than AI slop. It will not sound better, it will sound worse.
- StefanBatory 4mo ago
  Everyone says so, and then when you make even a single mistake in grammar, orthography or use weird phrasing, your entire point is disregarded. And currently many phrases we've been taught to use for formality are being seen as a sign of LLM usage...
VladVladikoff 4mo ago
Honest answer, I’m sort of not neurotypical, not formally diagnosed but enough people in my life have gone out of their way to inform me, and so while I do still write emails myself, if it’s for work I usually dump my email into an LLM before sending it and just ask for some minor edits where I could be misconstrued as being rude or offensive. It’s stuff I would normally not notice, but other people take issue with my overtly direct nature of speaking.
NagatoYuzuru 4mo ago
As a non native English speaker, letting an LLM translate my emails is actually a sweet trap that’s all too easy to fall into. But Gemini in Gmail DOESN’T SUPPORT non English input. What’s the point of this thing?
- duskdozer 4mo ago
  >As a non native English speaker, letting an LLM translate my emails is actually a sweet trap that’s all too easy to fall into. There's a big difference between running your input through DeepL and asking [ChatGPT] to rewrite it. I don't know how we got to the latter being the go-to
  - NagatoYuzuru 4mo ago
    DeepL's limit is now only 500 words. And I already have a whole bunch of subscriptions. This will become a habit. That’s why DeepL is feeling the pressure and [laying off](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-05-07/google-translate-rival-deepl-announces-plans-to-cut-25-of-staff https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-05-07/google-tr...) employees.
jeroenhd 4mo ago
21% of Americans are functionally illiterate. 54% of Americans read below a 6th grade level. Things that seem trivial to someone well-read can be insurmountable tasks for millions of people. Those people may do fine day to day, you don't need to write all that many emails for many if not most jobs, but when they do need to get their intentions across, things might get dicy. Or course this solution is far from perfect. If you use LLMs to word your message because you're not very proficient in reading or writing, you may not understand what the output is saying, so you can't verify that it didn't misinterpret you.
- voidUpdate 4mo ago
  You have to be able to write enough to prompt an LLM. So why not just send the prompt, since that's what you actually said?
  - reddalo 4mo ago
    Gmail can guess what you want to say without you having to type a prompt.
    - voidUpdate 4mo ago
      well what's the point of even sending the email if gmail can just reply for you
      - reddalo 4mo ago
        I don't know lol but apparently some people use that function. It doesn't make any sense to me
  - jeroenhd 4mo ago
    Because it's already hard enough to get someone to understand what you're saying if you write full, flowing sentences. Back when I did customer support, I occasionally dealt with people who lacked the capability to express themselves in written language. These weren't people born in other countries or people with some kind of intellectual disability, often they were just never taught how to read/write/compose a message. There's also a social stigma to sending a job application written like "good. morning. sir i. wnt too. Wrk for ur Compny u. hve job. for Me im steven i.m" and so on, even if the job in question has nothing to do with any form of written communication. Plus, there are plenty of things people just don't know how to do. I once had to Google "how do I write a letter of resignation" and Google will now generate a fulll message for you if you type "i want quit next month how write". I think the author of this blog post assuming a prompt to help improve a message (obnoxious glowing button aside) somehow implies that Google thinks they're stupid showcases the perceived link between the ability to write and intelligence. Obviously, using LLMs for this is just patching over the lack of resources put into (adult) education and literacy, as well as a societal shift to stop treating illiterate people badly. However, structural improvements take many years, probably several rounds of elections, and doesn't help someone today.
itake 4mo ago
speaking is faster than typing. My current process is: 1. Use Google Eloquent or directly into ChatGPT to dictate the email. 2. Then ask AI to polish, simplify, summarize, and I provide my writing style [0]. That gets sent to the user. I am very careful to not allow the AI to write too much. The alternative is I spend 20+ minutes writing and re-writing the email. [0] - https://www.kcoleman.me/writing/slack/2023/03/11/writing-style-for-slack.html https://www.kcoleman.me/writing/slack/2023/03/11/writing-sty...
- gblargg 4mo ago
  As an aside, using an LLM results in a post that's all black text, except a couple of colorful emojis that jump out: > Speak with confidence. “I think that I can possibly consider agreeing” . Don’t share weak decisions or opinions. Either agree, or disagree. When I see those I mentally downgrade the whole text.
Derbasti 4mo ago
More pointedly, instead of prompting the AI to write something, just send the prompt. It will be concise and pointed, exactly what a message should be.
kakacik 4mo ago
Wife is a GP and has to frequently write emails to either insurances or lawyers/judges. All done in french which is a messy language full of obsolete over-the-top completely dishonest empty fluff, but native speakers tend to get quickly offended if its missing, done by non-native speaker. Mistakes can easily have legal consequences. She uses chatgpt for such with appropriate checks afterwards, all the time. It saves her tons of time, and time is money, time is life spent with kids instead of useless bureaucratic work. I have tons of similar stories, friends (surgeons, radiologists, all non-native speakers) using chatgpt to write some official application for work permits, motivation letters etc. Just because you don't have certain way of working or work situation doesn't mean its valid for all of us.
tardedmeme 4mo ago
I think it's a case of projection. Megatech CEOs feel that avoiding interactions with peons is the most important thing, so they add this feature assuming that everyone else also wants that.

by why_at 4mo ago

goodmythical 4mo ago

I think you might be suffering from a little bit of bias concerning your own comfort with written english with regard to the general population's comfort with written english. I had a high school teacher (algebra II), my favorite coincidentally, who was actually functionally illiterate. He knew some words, and had a solid understanding of the alphabet, but ask him to parse a sentence or god forbid an essay, and he was completely lost. He was a native born american, english as only language, and simply could not interact with the written language. If he could have written (in 2009) "give 20 question test for week 1 algebra II student with answer guide" he'd have gotten (based on the prompt I just submitted): Week 1 — Algebra II: 20 Practice Questions Simplify: 3(x + 4) − 2(2x − 5). Solve for x: 5x − 7 = 2x + 11. Solve: 2(x − 3) = 3(x + 1). Solve and check: (x/4) + 5 = 11. Factor: x^2 + 5x + 6. Factor: 4x^2 − 9. Factor completely: x^2 − 6x + 9. Multiply and simplify: (2x − 3)(x + 4). Expand: (x + 2)^2. Solve quadratic by factoring: x^2 − x − 12 = 0. Use the quadratic formula to solve: x^2 + 4x + 1 = 0. Simplify: (3x^2y)(2xy^3). Simplify: (x^5)/(x^2). Solve for x: 2^(x+1) = 16. Evaluate: f(x) = 2x^2 − 3x + 1; find f(2). Write equation of a line in slope-intercept form with slope 3 and y-intercept −2. Find slope of the line through points (1, 4) and (5, −2). Solve the system by substitution: y = 2x + 1 and 3x − y = 4. Solve the system by elimination: 2x + 3y = 7 and 4x − 3y = 5. Simplify and write in simplest radical form: sqrt(50). Answer Key 3x + 12 − 4x + 10 = −x + 22 5x − 2x = 11 + 7 → 3x = 18 → x = 6 2x − 6 = 3x + 3 → −6 − 3 = x → x = −9 x/4 = 6 → x = 24 (x + 2)(x + 3) (2x − 3)(2x + 3) (x − 3)^2 2x^2 + 8x − 3x − 12 = 2x^2 + 5x − 12 x^2 + 4x + 4 (x − 4)(x + 3) = 0 → x = 4 or x = −3 x = [−4 ± sqrt(16 − 4)]/2 = [−4 ± sqrt(12)]/2 = [−4 ± 2√3]/2 = −2 ± √3 6x^3y^4 x^3 (assuming x ≠ 0) 2^(x+1) = 16 = 2^4 → x + 1 = 4 → x = 3 f(2) = 2(4) − 3(2) + 1 = 8 − 6 + 1 = 3 y = 3x − 2 slope = (−2 − 4)/(5 − 1) = (−6)/4 = −3/2 Substitute y: 3x − (2x + 1) = 4 → 3x − 2x − 1 = 4 → x = 5 → y = 2(5)+1 = 11 Add equations: (2x+3y)+(4x−3y)=7+5 → 6x = 12 → x = 2. Then 2(2)+3y=7 → 4+3y=7 → 3y=3 → y=1 sqrt(50) = sqrt(25·2) = 5√2 I'm sure there are many more accesibility stories surrounding these fancy auto-completes.

minitech 4mo ago
This comment is confusing to me on so many levels. What’s with the tangent(?) about a math test your algebra teacher could have generated? Did you bring up an illiterate teacher (extreme outlier) as evidence that the general population has low comfort with written English, or…? (I’m going to resist getting into the rest of the tangent, but it’s really impressively densely perplexing.) (edit: I’m not going to resist) > If he could have written (in 2009) "give 20 question test for week 1 algebra II student with answer guide" Is the “could” here just about AI not existing back then, or does “could not interact with the written language” imply that he could not have written this prompt? Why would he need the output, given that most of it is math? (If we assume he can speech-to-text the prompt, why can’t he do the same for other writing?) If the level of writing of “Write equation of a line in slope-intercept form with slope 3 and y-intercept −2” is the challenge, is he able to read it? What if the output is wrong – who’s going to verify it? Are you presenting this as a good thing? How did/would he grade handwritten written-answer questions?
al_borland 4mo ago
People won’t get better if they don’t use it. These LLMs are a crutch that will not just not people from getting better, but any skills they do have will atrophy without use. How can anyone even write a proper prompt, or understand if the answer is correct, without being literate? I’ve been noticing on YouTube where people are delivering scripts that are clearly AI written. It makes me question if they are able to read something, understand it, and put it in their own words. This seems like a fundamental skill any adult should have, especially if they are trying to make a living giving advice to others, as was the case with these videos. I’d also think literacy should be a basic requirement for a teacher, regardless of the subject. If we don’t hold that standard for our teachers, how can we expect it of our students? Continuously lowering standards is not helping anyone in the long run. It hurts the individual and society as a whole.
Dylan16807 4mo ago
What does this have to do with emails. The comment you replied to didn't say to purge all LLMs so I see basically no connection.

sebmellen 4mo ago

The most frustrating thing to me is to receive a 5-paragraph-plus email that was clearly written with some AI that filled in the email with vapid and useless talking points, like "Let me know if you need any other blah blah blah; While there is clearly a need for system improvement, we are working hard to address the underlying and fundamental issue; This is a lesson that it's not just a feature, it's a critical path for our users, etc." My theory is that people are fundamentally averse to the thought and effort it takes to write a good quality email. Then there’s probably some underlying belief that more volume shows more effort, which people will perceive positively. And finally, there's the worry that if you write the email yourself, you might make some embarrassing wording, grammar, or spelling mistake.

munk-a 4mo ago
Specifically, lets imagine LLMs as compilers - you're passing your prompt through to get some pretty language at the end. Don't send me your compiled code, send me your prompt. Let it be rude, if the wording is awkward I guarantee I can understand it just as well as an LLM, ignore the fact that my daughter just graduated and offering hallucinated platitudes. Send me the actual question, don't make me try and decompile a big blob of empty text to the ten word prompt that contains all the actual meaning. AI is a useful tool for a variety of purposes, what it is not useful for is expanding a short statement to an essay and reducing an essay to a short statement. Either the communication deserves to be an essay or ten words will get it done.
- ikrenji 4mo ago
  Just because you yourself are OK with being talked to rudely, doesn't mean others are. In fact I'd wager most aren't consciously or unconsciously...
  - not_kurt_godel 4mo ago
    Yeah that attitude will not get you far in life unless you're Steve Jobs, and it'll sink your ship unless you're obnoxiously rich. And even if you're either/both of those things: A. you can and should act better, and B. people will always attach an asshole-asterisk to your name for the rest of your life and probably even a good while after.

mrtksn 4mo ago

It’s the protocol of the brave new world, you and the recipient need a single sentence to communicate but the culture dictates using certain language and politeness + personal flavor so your AI helps you write culturally appropriate fluff and the person who receives it is using their AI to get rid if the fluff so you are both optimized for productivity through stripping the culture away making your interactions faceless and yourself fungible. You can imagine this spread into dating as well, so you just have sex efficiently to optimize the breeding and hedonism. At some point the protocol of expanding and then compacting with AI will also be removed to optimize the unneeded inference and people will again talk to each other but using the caveman language, stripped away from centuries of culture.

munk-a 4mo ago
My ADHD rejects modernity. I shall type novels when engaged in discussions about feature design decisions and if your question has an easy answer I will give it to you shortly. I absolutely agree with your opinion and I loathe it.
- bigiain 4mo ago
  I (mostly) welcome _people_ writing medium to long form emails, slack posts, and pull request comment (and the like). What really grinds my gears is when the clearly desired response is a few words or a single sentence, and what I get is a link to an obviously llm generated 3 page pdf full of em-dashes and emoji bullet pointed lists with very little relevance or context about the question. If I wanted Claude or ChatGPT's response, I would have asked them. If I'm going to bother a cow orker with a question, it's because I want domain specific knowledge or workplace experience that might be important. I'm more and more often internally reacting with "if you didn't bother writing it, I don't need to bother reading it". I would welcome your 30 min or half day turnaround with a well written and thought response, over lazy/disrespectful colleges who are just doing the instant 2026 version of "just fucking google it".
  - munk-a 4mo ago
    Hey, speaking of gear grinding - have you run into LLM generated comments? I have always loathed JavaDoc and friends as I think it encourages vapid space filling comments that are inherently knowable from the code - when it's connected to a renderer (as was the original JavaDoc) so that the comments can be exposed without the code that is fine-ish - it serves a purpose and I can comprehend the rational but in most cases I've seen those comments committed without any intent to ever render them separately. In the modern world we've got comments written by LLMs because "You've got to write a comment, of course, it's required!" but now the actually significant comments (the Why comments - as opposed to the What ones) are lost in a sea of LLM slop so no one will read them. Considering it'd be just as easy for the reader to point a conversational LLM at the codefile if they want the LLM interpretation of what's happening why are we bothering committing it at all? Gosh that really grinds my gears. It's definitely a tangent but that being encouraged is a huge red flag for me.

0x3f 4mo ago

I don't use gmail but often get an LLM to write certain emails. The benefit is that it can pull in context and typically one-shot the email without me prompting it at all. For example, a tenant emails me about some issue relating to a specific property. It can go through my leases, find the right one, check other emails to see I ordered a new appliance to that specific address, track shipping/install, all that, then reply appropriately.

altmanaltman 4mo ago
I think your example is just customer support and not something that requires a personal touch anyway. Like your tenant doesn't care about your tone in that context, just the information. (It does seem like email is the sub optimal channel for this task anyway). But if you're writing to someone with the intention of communicating personally, using AI anyway shows a lack of effort.

Almondioco 4mo ago

If i write a bad email because i'm frustrated to some company or whatever and want them to change their behavour, i think a llm can write an email, which triggers these people a lot more than my 'polite' way of convincing others.

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jrowen 4mo ago

It's insecurity. They worry they might be saying something dumb and the LLM gives them assurance that it sounds "better" and "more professional."

boelboel 4mo ago
And they will just get worse at writing anything by depending on it. Soon enough practically nobody will be able to write.
al_borland 4mo ago
It’s a false assurance. LLMs say dumb things all the time.

AlienRobot 4mo ago

Youtube implemented the same sort of thing for channels. If you have a youtube channel and someone comments on one of your videos, there is an AI-generated "reply" that you can click to avoid having to actually think about interacting with commenters on your videos. The weird thing is, if I commented on a channel and they sent me an AI-generated reply, I'd just hate them forever.

hn_throwaway_99 4mo ago

Ronny Chieng's speech at Harvard's Class Day that went viral put it well, something along the lines of "AI can write emails and summarize threads for you. You know who else can do that? Me."

anal_reactor 4mo ago

Normies love this shit because it makes them fit in the crowd effortlessly. Same reason why corporate slop was a thing even before AI. Personally, when I message people I respect I either don't use AI or ask it "please fix typos only", but if it's someone I don't give a fuck about, then AI-generated slop it is, because assuming that the recipient is a random person, AI-generated slop has the highest chance of actually getting shit done.

ssl-3 4mo ago

It is no surprise to me at all that some people reach to bots for help with writing email. I've seen some very incomprehensibly-written communication in my time, including from people who speak English as a first language. The most frustrating group of consistent offenders I've seen was comprised of folks who absolutely should know better: School teachers.

andrekandre 4mo ago

[dead]

mcphage 4mo ago

> It's one thing if you don't speak English well and could use some help making yourself understood If someone reading does this, please, do not. Imperfect English is a lot more pleasant to read than AI slop. It will not sound better, it will sound worse.

StefanBatory 4mo ago
Everyone says so, and then when you make even a single mistake in grammar, orthography or use weird phrasing, your entire point is disregarded. And currently many phrases we've been taught to use for formality are being seen as a sign of LLM usage...

VladVladikoff 4mo ago

Honest answer, I’m sort of not neurotypical, not formally diagnosed but enough people in my life have gone out of their way to inform me, and so while I do still write emails myself, if it’s for work I usually dump my email into an LLM before sending it and just ask for some minor edits where I could be misconstrued as being rude or offensive. It’s stuff I would normally not notice, but other people take issue with my overtly direct nature of speaking.

NagatoYuzuru 4mo ago

As a non native English speaker, letting an LLM translate my emails is actually a sweet trap that’s all too easy to fall into. But Gemini in Gmail DOESN’T SUPPORT non English input. What’s the point of this thing?

duskdozer 4mo ago
>As a non native English speaker, letting an LLM translate my emails is actually a sweet trap that’s all too easy to fall into. There's a big difference between running your input through DeepL and asking [ChatGPT] to rewrite it. I don't know how we got to the latter being the go-to
- NagatoYuzuru 4mo ago
  DeepL's limit is now only 500 words. And I already have a whole bunch of subscriptions. This will become a habit. That’s why DeepL is feeling the pressure and [laying off](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-05-07/google-translate-rival-deepl-announces-plans-to-cut-25-of-staff https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-05-07/google-tr...) employees.

jeroenhd 4mo ago

21% of Americans are functionally illiterate. 54% of Americans read below a 6th grade level. Things that seem trivial to someone well-read can be insurmountable tasks for millions of people. Those people may do fine day to day, you don't need to write all that many emails for many if not most jobs, but when they do need to get their intentions across, things might get dicy. Or course this solution is far from perfect. If you use LLMs to word your message because you're not very proficient in reading or writing, you may not understand what the output is saying, so you can't verify that it didn't misinterpret you.

voidUpdate 4mo ago
You have to be able to write enough to prompt an LLM. So why not just send the prompt, since that's what you actually said?
- reddalo 4mo ago
  Gmail can guess what you want to say without you having to type a prompt.
  - voidUpdate 4mo ago
    well what's the point of even sending the email if gmail can just reply for you
    - reddalo 4mo ago
      I don't know lol but apparently some people use that function. It doesn't make any sense to me
- jeroenhd 4mo ago
  Because it's already hard enough to get someone to understand what you're saying if you write full, flowing sentences. Back when I did customer support, I occasionally dealt with people who lacked the capability to express themselves in written language. These weren't people born in other countries or people with some kind of intellectual disability, often they were just never taught how to read/write/compose a message. There's also a social stigma to sending a job application written like "good. morning. sir i. wnt too. Wrk for ur Compny u. hve job. for Me im steven i.m" and so on, even if the job in question has nothing to do with any form of written communication. Plus, there are plenty of things people just don't know how to do. I once had to Google "how do I write a letter of resignation" and Google will now generate a fulll message for you if you type "i want quit next month how write". I think the author of this blog post assuming a prompt to help improve a message (obnoxious glowing button aside) somehow implies that Google thinks they're stupid showcases the perceived link between the ability to write and intelligence. Obviously, using LLMs for this is just patching over the lack of resources put into (adult) education and literacy, as well as a societal shift to stop treating illiterate people badly. However, structural improvements take many years, probably several rounds of elections, and doesn't help someone today.

itake 4mo ago

speaking is faster than typing. My current process is: 1. Use Google Eloquent or directly into ChatGPT to dictate the email. 2. Then ask AI to polish, simplify, summarize, and I provide my writing style [0]. That gets sent to the user. I am very careful to not allow the AI to write too much. The alternative is I spend 20+ minutes writing and re-writing the email. [0] - https://www.kcoleman.me/writing/slack/2023/03/11/writing-style-for-slack.html https://www.kcoleman.me/writing/slack/2023/03/11/writing-sty...

gblargg 4mo ago
As an aside, using an LLM results in a post that's all black text, except a couple of colorful emojis that jump out: > Speak with confidence. “I think that I can possibly consider agreeing” . Don’t share weak decisions or opinions. Either agree, or disagree. When I see those I mentally downgrade the whole text.

Derbasti 4mo ago

More pointedly, instead of prompting the AI to write something, just send the prompt. It will be concise and pointed, exactly what a message should be.

kakacik 4mo ago

Wife is a GP and has to frequently write emails to either insurances or lawyers/judges. All done in french which is a messy language full of obsolete over-the-top completely dishonest empty fluff, but native speakers tend to get quickly offended if its missing, done by non-native speaker. Mistakes can easily have legal consequences. She uses chatgpt for such with appropriate checks afterwards, all the time. It saves her tons of time, and time is money, time is life spent with kids instead of useless bureaucratic work. I have tons of similar stories, friends (surgeons, radiologists, all non-native speakers) using chatgpt to write some official application for work permits, motivation letters etc. Just because you don't have certain way of working or work situation doesn't mean its valid for all of us.

tardedmeme 4mo ago

I think it's a case of projection. Megatech CEOs feel that avoiding interactions with peons is the most important thing, so they add this feature assuming that everyone else also wants that.