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During his speech at Google Next '18, Google's VP G Suite Prabhakar Raghavan said:
We are at a point in AI where 10% of your replies are machine-written, but human accepted.
We are at a point in AI where 10% of your replies are machine-written, but human accepted.
This is real, today - and the message resonated deeply with me. Is that AI coming for a part of my job? Is it AI making me more productive?
You look so cute, Pepper - but does your typing make any sense?
A disclaimer first: I enjoy typing. I took lessons on an ancient typewriter, hauling them from a VW minivan every week, typing to "I like to move it" (it was the 90s). I switched to Dvorak. I use Windows KLC to this day, and if I ever sat in the same office as you, you would have heard me typing and kicked me out (for the nerds, HyperX with brown switches, bliss). And all of a sudden Gmail will suggest short replies for me, and then entire phrases as I type?
If I step over my pride as a typist, this is really helpful, for everybody:
Non-typists can type faster now. Almost everybody benefits from having to type fewer characters. Non-native speakers (like me) benefit from fewer mistakes in foreign languages, especially collocations. Haven't seen you for a while, in a while... This is valuable.
I also find the simpler cousin, smart reply (3-word suggestions, such as "Sounds good"), helps me overcome writer's blockade and go through emails faster. I use it for getting in the flow and expanding (if little) on the email - let's not get back to the Blackberry days of 1-word replies. And let's also not get to LinkedIn replies where you get a dozen identical "Congrats!" replies.
Of course, there is a danger in receiving more mindless communications, overwhelming us with "Great!" and "OK!" in Chat. Google has introduced emoji reactions for Chat for that.
Smart compose, available for your private Gmail and soon for PwC's Gmail.
My take on AI writing is: It is one more tool in our arsenal. Expect rapid advances in this field, up to a point where AI will suggest complete emails for you, based on your style (not possible today) and based on your interactions with that person, your job responsibilities etc. Everybody has a personal stenographer now, we all got a little dose of super powers.
How we use that power will be up to us. You can use it to spam, but you can also use it to to plow through your emails faster and help you get/stay in the flow. As for typing, you still get an edge from learning it. Although this might not be the best time to consider a career in teaching touch typing. Thanks for reading!
#philosophyPublished 2018-08-14 by Holger Matthies.Modified 2021-02-02 by Holger Matthies.
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