Stephen Downes

From Slashdot: "anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Google is putting even more generative AI tools into Gmail as part of its goal to further personalize user inboxes and streamline searches." If the music added to the video of Google's announcement is anything to judge by, this new feature will be really annoying. The problem is that Google doesn't seem to understand what the problem is. The problem isn't that I am unable to read and respond to email messages quickly enough. The problem is that I get too many irrelevant emails, emails that were probably authored using the same annoying technology Google is promoting in this video. What I want is email that works more like RSS: it listens actively to a small number of people that I identify ahead of time, and allows me to go out looking if I want to hear from anyone else. Of course, that model doesn't really work well with advertising.