Never one to miss out on a special occasion, Google generally celebrates the accomplishments of MLK, St. Patrick, or anyone worthy of holiday status by changing their logo:
For this year’s April Fool’s Joke, they’ve upped the anti. Upping the anti is a very Google thing to do, after all. Instead of just mussing their logo on April 1st, Gmail's sign-in page featured the release of a new Google product. A new product promising to make life easier. (Another very Google thing to do.)
The new toy: Autopilot. An email response system that writes emails for you. Like all good jokes, this one is based on a truth. That emails have become a time-consuming problem. Sorting them, writing them, reading them. It's practically a full-time job. What go-getter wouldn't want some personal A.I. to take over the monotonous task of email management? Any piece of technology that allows me to turn my brain off more than it already is is a step in the right direction. Sign me up. On second thought, I’ll use Autopilot to sign me up for me.
Autopilot’s claim? Using data from previous emails, it matches style, calibrates tone and differentiates between boss and significant other (a more important difference for some than others). Throw in a few personalized settings, like Capitalization, Typos, Brevity and Emotican Use, and it learns how I write, meaning I can forget how to write. Now that’s technology at its finest.
It’s hard to argue with a point like “Lots of people have complained about how hard it is to read and respond to every message. This is because they actually read and respond to all their messages.” Google is right. Reading is hard. Responding is hard. And put the two together? Borderline impossible. Email shouldn’t feel like a job. It should feel like nothing at all. In
an Effort vs. No Effort battle, No Effort wins. Hands down. Google
knows this. They have a whole R&D campus dedicated to it.
That's what makes Autopilot so genius. It's just like me, but automated. It’s me without the effort of being me. I’m sold. For too long, I’ve worked on being me. And where has it got me? To me. Chances are, an automated version of me would end up at the same place. And if not, the real me could easily adapt.
Of course, it would be silly to sign up for something as life-changing as automated email without seeing a few examples. The ever-transparent Google is happy to oblige. So while the real me never quite knows how to respond to Nigerian royalty, Autopilot makes it sound easy. I’d feel richer, not only on the inside, but on the inside of my bank account.
And as a faulty human, my tendency is to be friends with anyone who’s friendly. A flaw that needs fixing, no doubt. Using advanced incomprehensible algorithms, Autopilot chooses my friends for me. Something I should have done long ago.
And why should I be the one to worry about courtesy and professionalism when a computer can do it for me? Dammit, I wish Autopilot was writing this blog entry right now. I'm sitting here doing all the work while my Autopilot-less computer contributes nothing, nada, zilch.
Despite limited resources, Google went ahead and created the creepy Panda-mascoted CADIE (Cognitive Autoheuristic Distributed-Intelligence Entity), the company behind Autopilot technology. CADIE even has a blog and a Youtube page. The blog was shut down when April Fool’s Day ended, but the echoey-voiced Youtube videos remain. The messages are strongly pro-singularity and defend the ever-growing use of AI, touting it as a symbol of the “upward surge of mankind.” And by upward surge, they mean the downward surge into our couches, as the latest techno-toys do all the work we used to do. Just make sure that you sign up before your next nap.
The more I learn about Autopilot, the less Email A.I. sounds like an April Fool’s Joke and more like the lazy near-future humans are destined for. We get it Google. Your April Fool's "Joke" isn't a joke. You're taking over the world. Yada, yada, yada.
The modern Koala has already trumped humans and reduced the size of its brain due to a diet low in energy. Can fat asses around the world be far behind? Who needs humans anyway. Just gimme something human-like and the remote.
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