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izolate | 2 years ago

The first two are seemingly of questionable utility, but the 3rd feature (Help me write) is actually quite interesting.

As of late, most of my public written responses (bar HN) have had some sort of collaboration with ChatGPT, and I've often wondered about a native browser integration. For those of us who struggle with communication, this is an exciting prospect!

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jabroni_salad|2 years ago

Ironically, the message "I'm interested in this place - do you allow dogs?" is a piece of decent business writing on its own and way better than anything I saw while trying to sublet a room. I would rather see AI suggest phrases like that rather than their proposed answer.

Now that I think about it, a Clippy that interviews you about needs and follows your browsing session to highlight stuff you like / don't like and propose questions to ask would be pretty sweet.

burkaman|2 years ago

Yeah that suggestion is terrible. Really not looking forward to seeing this kind of writing everywhere.

int_19h|2 years ago

I don't know. The screenshot that they use to showcase it makes me feel the opposite - it took a perfectly clear and concise question and dressed it up in a lot of unnecessary verbiage that the person on the other end will now have to unpack to get to the gist of it.

Or they could use an LLM to translate it back to clear and concise, I suppose. But then what is it even for?

smith7018|2 years ago

I'm on the other end of the spectrum; I'm pretty worried that that feature will make it really easy to automate bot comments in-browser. It's sad that the internet as we knew it 3 years ago is gone forever and changes like this to push some team's OKRs means I won't be able to trust more online comments.

rockemsockem|2 years ago

The Internet 3 years ago? Was that Internet that great?

wolverine876|2 years ago

I suck at plenty of things and when there is software (or another tool) to help me, I am happy to use it. Software that helps with communication, at least on this level, is a new frontier and therefore, as always, people feel a lot of uncertainty.

As someone who seriously utilizes this particular tool, what do you think of those issues? For example, do you feel like the result has your own voice? Your own specific, precise thoughts? Does it help or hurt growth in communication skill? How do those things play out in real application of the technology and what is the best way to use it?

Incidentally, communication is a strong point for me and therefore ChatGPT doesn't benefit me much in that respect. I hate to think that my skill has lost most of its value, but working in technology, I can hardly complain when it happens to me: Are communication skills even needed now, or how has that need changed?

izolate|2 years ago

The uncertainty you pointed out does seem to explain the downvotes I received.

For me personally, communication is arduous. I struggle daily to articulate what I want to say in a logical and efficient manner, let alone in a graceful or artistic one. I've noticed my vocabulary and communication skill has regressed as I get older, despite efforts to improve it.

Overall, ChatGPT has helped tremendously. I never had a written communication style that I was proud of, so I'm happy to assume its more generic tone of voice. If language fulfills its primary purpose, to get a point across, that's enough for me. Any kind of inherent artistic integrity is above my pay grade, so to speak.

kccqzy|2 years ago

I find it the exact opposite. Writing is joyful to me, whether I'm writing a short one-paragraph comment on HN or writing a thousand-word essay. I do not like the current crop of "Help me write" features because they take away the joy.

summerlight|2 years ago

I see this may be a good replacement for general autofill features as well. Seemingly simple autofill tasks like filling e-mail, address, name, country etc... fields never "just works" for almost all sites since this relies on correctness of the target page implementation and devs usually never care of it. Large language models should be better on this task.

worksonmine|2 years ago

You don't need an LLM to figure out what a certain field is. It's like choosing the 18 wheeler to drive your kids to school...

bogtog|2 years ago

Is there any good AI autocomplete tool out there? The only LLM tool I like currently is GitHub copilot. I basically want copilot for gmail + MS word, but every product I've found wants me to prompt an AI.

kccqzy|2 years ago

Gmail already has content-based autocomplete. The feature is called Smart Compose: https://support.google.com/mail/answer/9116836?hl=en

I also find the UX much better than typical LLMs that require you to write a prompt first; it simply suggests continuations of your sentences that you can accept or ignore, without requiring you to switch your mind between writing for your intended email recipient and writing a prompt for the LLM.