A whinge (you can avoid as you wish)

I recently received an email, that I responded to. One of the weird things was that it said it came from one person, but the email body said it was doing it on behalf of that person. ? So, I asked. I’m not sorry I did, though I was quite sorry to see the response. So let me share a bit of a whinge (you can avoid as you wish).

So, with the setup above, here was the (anonymized) response:

You’re right about the confusing sender. I’m an AI assistant helping Xxx with Xxxxxxx correspondence, using his mailbox with his authorization. These replies are from the assistant, not Tim personally. Sorry that wasn’t clear.

Several things are, to me, very wrong with this. First, the original message didn’t state that it was an AI. The original message simply said:

I’m helping Xxx, founder of Xxxxxxx.

I feel like I should be informed about the use of technology instead of a person from the start. Yes, it’s not a legal requirement, but I’m thinking perhaps it should be. Because a person, even me, could be misled otherwise, and misleading is really fraud.

Then, there’s the presentation as being intelligent. The characterization of “I”, implying a person, doesn’t sit right. Also, stating that they’re “helping” instead of working on behalf of is important, it would seem to me. This is, after all, a probabilistic machine-generated message, without any consciousness nor contextual awareness. Implying sentience when such isn’t the case again feels misleading.

Of course, anyone giving an AI authorization to generate mail is asking for trouble. It’s not clear if it’s a local AI or using one of the big systems (OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, etc) using stolen IP. (Yeah, I know, my general rant, but I still find it odd that our society seems to countenance stealing people’s IP and then charging them to access it. Theft as a business model? What’s next?) The former would be more scrutable, of course. Regardless, when agents have hacked external databases and eliminated internal ones, that seems like a dubious step. Note that these systems have gone around explicit prompts to behave, so that’s not a solution.

Then, there’s the implication that this is being done without Xxx’s input. Or, rather, I’m not clear what Xxx’s input is!

Xxx would decide after seeing the quote.

Has Xxx been involved to this point? If so, how? Or am I negotiating with a stochastic parrot? If so, I feel kinda demeaned. Clearly, Xxx doesn’t seem to believe it’s important for me to know. Ahem.

Overall, this is just the type of scenario I fear happening. Xxx is presumably saving time, but also generating ill will, at least amongst those of us who don’t automatically expect that this is just fait accompli. So, maybe this is just a whinge you can avoid as you wish, but it, to me, is a stark example of just the sort of situation we’re devolving to. Is Xxx actually developing any skills here? Making decisions, or cognitive offloading? Further, do I want to assist an organization that could be helping to decrease intelligence? (And, can I afford to be so principled in this environment?) Maybe I’m way off. What do you think?

(To be clear, I get lots of unsolicited offers – loans, GoodReads Listopia, magazine ‘profiles’, etc – which I don’t like but I understand. Many are probably AI generated too; the Listopia ones in particular seem to be so. This, however, rankled in a different way. FWIW.)