In an interview with Joanna Stern of The Wall Street Journal, Rick Osterloh, Google’s vice president of devices and services, said that Google AI can help people “be more productive” by writing thank-you notes ($/£). Osterloh said that by putting down his pen and switching to digital thank-you notes, he was able to “write 10 times more emails than I could have written by hand.” In the future, AI could help us write exponentially more thank-you notes in less time.
Sad, right? The problem is the dehumanizing nature of such functionality: Google’s AI can do things that humans can, but it’s not the functionality itself that’s important, it’s that the AI does it.
Like many people, I hate writing thank-you notes. I love receiving gifts and expressing gratitude, but writing them makes the process a pain. But I still write thank-you notes on special occasions because I’ve received them and I know how good they feel.
Receiving a thank you note is the ideal outcome of gift-giving — aside from the joy of giving, of course. When I receive a handwritten thank you note, it’s not the words on the paper that I see — it’s the time it took to write it. I visualize the effort involved in finding the special notepaper, digging out the stamps from the junk drawer, and dropping the letter into a real-world mailbox.
Writing 100 thank you notes after the wedding was a huge task, as I had to come up with something unique and personal to say to everyone. But these weren’t strangers. They were friends, cousins, coworkers, loved ones. You know, people, relationships, it’s human stuff.
When I receive a thank you card after someone’s wedding, whether it’s a simple two-line statement that barely acknowledges our connection or a living testament to the gift, I still feel honored and pleased. I know how much effort it took, and I appreciate the effort that was made on my behalf.
Being human is an experience, not a result
Google, how many more times will we have the same conversation? Stop taking the humanity out of my human life. I don’t want an AI that writes thank you cards because that’s not human. I don’t want an AI that creates fake memories in the form of photos. It makes me sad when humans tout these benefits of AI.
Google’s latest camera features suffer from the same problem. The new Add Me camera feature on the Pixel 9 works really well in practice and solves a real problem: You’re out in a group and you want to take a group photo, but the photographer isn’t in the picture. Add Me uses AI to add you to the group photo.
As a human being, I often ask other humans to take a photo of me or my group, and I’ve never met anyone who said no. Thankfully, Google has solved this problem.
@techradar ♬ Storytelling – Adriel
Once complete, your “Add Me” photo is complete. You’re standing next to your group. Now imagine how you’ll feel when you look at that photo 5 years from now, 10 years from now, or in the distant future when you can’t remember everyone’s names. We bet you’ll get there sooner than you’d like.
Real group photos give you a real sense of connection with people. I remember taking a group photo at Dorney Park in Pennsylvania. I’m tall, so I stood at the back with my arms around the shorter people in front of me. I wish I’d taken my hat off. You couldn’t see their faces, but I was there.
I remember being there, and that’s important. In fact, that’s the only thing that matters.
Even if you forget the names of the people in the photo, you still feel like you are there. How does it feel to use Google’s “Add Me” feature? I was standing alone while my friend added me using Google Pixel 9. I’m sure I’ll never remember the feeling of standing around people with my arms folded at the back because I’m alone.
This is a picture of me with a celebrity I’ve never met
Google’s Add Me example is even more egregious: Google suggests taking photos of friends and celebrities and then adding yourself in later. On stage at a Made By Google event, Google used Add Me on Miami Heat superstar Jimmy Butler. One of the presenters stood next to Jimmy Bucket while the other took a photo. The photographer then used Add Me to add himself to the photo.
We all know how this feature is used in practice: I see Chris Rock crossing the street in Manhattan, take a photo with “Add Me,” and then I add myself to that photo so it looks like Chris Rock and I are crossing the street together.
Sorry, Chris Rock. I only use you as an example because I really only saw you cross the street once. And I didn’t take a photo and tried to add my own later. I would have been sad if I had done that. And what would people say if I showed them that photo?
“Me and Chris Rock!”
“Oh, did you meet Chris Rock?”
“No, but I took a photo and added myself later using Google’s Add Me!”Get it?
sad.
I used to call these AI features creepy, but now I realize they make me feel sad more than anything.
If you sent 100 thank you emails, all written by Gemini AI, would you feel satisfied? Would you feel like you’d thanked someone?
So what happens next time you receive a thank you email? A (hmm) thank you email? Will it have the same impact? Will it have any impact if you think it was written by an AI?
An AI can write you a note, but it doesn’t express gratitude. Google’s AI can add you to a group photo, but it can’t make you feel part of the group. These AI tools don’t do what their developers claim because they claim they are useful to meet human needs, but then again, there is no humanity in AI.
