Another Point of Singularity

I was more than puzzled to log into GMAIL(tm) this morning and see a link to what appears to be a boffo new service by Google called AUTOPILOT, which apparently learns your communication style and answers emails for you.

How does Gmail mirror my communication style?

The more Gmail messages Autopilot can sample, the better. With fewer than 100 messages, there may not be enough data to calibrate Autopilot effectively. You can adjust tone, typo propensity, and preferred punctuation from the Autopilot tab under Settings.

You may want to log in every week or so to ensure Autopilot is calibrated optimally.
Does Autopilot work for Gmail chat too?

Yes. Chat was actually simpler to build, given the natural language headway made by Joseph Weizenbaum's ELIZA. While many claim ELIZA oft times passed the Turing test, Gmail Autopilot passes with 99.9% accuracy due to the inclusion of human-like qualities such as compassion and wisdom and CADIE's related ability to calibrate to match your chat style.
What happens if a sender and recipient both have Autopilot on?

Two Gmail accounts can happily converse with each other for up to three messages each. Beyond that, our experiments have shown a significant decline in the quality ranking of Autopilot's responses and further messages may commit you to dinner parties or baby namings in which you have no interest.

What the heck? Then I read the the individual examples of correspondence and realized it was April the first. D'OH! You scamps!!



Man, taken in by geek humor... this office needs some windows, for God's sake.

(It really was amusing, Google, thanks!)