Her

Originally published on Tumblr.

Last week I saw The Pajama Game. This musical, among other things, addresses the problem of early factory automation, which doesn’t distinguish between human and machine activity. People didn’t like that. Today, it’s no longer a matter of debate. Factory workers are part of the process, and their activity is monitored and optimized, just like a machine’s.

Today I watched Her, the new Spike Jonze movie in which people fall in love with their AIs. I watched it because I’ve been thinking about allowing technology to prioritize an important aspect of my life: my contact with other people. I knew that Her went way beyond the idea of an intelligent assistant, but I thought it might frame some of my ideas.

I maintain many circles of relationships. In my personal life my circles include immediate family, extended family, friends, and acquaintances. In my professional life they include co-workers, advisors, investors (both current and potential), vendors, and clients. Until last week I didn’t know that I typically have about 200 active conversations going on at any one time. That’s more than I would have guessed.

How did I used to manage them? In a completely arbitrary way. I communicated with people when I thought of them, when a deadline required it, or because I just wanted to clear my inbox. Odd that an otherwise organized and methodical person – me! – would treat something so important in such a casual way.

Last week I started using Contactually, a customer relationship management (CRM) system that reminds me when I should get in touch with someone. It does this by knowing about my relationships (client, vendor, friend, etc.) and having explicit rules about how often I should be interacting with them. It also uses implicit rules by analyzing my past communication patterns and using those as a baseline.

I’m not a salesman, and I’ve never used a CRM before, so this seems like magic. In a way, it is, because I never have to explicitly do anything for it to work. Contactually watches me, and advises. It’s easy to understand, and a bit crude, but it’s already changed my behavior, and it’s made me feel more confident. I feel like I’m now able to stay on top of a web of communication that was previously completely unruly.

The next step is obvious. This kind of program should be able to read and understand my emails. This will allow it to know the rhythm of a conversation, and adjust accordingly. And eventually it should be able to write most of my mail and just prompt me for the data it needs. Analyzing my writing style, it should be able to write mail that sounds as if I’d written it.

Using AI to organize personal communication is unsettling at first, but I don’t see any reason not to use it.

The way we write letters has changed significantly as we’ve gone from pen and paper to typewriter to word processors. The ease of editing has literally changed the process. We now think less a priori and more during the mechanical input process. AI will eliminate most of the mechanics, thereby again changing the process and the outcome.

So far, I love the leverage Contactually provides, although I haven’t fallen in love with her it yet.