the roamerAug 16, 2025

genAI and email communication.

I work in higher education, where email is the main mode of office communication, especially with the admin staff. Over the last few months, I experienced several cases where the communication became very complicated because the other side clearly had not read my carefully crafted message.

The number of such cases isn't huge, but it's noticeable. Until a year ago, this simply did not happen, never.

Suddenly it dawned on me: these colleagues are using genAI summaries of my messages, so they never ever saw my actual sentences! It's only a hypothesis, but it explains this unusual situation well.

Do others have had similar experiences?

#email #communication #noAI #noLLM

Show threadOscar Nierstrasz
@the_roamer Nah. People just don't read. Period. They glance at the first thing they see, and think they've read it. So:
- Never put more than one message in an email.
- Put the key point in the subject line.
- Start with the main point; don't bury it in the email.
- If you have more than one point, be sure to explicitly highlight them, and start the subject line with: TWO THINGS.
- Don't be surprised when people still don't read what you write.
Aug 16, 2025 at 4:12pmMastodon for iOS
Show threadthe roamerAug 16, 2025
@onierstrasz
Yes, all of this is good advice. My point however is that professional services staff used to read my messages, and it seems they have outsourced the reading and thus are missing things that previously they did not miss.