In today’s hyperconnected world, it is easier than ever to reach out, but it is hard to get the message across. You pour effort into outreach – a thoughtful email, proposal, collaboration offer – and then… silence. Not rejection, not acceptance, just a complete lack of response. We’re not complaining, we’re going to fix that!
The problem
Ignoring a message that has no direct benefit for the recipient is often the path of least resistance, and given people’s busy schedules, many choose to take it. Politeness was invented for a reason, but this reason fades with distance (it’s a kind of “line of sight” thing).
This behaviour has negative effects on the society, breaking harmony, slowing down innovation, and leading to burnout in people who already have it tough, such as aspiring entrepreneurs.
On top of that, the ghosts of messages unanswered may come full circle and bite you, when you’re doing an outreach of your own.
The proposed solution
That’s where the Ethical Inbox Assistant steps in. It reads incoming messages, rates them on the spamminess—usefulness scale, and suggests a course of action.
Whenever composing a polite reply to an unfamiliar person when you’d rather have a coffee feels too daunting, the friendly AI assistant steps in with expertly composed options, so all you need to do is confirm. It will even point your attention to important information which upon first glance you considered trivial, so that you don’t miss out on great opportunities that might be coming your way.
How to do it?
AI-powered inbox assistants are already a thing, and there are more in development. All that needs to be done is to put an emphasis on implementing and marketing this feature. Instead of viewing inbox assistants as a tool to help their user while ignoring others, we make sure they treat people on the other side ethically. And caring for others will make things better for the user of the inbox assistant, too. Harmony is not a zero-sum game.
Submitted by: Ilia Leikin
Hashtags: #AI #Communication #Email #Inbox #Politeness
Looking for: startup team to take on the project, company to include this feature into an existing product
I can: brainstorm, help testing prototypes
Status: newly submitted
