Google’s AI Email Tool May Answer in Your Style — But At What Cost?
The relentless advance of artificial intelligence is often compared to the transformative forces of the internet or even the Industrial Revolution. But before AI revolutionizes medicine or ends climate change, one of the field’s top leaders has a more immediate goal: helping us manage our inboxes.
Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind, revealed at the SXSW London festival that his team is developing “next-generation email” tools — AI assistants capable of automatically sorting messages, replying in a user’s voice, and making “some of the easier decisions.” In his words: “I would love to get rid of my email. I would pay thousands of dollars per month to get rid of that.”
This smart email assistant is part of Hassabis’s broader vision for AI: a deeply personal tool that not only lightens the digital load, but actively protects users from attention-draining algorithms created by tech giants themselves. “I’m very excited about the idea of a universal AI assistant that knows you really well,” he said. “[It] basically gives you more time and maybe protects your attention from other algorithms trying to gain your attention.”
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Hassabis imagines this AI doing more than answering emails. It could enhance our lives with intelligent recommendations, automate chores, and act as a kind of cognitive firewall. “Something that would just understand what are the bread-and-butter emails, and answer in your style,” he explained.
While he emphasized that the impact of AI is “overhyped in the short term,” Hassabis believes the long-term effects could be “nothing short of a new Industrial Revolution.” He estimates that artificial general intelligence (AGI) — a more adaptable, human-like form of AI — is only five to ten years away.
Despite once thinking the pursuit of AGI would be led by academia, Hassabis admitted the race has become dominated by tech corporations due to the technology’s “immediate” commercial potential. This fast-paced development has raised alarm among experts and governments worldwide, spurring debates about the safety and ethics of AI advancement.
“I hope at least on the scientific level and a safety level we can find some common ground,” Hassabis said, calling on global powers like the US and China to collaborate. “Because in the end it’s for the good of all of humanity. It’s going to affect the whole of humanity.”
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He remains cautiously optimistic about the concept of “radical abundance” — a world where AI solves fundamental issues like energy scarcity and creates widespread prosperity. But he also posed a pressing question: “Can we make sure that’s fairly shared, and fairly distributed?” urging economists and social scientists to explore the implications.
Yet as AI becomes more capable of mimicking our speech, making our choices, and shielding us from digital distractions, a sobering concern emerges: in outsourcing our daily decisions and digital identities, are we surrendering more than just our inboxes?
If AI begins to speak for us, think for us, and filter our world on our behalf, what remains of our humanity? In trying to gain time, we may be giving up something far more irreplaceable — the subtle, imperfect, and deeply human experience of living and choosing for ourselves.
