

Less.Mail – An email assistant that makes you work less - ilyaeck
http://less.robinlabs.com

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kristiandupont
On a sleepless night, I was playing with my iPhone and accidentally activated
Siri. I never use Siri but I was bored and the screen had a couple of
suggestions, one of them being something like "Is my daughter home". Puzzled
about what that could possibly make Siri do (I don't have a daughter), I asked
her that. Excited about the sudden attention, Siri decided to call a person in
my contacts, a guy that I barely know and only spoke with years ago.
Panicking, I pressed the home button instead of hanging up immediately, so the
call probably went through, possibly waking him up in the middle of the night.
I never heard from him so I don't know. But the experience was rather
unpleasant.

I think the demos in this video look neat but I don't see myself using AI for
anything that I have to rely on any time soon. I would constantly feel the
need to double check it anyway.

~~~
pestaa
Did you find out why it started the call?

~~~
kristiandupont
No, I still have no idea what the rationale was there.

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comboy
The future:

Joe> Keep responding that I'm working on it

Bob> Keep reminding Joe that the report is urgent each time he responds

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johnchristopher
After 5 seconds I thought the video was an ironic comment on our culture of
constant interruption but it's not.

You have to put a lot of faith into that software if you actually use it while
driving because checking if the answer is correctly chosen with the phone
hanging over the wheel is a big no-no in my driver's book (it does beat
actually typing out the message with one hand but that is already an even
bigger no-no).

Semi-automatic voice activated replies is something I'd like to try out to see
how it feels though. I am curious how the experience would work out
considering I am more of pushing buttons guy.

~~~
Dewie
> After 5 seconds I thought the video was an ironic comment on our culture of
> constant interruption but it's not.

What I like about my email is that I don't have any push notifications from
it. I check it when _I_ want to.

Granted I'm not the kind of person who gets a lot of emails and thus would
benefit from an AI email assistant.

~~~
jrub
I also don't get push notifications of my e-mail. I also don't get a ton, but
it's a well known fact to my colleagues that I don't reply to e-mail instantly
and if they're sending me an e-mail expecting an immediate reply, then they
should re-evaluate why they're sending me an e-mail.

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passfree
Interesting concept. I did sign up to test it out. However, I think that voice
control is not practical with the amount of email we receive on daily basis.
Some people will receive more than 100 messages per day that needs to be
answered and a voice activated software will not cut it.

However, looking beyond this challenge, the idea is still cool and having an
AI assistant to sort out your inbox will be certainly a breakthrough
technology. Besides web, email is perhaps one of the greatest innovations of
the 20th century but it needs to be brought in the 21st, i.e Email 2.0.

~~~
ilyaeck
You are right, it doesn't have to be a voice-only interface. rather, voice UI
is a starting point for us, since that is a use case we already understand
well. But it could work just as well with written/texted instructions to your
assistant.

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escapologybb
If the makers of this software are on HN, I am quadriplegic and this would
make my life about 333.25% easier. For realz. Seriously though, if I could
navigate my email with my voice that would totally negate any accessibility
issues I have with email clients.

I can use email fairly successfully, Siri does a pretty good job but if this
works as advertised I would definitely love to try it.

Thanks.

~~~
ilyaeck
This is Ilya Eckstein from Robin Labs: please contact me at
ilya@robinlabs.com, it will be my privilege to help.

~~~
escapologybb
Hello Ilya! I will do just that, thank you. :-)

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arihant
Do I have to keep the phone unlocked and the app open to have the kind of
experience demonstrated in the video? If that's the case, given the kind of
batteries in the smartphones, the fun won't last very long. I can keep it
connected in my office, I believe.

Does it work with handsfree?

~~~
nnnnni
I suspect that it'd use the phone's native notification system to alert the
user each time a new decision needs to be made.

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ForrestN
I have been thinking recently about hiring an assistant, and this solves one
of the main reasons why. Working with dictation to send e-mail allows for a
different kind of tab-less focus, and makes it easier to deal with one mail at
a time. When I have too much to do, forty e-mails that need thought and
replies feels like too much work, so I do something else, and then the problem
gets worse. It also allows for you to work on e-mails while standing up from
your computer for a moment, which is recommended for health. I think it's very
valuable, and I look forward to receiving my invitation.

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borplk
These look great in a video but good luck having a pleasant experience
actually using it.

Companies like to pretend that they have some magic AI that makes things just
work but we simply aren't there yet, and far from it.

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conradk
That looks neat in a video. But as the person that receives the email, I would
not feel valued at all by the thought that Joe doesn't even take the time to
reply but instead lets a robot reply for him.

If you don't want to take the time to reply, then don't bother sending me
anything at all. And it's not about having a crazy schedule. We have time. In
fact, we have more time than ever before because robots already automate
repetitive tasks. But a human interaction is not a repetitive task IMO.

~~~
jaxn
This is something I think will be a cultural shift over time. There is
something less authentic about it, but I think the "sender" still gets credit
for the message. In some ways, they get more credit since the reply should be
more timely.

I regularly schedule meetings through people's assistants and they probably
reply to my emails to, but I don't know about it. This will be the same thing.

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AndrewKemendo
The one thing that absolutely keeps me from using most of these services SIRI,
Now etc...to their fullest is the voice commands. Not because they aren't up
to the task, which they often aren't, but because I don't want to announce
everything I am doing to the world.

This takes that to even another level of 'nope' for me by reading my emails
aloud to whoever is around. The video example is exactly the stuff that I
wouldn't want other people hearing.

~~~
ilyaeck
So you can use it in your car. Commutes are exactly when I wish I could use
the time better, e.g., catch up on my email.

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electic
Looks like an interesting project. However, having a 3rd party app have access
to my email doesn't bode well with me.

~~~
ilyaeck
Understandably. We will have to earn your trust.

~~~
simi_
I work in a startup that does zero knowledge email, so I think about stuff
like this a lot. Would it be possible to do the work at "runtime" i.e. process
the emails on the user's device?

~~~
wodenokoto
I highly doubt it. I'd imagine the training data is several gigabytes if not
terrabytes of corrospondance.

I don't know much about this type of AI work, but I can tell you a little
about the scale of things where I do work.

I work with kana/kanji conversion and it is a similar problem as just getting
the phonetics part of speech to text sorted out. First you convert the sound
signal to phonetics, then you need to convert the phonetics to actual
sentences. A surprising amount of English sentences have the same phonetics,
so it is a non-trivial task to make sense of these. Try saying "Recognize
Speech" and "Wreck a nice beach" out loud.

I'd dare say Japanese is even worse, so a lot of data is used to infer what
the writer means with the phonetic input in kana/kanji conversion.

Baidu uses 2.5 terrabyte[1] of data for their kana/kanji conversion system,
which has both an online and offline part, where the online part makes use of
all the data and boosts performance considerably.

[1]
[http://www.aclweb.org/anthology/I/I13/I13-1172.pdf](http://www.aclweb.org/anthology/I/I13/I13-1172.pdf)

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thebladerunner
Who needs a voice controlled email? How do you make sure it does not send
wrong texts on your behalf? I am skeptical.

~~~
ilyaeck
Who needs voice controlled email? Anybody who could use a human secretary. The
'human' part can be replaced with "relatively intelligent", couldn't it?

~~~
vidarh
90% of the time I use my e-mail, I'm around other people and talking to my
mail client would range from annoying and intruding on other people to breach
of confidentiality.

The remaining 10% _maybe_ it'd be useful, but it'd need to be useful enough
for me to learn two separate ways of doing things - one with the spoken
interface, and one without.

~~~
ilyaeck
We are intentionally focusing in those 10% first, because email is a very
broad use case. For now, you can think of it as a tool to catch up on email
while driving or on the run.

------
ilyaeck
Here is is TC's take on the subject: [http://techcrunch.com/2014/10/27/robin-
labs-launches-less-ma...](http://techcrunch.com/2014/10/27/robin-labs-
launches-less-mail-an-a-i-based-assistant-that-responds-to-emails-for-you/)

------
ilyaeck
Now on Gizmodo: [http://gizmodo.com/would-you-let-this-ai-app-answer-your-
ema...](http://gizmodo.com/would-you-let-this-ai-app-answer-your-email-for-
you-1651345918)

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vinodkd
this looks awesome, but how do you deal with noise? If the use case is being
able to process email when not explicitly doing that task, wouldnt it
essentially be when you're waiting for the train or playing with kids or even
around a noisy office?

I have a tough enough time with IVR systems today because of my kids talking
in the background that I have to switch to touch tone mode.

How does this work in the real world?

~~~
ilyaeck
Valid point, but speech recognition on mobile is improving very rapidly -
e.g., see Robin - our other Android app. Also, email messages give you the
context which makes it easier for the NLU engine to extract the meaning of
your utterances.

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benenosh
I have been waiting for such an App for the last few years. Can't wait to get
my hands on it. When can one start using it?

~~~
ilyaeck
Please sign up on the website and we'll reach out to you shortly.

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chlestakoff
Isn't this similar to Google Inbox, in a way?

~~~
ilyaeck
Not really, Less.Mail can practically write brief emails on your behalf, based
on your commands.

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iosebe
This looks very promising. Love to test it.

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Forsvetka
I could definitely use one

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bgalitsky
A very useful thing

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lmichael
interesting to follow if this will fly

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omry
Looks good

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breiner
Cool!

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Dewie
What's up with that specific kind of really upbeat music in promotional videos
for IT gadgets and software? Everyone uses the same jingle composer/ukulele
player?

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eevilspock
It feels like a parody video but sadly its serious.

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FajneFarita
how to sign up?

~~~
ilyaeck
On the website, there is a signup form

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tenselogician
sounds interesting.

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tevel
Looks good! Why this app it not available in google play?

