“Suggested Reply”

Most email platforms now incorporate artificial intelligence, giving you a summary of what they think the sender said to you, then a “suggested” response, together with a convenient and tempting send button.

Easy-peasy. Now you can communicate without effort, without even having to think about it! What could possibly go wrong?

To be sure, our inboxes seem to get more and more jammed, everybody wants our attention, and any offer to take a load off our shoulders is pretty tempting. But let’s break this down.

Let’s sit in the listener’s chair or the reader’s seat. What happens when you get a message? Well, to be sure, you’re getting two messages. One is content, the other is tone. Either one can make or break the intended message.

When you’re the speaker, not the listener, the same rule applies. How you say it is at least as important as what you say. The reader is just as concerned with who you are as what you say. The accumulation of impressions over time is what we call “reputation”.

Every word out of your mouth enhances or diminishes your reputation, whether personal or professional. Your message not only conveys ideas, but also impressions. The listener or the reader not only hears what you are saying, but how you are saying it. Each message triggers not only an intellectual response, but an emotional one. And over the course of a lifetime, your personal and professional reputation is built or diminished by the sum of emotional responses to your messages.

Simpy put, if you don’t have time to weigh your words, don’t send them.

There’s also a deeper and more important reason to say “Thanks, but no thanks” to AI’s kind offer: lack of exercise leads to atrophy just as surely in our communication skills as it does in our muscles. Not having to think ultimately leads to not being able to think.

So, what was that again about AI offering to handle your important responses?

In the event you want to turn off AI’s “helping hand”, you can do it in your email settings. Takes about ten seconds.