It’s all the rage right now. Everyone is scrambling to put AI into their products. The uncanny valley is shrinking enough that it’s hard to see how much AI was used to write something.
This isn’t entirely new, auto-complete on my phone already suggests the most likely word when I’m typing. AI writing tools are an extension of this, but they’re also much more capable.
Your electronic memory
I stand by one of the most important truths about email. It’s not only the largest and most diverse social network, email is your electronic memory.
In the novel 1984, the “Ministry of Truth” has a whole massive department which rewrites history. In a world where there’s enough AI capability to process the entire web and rewrite every page to remove something, the cost of “changing history” is much reduced, so we can expect more of it.
This is where the immutability of email really shines. An email is your copy, and the sender can’t revise it later. This is frustrating when you’ve sent the wrong thing and have to send a separate correction later, but in the long term it’s insanely valuable.
It makes a huge difference to be able to go back and double-check your memory against an email you saw years ago and know that if they disagree, the email is correct. This is already not the case with web pages — they change, and it’s only becoming worse.
Adapting to a changing world
My son is studying at University now, and he’s one of a few students in his class who refuses to use AI to write his assignments. As he said “what’s the point of paying to be here if I’m not going to build the knowledge and skills for myself, and come out knowing how to do the thing” (near enough… I didn’t write the exact words down in an email, so I’m going off my own fallible memory!) I am so proud of him for having that attitude.
I’m also pleased to see that Fastmail’s staff, and many of our customers, are wary of AI tools.
But they are that, tools. The world is changing, and we need to adapt and understand it.
Our service, your data
For our service, we want you to be able to do what you desire with your own email, calendars, and contacts. We will continue to build tools and integrations to make that easier.
You are welcome to operate your Fastmail account with AI tools, so long as that usage doesn’t otherwise breach our Terms of Service, or degrade the performance of our systems for other customers.
Our staff, your privacy
For our staff, we encourage understanding the tools that exist in the world, and how to use them safely. Our policy makes it clear that any use of tools, including tools with AI in them, must follow clear privacy-preserving principles:
- Data Protection: All data protection, confidentiality, and privacy policies must be followed (our vendors for things like anti-abuse and support are moving towards using AI for translation, categorization, abuse detection – and we are ensuring that their policies continue to provide protection for our customers)
- Accountability for work: Any AI generated writing or code must be reviewed and understood by a human being, and go through our regular second-set-of-eyes processes before being used
- Bias awareness: Actively look for biases or hallucinations in AI output
- Human authority: Always have a path for appeal to a human from any decision that is made by automated tools
The future
Who knows what the future will bring, but we continue to be guided by the principles that we first publicly articulated in 2016 and have held even longer. The data is yours, and we will be good stewards and good internet citizens, helping enable you to use your data in the ways you choose.