AI + Gmail = Future?
With the launch of ChatGPT5 a couple of weeks ago, Gmail integration crossed a quiet threshold. On the upside, it scans messages, detects patterns, and manages calendars, freeing time for judgment. Letting go of huge mboxes is a dream realized. Yet the risks remain. Business Insider showed how AI boosts confidence, but Vice revealed how quickly routines collapse when decisions shift outward. The inbox shows the paradox in plain view—technology that augments judgment while tempting us to let go of it. As I argued in Clean Data = Real AI, quality precedes insight. Alma-Tadema’s A Reading from Homer echoes this tension: listeners rely on another voice to interpret meaning, as we now rely on AI to parse our words.
(image: Lawrence Alma-Tadema, A Reading from Homer, 1885. Public domain. Philadelphia Museum of Art).