Smart Reply isn't so intelligent

A student sent me an email the other day because he couldn’t find a writing assignment on the class website.

My Google mail has Smart Reply enabled. In theory, this makes it easier to send quick, appropriate answers.

Yet one of the suggested replies to the flummoxed student was “That sucks.”

Discretion being the better part of teaching, I didn’t go with it. I can only imagine the student opening the response, hoping for directions or, at the very least, a sympathetic ear, and finding instead a slacker retort.

Another email feature, Smart Compose, is more helpful. It suggests words and expressions based on context. If I type, “I’m sorry you dislike,” it might continue, “reading this column.”

In my typically perverse way, however, I am more captivated by the less-helpful Smart Reply. Today, in my ongoing efforts to avoid real work, I emailed myself several sketchy comments to see how Smart Reply would handle them.

For some reason, the program always generates options in threes. Call it the Law of Thirds ported onto a computer screen. Three Bears, Three Little Pigs, Three Blind Mice, three Google options.

“I need you to stop at the grocery store,” I wrote to myself. The possible responses? OK, I will. Will do. What do you need?

Those are relatively helpful for the half-dozen people who use email for a milk run instead of texting the request like the other 328.2 million Americans.

Next, I stepped up my game: “I saw you run that red light,” I typed. Suggested responses: Really? Lol. What?

Deflection, humor and disbelief — boom boom and boom. This algorithm really understands humanity, doesn’t it?

I went ambiguous with the next one: “I ran into your mom today.” This could mean a lot of things. Mom might be a mole for the CIA, a reanimated zombie or a federal prisoner. Running into her might not be so wonderful if she had died in 1982.

The responses: Love it! Who’s this? Nice!

I’m trying to conjure a scenario where running into somebody’s mother would elicit a cutesy-pie “Love It!” but my imagination is failing me. Ditto “Nice!” with the recipient making a cha-ching gesture.

I guess “Who’s this?” wins by default.

Next: “I have incriminating photos.” Answers: Got them, thanks! These are great! Thank you! (There apparently is a fire sale on exclamation points at Google Central.)

“I severed my finger on your fence gate.” Love it! Nice! Wow!

“Where do you want to meet?” I don’t know. Where? My place?

“I hear you are voting for Donald Trump.” I voted. I vote yes. I am not.

Then came the masterpiece, the pièce de résistance, with the funny flying accent marks the French love so much: “I think I am pregnant with your baby.”

The suggested responses? Congratulations! Why? What?

Suggestions one and three are within the realm of possibility, but suggestion two?

Where’s “That sucks” when you really need it?

chris.schillig@yahoo.com

@cschillig on Twitter