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Can you please not post like this? We want substantive, thoughtful discussion on this site.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Edit: the top text had this bit which I've replaced now:
“she” (sorry, I can’t help anthropomorphizing) canHope the above doesn’t come across as negative - just interested in how you see this market developing.
Ai yai yai - you can't dismiss someone's work that way, especially not in launch threads. HN has additional rules when people are sharing their work, because it's particularly important not to be a jerk in such threads. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html as well as https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html, we'd appreciate it. Thoughtful criticism is fine, of course, but supercilious dismissals are something we'd really like people to avoid here.
[1]: https://guard.io/labs/scamlexity-we-put-agentic-ai-browsers-... (currently on the front page)
Interesting idea, but how do you address car safety concerns? Studies consistently show that cognitive distraction, even with voice interfaces, can significantly increase crash risk. Wouldn’t managing emails and calendars while driving still fall into that category?
And which we know is highly unsafe: https://unews.utah.edu/up-to-27-seconds-of-inattention-after...
Maybe you can talk about other "dead time" without safety impact - e.g. doing my laundry involves low mental workload but my hands aren't free!
Also, audio interfaces incur different amounts of mental load / distraction. I wouldn't be surprised if this was more distracting than just talking to a person.
But totally valid criticism about cognitive load - better example could be dog walking, cooking or screen free time.
I'm definitely curious on the technicals but there is also a bit of a trust element here - both on trusting that my email (likely some of my most sensitive data) is handled with care and trust that the actual responses are phrased well.
None of the email's actual content is/will be stored (Goes against gmail's compliance)
- https://tryapril.com/security - https://tryapril.com/privacy
[0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S089662732...
Is there a good audit trail of exactly what actions it takes at each step? I'd personally be worried about leaking proprietary or otherwise private information this way, or having it hallucinate information when it sends out emails potentially causing catastrophic issues.
But do you think a 'safe mode' - where April does only non destructive operation like read/summarize/draft/move emails to a folder would help you build trust?
It's in our pipeline - we can prioritize it to mitigate that fear.
What if it thinks you asked for it?
> But do you think a 'safe mode' - where April does only non destructive operation like read/summarize/draft/move emails to a folder would help you build trust?
> It's in our pipeline
Wat
AI is still not at the point where I am comfortable letting it run free with my email, but a draft that I can read over and make changes to before sending it out is a game changer.
Feel free to take the idea, if it's helpful. No credit/rights necessary. Y'all are much farther along than I am and if you come out with an Android app I'll probably end up a customer!
> Send replies that I dictate (it handles the formatting and tone)
How does it handle the tone without editing your dictation?
However, I did notice that connect took around a minute to a minute and a half before the agent was in the call and able to speak. Is this a byproduct of the underlying calling service you're using or the traffic?
Regardless, awesome app, curious to see how it continues to improve!
Congrats on the launch btw—cool stuff!
Create/edit/delete draft are very common use cases as people would like to read before sending.
The other thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45008239) appeared by coincidence. It looks like it spent quite a few hours on the frontpage overnight, but I had no idea it existed! In any case the Launch HN was scheduled before that.
(Btw, I don't think that "using it made them crash" is correct - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45010327)
But the situation where emails are backing upload as you drive to work and back to back meetings sounds like a mismanaged workplace.
The real impact (not a startup idea really) is fixing whatever makes the workplace like that. Usually everyone needs to be involved in everything and bad meeting management. Could be bad prioritisation and taking on too much work. Could be busywork.
If AI could solve those problems or help it might be good.
There is a category of users who have to deal with emails and meetings as a primary part of their job. For instance our power user is a Head of Sales who uses April to just get a rundown of his day and get context about his customers before the meeting. It's his typical workday and wouldn't be a mismanaged workplace.
But you can say remove all the emails which have unsubscribe text and it will do that in the batch of 20-100 (based on the app's rate limit at that time)
I think I represent a typical office employee where I get maybe a dozen emails at work and a few calendar invites. Nothing I can't get through in the first 10 minutes of work in the morning. Usually emails that take time are those that I can't outsource to AI anyway.
Nevertheless congrats on the launch and best of luck.
Accuracy matters, especially when communicating with customers or between managers/employees, and I can imagine many kinds of scenarios where this goes wrong.
I felt it was more of a tutoring session!! Wouldn't it be distracted driving if you are using it while on the wheel? If not, then honestly, anyone can do those things faster. Also, if you had organized your inbox, many of those emails shown in the demo wouldn't be there.
Anyway, congratulations on the launch. Looking forward to the next iteration.
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