A note about email

It is my strong preference that you do not use generative AI (ChatGPT, Gemini, etc) to write messages to me. I will also not use generative AI to write messages to you.

There are a couple reasons for this preference. First, and most important: I want to hear what your thoughts are. LLMs take your words as input and produce output that is statistically likely text, based on content that others have written. This is no longer your thoughts.

Second, LLM output is often much longer than is necessary. A single sentence of input (particularly if it includes the phrase "write an email to my professor") often generates several paragraphs of output. If you have lots of information to convey to me, I welcome a long email. If you have only a single sentence, then please simply send that sentence.

Finally, please do not worry that I will take exception to typos, grammatical errors, or unusual phrasing in your messages. If English is not your first language, I would still prefer an email written by you -- with whatever mistakes it might have -- over LLM output.

If you are a student in my class, then one of my goals is for me to understand what is happening in your brain, and for you to understand what is happening in mine. Writing is already an imperfect medium for this: thoughts cannot necessarily be concretized into words without transformation. Passing those words through a pile of statistics designed to make them more like everyone else's words only moves them further from your actual thoughts.