Angry Nerd: Smart Replies Make Us All Dumber

There’s a ghostwriter in my machine. And it’s no Lee Israel—she’d balk at all the fast-­flying verbal inanities. I speak of Smart Reply, Google’s answer, in the form of a triad of autogenerated responses, to the problem of email. Just the other day, it saw fit to butt-reply to a frenemy of mine, “I’ll be there!” This in response to an invitation I had planned to ignore.