I saw someone here say "LLMs are coming to gmail so we should all get out" - can someone explain to me what this means? I don't really follow "AI" news as it bums me out and there's nothing I can do about it except choose not to use it when possible.
But they're saying it like it's a non-opt-outable security risk, and abandoning gmail at this point would be more stress than I can currently handle, so can someone knowledgeable straighten me out on this supposed security risk? Like I'm four.
I am referring to a reply to this post (and I don't understand the first post either as I thought LLM just stood for language learning model and I have no idea how one "hooks one up" to an email account so as not to read one's emails.)
@mishellbaker I do not think there’s anything immediate to worry about.
The announcements from Google appear to be limited for now to “labs” experimental features, which are usually opt-in.
Also as far as I can tell none of the announced features would actually be able to send an email without user confirmation, but I’m far from an expert on LLMs since I avoid them on principle
@mishellbaker LLM means “large language model” which basically means “more complicated next-word prediction engine.” The challenge is, to use them as assistants (the main use case anyone can name except spam) they need to integrate with other programs, and to control those programs as a user would.
Google is now offering a connection between their LLM and their office suite, including mail.
@mishellbaker This post is claiming you can trick the LLM into controlling the mail program in ways that are bad for their users. I don’t know if it’s true, but it looks a lot like other attacks that do work.
Not sure if this answers your questions—happy to try again if this isn’t quite on-point!
@mishellbaker if this one isn’t true, there’s going to be a similar one that is. There’s a real problem with this class of attacks that is completely unsolved.
@disappearinjon What should I do, other than abandon my 10+ year old gmail account which has essentially become a substitute for my own memory at this point?
@mishellbaker if you were to migrate mail providers, you can take all your data with you. Not that it’s not a huge hassle, because it is!
If you choose to stay on Google you’ll want to disable whatever LLM slop you’re allowed, and hope for the best while waiting for the craze to blow over. (It’s too expensive for them to run this, so I presume they’ll remove it when it stops boosting their stock price.)
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