I mostly agree with what the author is saying with regard to "the current state of things." I do not feel, however, that it is a particularly large concern, especially long-term, given the second step (summarizing) is probably already integrated into everyone's e-mail client, and if not -- it will be at some point. The "smoothing out of difficult communications", however, may end up being worth the whole "having to read a summarized response."<p>The reason it won't matter "long term" is that e-mail clients are solving/will solve[0] the "give me 'the point' of this e-mail." If my couple of decades of experience across multiple employers is any indication[1], the vast majority of people in software development fall into one of two camps: (a) They don't have the basics of written communication down. It's not a matter of misspellings or improper semi-colon, or emdash. It's all lower case[2] with no punctuation, or with "..." (no spaces between, either) in place of every other form of punctuation. Or (b) they are generally grumpy people who write in a manner that fits their personality.<p>Conveying tone, correctly, via written text is <i>hard</i> unless the tone you're trying to convey is "frustration/anger/impatience". And, of course, the same folks who can't figure out punctuation tend to respond tersely. Between co-workers who work closely together, that's <i>preferred.</i> When my boss has to tell me something minor about my performance and sends it in a five-word e-mail, it comes off like I need to start looking for new work. Prior to AI, "good managers who were writing-challenged" would find templates online and replace words. It never sounded genuine. AI brings us a lot closer to that, while not requiring an enormous amount of effort on the part of the writer. It'll be a matter of time before a lot of that process happens within the client (if it doesn't, already). I know tone detection is a common feature on communications tools I use[3].<p>[0] Not entirely sure; I use e-mail so infrequently, but thinking about the chat app we use at work, it provides AI summaries of the day's chats in each channel.<p>[1] Anecdata, I know, but it's all I've got<p>[2] Including the first letter of every meeting invite and subject; if I have OCD, that triggers it.<p>[3] Divorce communications ...