Paper Reading #25: Agent-assisted task management that reduces email overload

References:
Title: Agent-Assisted Task Management that Reduces Email Overload
Author: Andrew Faulring, Brad Myers, Ken Mohnkern, Bradley Schmerl, Aaron Steinfeld, John Zimmerman, Asim Smailagic, Jeffery Hansen, and Daniel Siewiorek
Venue: IUI 2010, Feb. 7-10 2010

Comments:
Comment 1
Comment 2

Summary:
This paper discusses using an AI system to help manage e-mail systems. The AI can do certain tasks such as parsing through e-mails for sorting or even scheduling tasks.

The AI can go through e-mails as they are received and sort them according to what is in the e-mails. Part of the AI also is used for scheduling. According to what the AI parses a certain amount of time is scheduled to view that e-mail. It was shown that with this methodology the scheduling was actually more productive than hindering.

It was shown that with the AI sorting and scheduling people got more meaningful work done than those who did not use them. When people only used the sorting AI they got more overall tasks done but were not able to compare to the first study.

Discussion: 
This was interesting to read because I have never really thought of anything help with e-mails other than the interface that already exists. The results shown from the paper made me think this is a very promising idea and should be further developed. After thinking about this a little more I'm kind of curious to see what other little assistants could be created with this mentality.The only concern I would have is if this was used in a corporate environment and it constantly misjudged e-mails and put them in the wrong categories.