I wanted to thank you for supporting PolitePost.net. I can't believe it's been a whole year since my last update and once again, I want to reassure you that I won't be emailing you regularly. I write this update to let you know that the coffee you buy is being well spent directly on the site to serve you and our visitors; not lining my pockets.
PolitePost.net helps folks rewrite their rough messages into professional emails with the use of AI. Last year, I opened up our costs and practices right on the PolitePost About page to be transparent. Getting straight to the point, our costs are higher than the coffee we take in, thus we appreciate any donations coming our way. While I never intended to turn a profit on the site, the costs add up, so I am extremely grateful to all of you for chipping in to keep the site running.
Last year, I gave a rough estimate that a $2 donation will help us rewrite about 4,000 emails (at 400 words each). Thankfully, the cost per email has gone down significantly as AI technology matures. A $2 cup of coffee now roughly helps us rewrite more than 10,000 emails under those same assumptions. From reddit posts, blog articles, and emails to my inbox, I know that PolitePost isn't just used in the workplace anymore. It's being used by people with disabilities, in difficult relationships, learning new languages, navigating government bureaucracy, and more. I couldn't be more proud of the impact this simple site has made. You are part of that journey. Thank you for your contributions and I like to think that together we've made a difference.
Just several days ago, I flipped the switch to move on from Microsoft Azure to Anyscale as our AI provider. The primary goal is to make sure your dollars stretch further. I have been evaluating smaller, more cost efficient models from day 1, but largely, they've been unimpressive. We were using GPT3.5 all this time, finding the performance to be quite good, and also finding larger models like GPT4 too artistic and poetic. It is only recently, with fine-tuned variants of the Mistral 7B model, that we found our new solution. On the backend, we dynamically select the ideal Mistral variant for your message and run the email through. In our blind testing, we found that these models produced rewrites that ranked the same as GPT3.5. More importantly, the costs have been cut by about a third. Before switching, we also ensured that Anyscale does not train future models with our visitors' emails and reviewed their legal terms. Privacy is important to me, and I wouldn't be comfortable with switching to a provider unless they respect the privacy of our visitors.
I want to end this update by talking about the future. I assumed that the gradual growth of ChatGPT and other AI chatbots would slowly render the site useless. Instead, PolitePost has grown bigger than ever and is acting as a gateway to demonstrate what AI can do. On an average day, we are fixing about 50,000 emails. Last year, that number was about 20,000. A good chunk of our visitors are from the US, but about a quarter are from countries that don't have easy access to ChatGPT. One day down the road, PolitePost might become redundant, but for now while AI adoption is far from universal, PolitePost has a role to play in outlining an obvious and effective use case. I will keep this site running while I can. Thank you for your support. I hope you have a great Easter weekend!
If you believe in our mission and want to continue helping us make a difference, consider buying us another cup of coffee.