The world has enough spam. Receiving a compliment from a robot isn't meaningful. If anything it is an insult. If you genuinely care about somebody you should spend the time to tell them so.

Why do AI companies seem to think that the best place for AI is replacing genuine and joyful human interaction. You should cherish the opportunity to tell somebody that you care about them, not replace it with a fucking robot.

In this specific situation, it's not really a case of using an LLM to replace real interaction. No real person set out to write to Rob Pike, they just let an LLM do whatever and it had then eventually chosen to send an email to Rob Pike, among other people, based on its existing data. To me, the wrongdoing here is about the spammy pestering, because the email wasn't written by anyone and therefore isn't really expressing anything material, but it's not replacing anyone here.