6 ms·

Natural language interfaces are very limited and certainly not the next generation of computing. Granularity of functionality and composable input will always b

by mrits 4y ago

Natural language interfaces are very limited and certainly not the next generation of computing. Granularity of functionality and composable input will always be more efficient as long as the original source is a human. I think the natural language part of your product is the lease interesting and certainly not the most impressive.

amilios 4y ago
On the flipside, natural language interfaces have the potential to be extremely easy to use for anyone, including non-experts. Anyone can type a message to the computer, without having to learn the specifics of an interface's custom controls. There are different types of efficiency. I'm assuming you're referring to something like 'operational efficiency', while NLI wins on 'ease of adoption' per se.
- angrais 4y ago
  Consider search engines and searching for content more generally: are you certain that natural language is most often used? When I search for content, I use key terms to produce refined and better results. If you don't use such terms then what you're looking for may be difficult to find.
  - dwrodri 4y ago
    So, I actually thought the opposite: the growth in userbase that most big tech companies have seen over the 2010s probably meant the "death" of people creating queries á la AltaVista. But it turns out, I think I'm wrong, Google's own research says the average query is between 2-3 words in size, but apparently it has in fact been going up over the years. Here's my source: https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/1753326.1753333?casa_token=vVa95Yql8LQAAAAA:LXHeBXPq3m5fhM5oi-gwk0Y62TxvCzZr0lbGn59zDYKCdJPM7g5teO4vZ2I8aXj_jwaOePlnVHD3 https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/1753326.1753333?casa_toke...
  - averylamp 4y ago
    I think this is true for everyone. Without ever knowing how google search works, somehow over time you figure out how to do prompt engineering and figure out that the results you want are more highly correlated with certain phrasing. Wouldn’t something similar apply here though, where after using it for some time you get an inherent understanding of what it works well with and does not? There’s always some sort of mix of things to learn and make available to the end user though, so that they understand how to use the tool to be successful. Disclaimer: I also work at Adept
    - jacobr1 4y ago
      But don't we do this with other humans too? The language one uses with close family, or friends, or colleagues all shifts to achieve the desired effect. Code-switching is pretty common. I think people underestimate how much communication is a feedback-driven process.
- mrits 4y ago
  Nobody can type a message to a computer without knowing how the interface works. I think you are confused on this topic. Natural language is just a translation layer. If you wanted to you could put AI on top of a UI that works on intent as well.
jcims 4y ago
You might not be the target audience though, eh?
- i_am_toaster 4y ago
  I’d argue this product has no target audience.
  - tveita 4y ago
    Based on the example videos I think it could be an amazing accessibility aid.
davepeck 4y ago
> Natural language interfaces are [...] certainly not the next generation of computing. I'm game to take the other side of that wager. My instinct from the last 5 years of advances in ML language research is that we're right at the cusp of having radically better natural language interfaces. I chose a half-decade horizon because "Attention Is All You Need", the paper that introduced the transformer model, was published in 2017. Two of its co-authors are co-founders of Adept.
- jacobr1 4y ago
  Agreed. Multiple paradigms and "right tool for the job" and all that. Technology is often additive rather than successive. At this point ... think of google. How many tasks start with some vague statement of intent in a google search and then refinement by reviewing pages or better search queries: "How do I ..." Already many (most) internet users are using natural language to interface with the internet. Average don't go straight to wikipedia - they type a question and get a response where wikipedia is the first first or the knowledge graph except is sufficient. Or "plane ticket to $location" and get linked to airline sites (or the search engines interface). We are much further along this path than many might suspect.
aleksiy123 4y ago
Most of human interactions with each other are through natural language and it works very well for us. Most of our goals start with this kind of communication. It feels like to me its the natural way for us to interact. We just didn't have the tech that was able to take our high level instructions and carry them out for us like a human can. I think that is the long term goal of human computer interaction. This product seems like a significant step towards that.
- mrits 4y ago
  Do you have any research backing up that human interaction "works well"? As far as I can tell it is absolutely horrific. So much we literally have games called "telephone" mocking how horrible it is.
  - dreadlordbone 4y ago
    Gonna start with the last 10,000 years of human history.
  - aleksiy123 4y ago
    Works well in comparison to anything else we know. Would love to hear any other methods you might have for communicating complex ideas.
    - tluyben2 4y ago
      It works well-ish in general, but it is rife with ambivalence, noise, lack of recall and bias. I find it horribly inefficient for my work on it’s own and as someone who grew up with the teachings of older generation programmers (most extreme, Dijkstra), I notice that most attempts to move everything to verbal communications is laziness; people don’t want to write, draw, spec etc if they can do prevent it. I even think ‘agile’ is a lazy way to say you are not going to spec out anything but just have a chat and hope for the best.
      - i_am_toaster 4y ago
pyinstallwoes 4y ago
Language is the ultimate interface. The highest standard of UX is the genie that does as one wishes. The best interface is no interface.
- woojoo666 4y ago
  Programming languages are languages as well though. Every language has tradeoffs, and there are multiple natural languages (english, chinese, spanish, etc). I'd be surprised if english was the best tool for every task
  - jacobr1 4y ago
    > I'd be surprised if english was the best tool for every task Certainly not - language models (including multi-lingual models) map words to some kind of (300ish?) multi-dimensional concept space. I wonder if we can translate that back to some sort of symbolic representation that is much more precise than human language. Some kind of IR where we could compile human into representing but also program against. I suspect the early prolog people were attempting something like this but were very wrong about framing reasoning as logical deduction rather than a stochastic process.

by mrits 4y ago

amilios 4y ago

On the flipside, natural language interfaces have the potential to be extremely easy to use for anyone, including non-experts. Anyone can type a message to the computer, without having to learn the specifics of an interface's custom controls. There are different types of efficiency. I'm assuming you're referring to something like 'operational efficiency', while NLI wins on 'ease of adoption' per se.

angrais 4y ago
Consider search engines and searching for content more generally: are you certain that natural language is most often used? When I search for content, I use key terms to produce refined and better results. If you don't use such terms then what you're looking for may be difficult to find.
- dwrodri 4y ago
  So, I actually thought the opposite: the growth in userbase that most big tech companies have seen over the 2010s probably meant the "death" of people creating queries á la AltaVista. But it turns out, I think I'm wrong, Google's own research says the average query is between 2-3 words in size, but apparently it has in fact been going up over the years. Here's my source: https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/1753326.1753333?casa_token=vVa95Yql8LQAAAAA:LXHeBXPq3m5fhM5oi-gwk0Y62TxvCzZr0lbGn59zDYKCdJPM7g5teO4vZ2I8aXj_jwaOePlnVHD3 https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/1753326.1753333?casa_toke...
- averylamp 4y ago
  I think this is true for everyone. Without ever knowing how google search works, somehow over time you figure out how to do prompt engineering and figure out that the results you want are more highly correlated with certain phrasing. Wouldn’t something similar apply here though, where after using it for some time you get an inherent understanding of what it works well with and does not? There’s always some sort of mix of things to learn and make available to the end user though, so that they understand how to use the tool to be successful. Disclaimer: I also work at Adept
  - jacobr1 4y ago
    But don't we do this with other humans too? The language one uses with close family, or friends, or colleagues all shifts to achieve the desired effect. Code-switching is pretty common. I think people underestimate how much communication is a feedback-driven process.
mrits 4y ago
Nobody can type a message to a computer without knowing how the interface works. I think you are confused on this topic. Natural language is just a translation layer. If you wanted to you could put AI on top of a UI that works on intent as well.

jcims 4y ago

You might not be the target audience though, eh?

i_am_toaster 4y ago
I’d argue this product has no target audience.
- tveita 4y ago
  Based on the example videos I think it could be an amazing accessibility aid.

davepeck 4y ago

> Natural language interfaces are [...] certainly not the next generation of computing. I'm game to take the other side of that wager. My instinct from the last 5 years of advances in ML language research is that we're right at the cusp of having radically better natural language interfaces. I chose a half-decade horizon because "Attention Is All You Need", the paper that introduced the transformer model, was published in 2017. Two of its co-authors are co-founders of Adept.

jacobr1 4y ago
Agreed. Multiple paradigms and "right tool for the job" and all that. Technology is often additive rather than successive. At this point ... think of google. How many tasks start with some vague statement of intent in a google search and then refinement by reviewing pages or better search queries: "How do I ..." Already many (most) internet users are using natural language to interface with the internet. Average don't go straight to wikipedia - they type a question and get a response where wikipedia is the first first or the knowledge graph except is sufficient. Or "plane ticket to $location" and get linked to airline sites (or the search engines interface). We are much further along this path than many might suspect.

aleksiy123 4y ago

Most of human interactions with each other are through natural language and it works very well for us. Most of our goals start with this kind of communication. It feels like to me its the natural way for us to interact. We just didn't have the tech that was able to take our high level instructions and carry them out for us like a human can. I think that is the long term goal of human computer interaction. This product seems like a significant step towards that.

mrits 4y ago
Do you have any research backing up that human interaction "works well"? As far as I can tell it is absolutely horrific. So much we literally have games called "telephone" mocking how horrible it is.
- dreadlordbone 4y ago
  Gonna start with the last 10,000 years of human history.
- aleksiy123 4y ago
  Works well in comparison to anything else we know. Would love to hear any other methods you might have for communicating complex ideas.
  - tluyben2 4y ago
    It works well-ish in general, but it is rife with ambivalence, noise, lack of recall and bias. I find it horribly inefficient for my work on it’s own and as someone who grew up with the teachings of older generation programmers (most extreme, Dijkstra), I notice that most attempts to move everything to verbal communications is laziness; people don’t want to write, draw, spec etc if they can do prevent it. I even think ‘agile’ is a lazy way to say you are not going to spec out anything but just have a chat and hope for the best.
    - i_am_toaster 4y ago

pyinstallwoes 4y ago

Language is the ultimate interface. The highest standard of UX is the genie that does as one wishes. The best interface is no interface.

woojoo666 4y ago
Programming languages are languages as well though. Every language has tradeoffs, and there are multiple natural languages (english, chinese, spanish, etc). I'd be surprised if english was the best tool for every task
- jacobr1 4y ago
  > I'd be surprised if english was the best tool for every task Certainly not - language models (including multi-lingual models) map words to some kind of (300ish?) multi-dimensional concept space. I wonder if we can translate that back to some sort of symbolic representation that is much more precise than human language. Some kind of IR where we could compile human into representing but also program against. I suspect the early prolog people were attempting something like this but were very wrong about framing reasoning as logical deduction rather than a stochastic process.