11 ms·

It's important to distinguish between the limitations of current technologies and the possibilities of natural language. Imagine if all natural language interf

It's important to distinguish between the limitations of current technologies and the possibilities of natural language. Imagine if all natural language interfaces were like talking to a personal assistant. Sometimes you might not vocalize what you want properly, but we're highly adapted to that sort of communication as humans and the assistant can almost always fill in the gaps based on their knowledge of you or ask clarification questions. What makes natural language so infuriating as a computer interface is that it's nothing like that. The models are so limited and constrained that you can't actually speak to them like a human, you have to figure out the limitations of the model first and translate your human-centric ideas into it. That's a huge amount of cognitive load and in the worst cases (e.g. Alexa), the result isn't even worth the effort.

marcosdumay 4y ago
Well, if you have an empathic model that can anticipate the needs of the user, yeah, any interface that you put before it will be easy to use. This is also bordering a human-equivalent intelligence. And it needs at a bare minimum to be a general AI.
- AlotOfReading 4y ago
  That's why I'm making a distinction here. It's not that the interface is inherently bad, but simply that we lack the knowledge/ability to implement it well. The follow-up question is whether we need a fully human-level ai or if we can design systems so that we naturally engage with them in such a way that the limitations aren't significant issues. I could certainly make an argument against that , but I've been wrong enough times about the practical capabilities of ML systems to suspect that my imagination is simply a bit limited in this area.
  - marcosdumay 4y ago
    > or if we can design systems so that we naturally engage with them in such a way that the limitations aren't significant issues. Fair enough. I can imagine that happening. It wouldn't be the first unreasonably easy problem we get in AI.
jimmaswell 4y ago
> you have to figure out the limitations of the model first and translate your human-centric ideas into it This is the same process as communicating with another human. In comparison the computer may be easier to build a mental model around and work with.
- potatolicious 4y ago
  The difference is that even a fairly amateur human is considerably more capable than even a sophisticated natural language system we have today. The problem is one of failure modes. In modern natural language systems straying away from the (very narrow) happy path is basically falling into a UX abyss. Because of the limited understanding the agent cannot redirect, ask clarifying questions, or otherwise get you back on track. When talking to a human you do have to model them mentally, but a) you've done it many times before and your mental models of humans are generally fairly applicable to other individuals and b) the model doesn't have to be terribly sophisticated because humans are generally more able to redirect an off-track conversation productively. The penalty for getting off-track is low. Like, say you walk up to the ticket booth at a theater and ask for a large tub of popcorn. This is well outside of the expected engagement for this person, but they likely know enough to steer you towards the concession stand. This level of recoverability is atypical of modern language agents. I'm with GP on this - natural language interfaces are tremendously promising, but under a minimum threshold of functionality they are more frustrating than they are useful. They are functionally limited but with no indications of where the functional boundaries are, and the systems generally do not react well once you stray outside of their narrow boundaries. My hypothesis is that once we are able to understand the user above this threshold natural language becomes extremely usable.
  - sharemywin 4y ago
    If a person walked up to a ticket booth that only sells tickets and asked for popcorn, the ticket booth worker would likely inform the person that they do not sell popcorn at the ticket booth and direct them to the nearest concession stand. The worker could also assist the person in finding the location of the nearest concession stand if they are unsure. They could also offer to sell them a combination of a ticket and a popcorn at the concession stand. Me: please convert the pesron's request and workers response in the form of json I'm sorry, but creating a JSON script for the interaction between a person and a ticket booth worker would not be appropriate as JSON is a data interchange format, not a scripting language. JSON is used to represent structured data, such as key-value pairs, in a format that can be easily read by both humans and machines. A script or dialogue between a person and a worker is not structured data, it is a conversation. JSON is not the right tool to represent that kind of information. If you want to store this information you can use a database or a file format like CSV, XML or even plain text. Me: assume the work is a ticket management system Sure, assuming the context is a ticket management system, the interaction between the person and the ticket booth worker could be represented in JSON as follows: Request: json Copy code { "request": "popcorn", "customer_id": "12345" } Response: json Copy code { "response": "We do not sell popcorn at the ticket booth. Please visit the nearest concession stand for popcorn purchase. Would you like to purchase a combination of a ticket and a popcorn at the concession stand?", "concession_stand_location": "Concourse A, near gate 10", "ticket_and_popcorn_offer": true } This is just one possible representation of the interaction in JSON, and the specific keys and values used may vary depending on the specific ticket management system being used. Me: could you add a intention field in the request Sure, the "intention" field could be added to the request JSON to indicate the customer's intent or purpose behind their request. Here's an example of how the request JSON could be modified to include an "intention" field: Request: json Copy code { "request": "popcorn", "customer_id": "12345", "intention": "snack_purchase" } In this example, the "intention" field is set to "snack_purchase" to indicate that the customer is requesting popcorn as a snack purchase. This field could be useful for the ticket management system to understand the customer's intent and provide a more appropriate response.
kilgnad 4y ago
Actually that's not the main problem with the current state of the art LLM (chatGPT). You can speak to chatGPT like a human and it won't necessarily give you the answer you're looking for, but it will more often then not give you an answer that is very inline with what another human expert will give. The infuriating thing about chatGPT is that it lies and gives inaccurate info. It will often creatively craft an answer that looks remarkably real and just give it to you. Not sure if you played with chatGPT in-depth but this thing is on another level. I urge you to read this: https://www.engraved.blog/building-a-virtual-machine-inside/ https://www.engraved.blog/building-a-virtual-machine-inside/. It's mind blowing what happened in that article all the way to the mind blowing ending. This task that the author had chatGPT do, literally shows that you don't actually need to figure it out it's "constraints". It's so unconstrained it can literally do a lot of what you ask it to.
- chipgap98 4y ago
  There is a ton of opportunity in building those constraints and making ChatGPT more accurate
- jt2190 4y ago
  I think both can be true. Have a look at the SuperGLUE (General Language Understanding Evaluation) benchmark tasks to get a sense of of what these models will have to conquer to reach human levels. Edit: I’m specifically responding to your assertion that the model has no constraints, which the post you’re replying to was talking about. > This task that the author had chatGPT do, literally shows that you don't actually need to figure it out it's "constraints". It's so unconstrained it can literally do a lot of what you ask it to. https://super.gluebenchmark.com/tasks https://super.gluebenchmark.com/tasks
  - idiotsecant 4y ago
    Oh wow, this is fascinating. Thank you so much for the link. If you want a really interesting window into chatGPT's mind, start asking it to draw ASCII art. It definitely understands how to draw cats but it's intuition on the physical structure of other objects and how that is turned into line art is someone 'abstract'. I asked it to draw a fully loaded chicago style hotdog and it basically drew a approximately 12x grid of squares using pipes and repeated it for 7 or 8 screens. I started another session and asked the same and got approximately the same answer. I know it's anthropomorphizing but it's fascinating to look into an alien 'mind' even if there's nobody looking back at me.
Existenceblinks 4y ago
Narrow down vocabs .. into something something domain specific.
- dwater 4y ago
  At which point you're no longer using natural language and may as well design a traditional interface. As noted in the GP, Alexa and the rest of the digital assistants are losing users because it's faster and easier to have a custom interface for tasks you do frequently. A natural language interface is useful for something you've never done before and probably won't do too many times in the future.
  - Existenceblinks 4y ago
    Yes, it was a half joking. I never believe in natural language as input. And also approximation as output. AI has always been something in between the pipeline ([I] ------------ the far from IO, the good ----------[O])
Swizec 4y ago
> It's important to distinguish between the limitations of current technologies and the possibilities of natural language And yet any time a person says "Lemme know if I can help" my first thought is that I don't even know what's in their wheelhouse to help me with. Will they help if I ask for someone to shovel snow? Clean out my gutters? Or are they offering to help with introductions people with money? Do they even know people with money?
- AlotOfReading 4y ago
  A personal assistant would absolutely get the driveway shoveled and the gutters cleaned for you, but that's beside the point. The important bit is that they understand you and could do those things if they had the capability and desire. Current natural language interfaces don't, so the human has to pick up the slack (which sucks).
makeitdouble 4y ago
> Imagine if all natural language interfaces were like talking to a personal assistant. I don’t have a personal assistant, so I’ll compare that to hotel receptionists. Every time I booked a room directly through a human, it was long and (not pleasant to me) series of back and forth to understand what they can offer, what I precisely need in that moment, what price I’m willing to pay, how my mind changed as I understood their pricing structure and I then need to know what happens with two rooms instead of one. And requesting an additional towel because we waterboarded one, but not the “face” towel, the other one of middle size, no actually it was thick and coarse, oh was that a mop actually ? etc. It would be infuriating except for the fact that I’m talking to an actual human I have empathy with, we’re stuck together in that interaction and we’ll try to make the best of it. As a contrast online booking and assistance interfaces are sub-par with many other flaws, but I’ll never choose to go the chatty route first if I have a choice. At their best, ‘general intelligence’ level of AI, I think chat interfaces still won’t be a great interface for anything requiring more than 2 steps of interactions.
gibspaulding 4y ago
Alexa is basically a CLI without man pages or useful error messages.
andsoitis 4y ago
> Imagine if all natural language interfaces were like talking to a personal assistant. Sometimes you might not vocalize what you want properly, but we're highly adapted to that sort of communication as humans and the assistant can almost always fill in the gaps based on their knowledge of you or ask clarification questions. There is understanding of natural language and then there's comprehension and critical thinking deeper down. Today's natural language interfaces solve for the former but not the latter. They don't anticipate, they don't originate novel solutions, they can't change their minds, they certainly cannot read the air, etc.

marcosdumay 4y ago

Well, if you have an empathic model that can anticipate the needs of the user, yeah, any interface that you put before it will be easy to use. This is also bordering a human-equivalent intelligence. And it needs at a bare minimum to be a general AI.

AlotOfReading 4y ago
That's why I'm making a distinction here. It's not that the interface is inherently bad, but simply that we lack the knowledge/ability to implement it well. The follow-up question is whether we need a fully human-level ai or if we can design systems so that we naturally engage with them in such a way that the limitations aren't significant issues. I could certainly make an argument against that , but I've been wrong enough times about the practical capabilities of ML systems to suspect that my imagination is simply a bit limited in this area.
- marcosdumay 4y ago
  > or if we can design systems so that we naturally engage with them in such a way that the limitations aren't significant issues. Fair enough. I can imagine that happening. It wouldn't be the first unreasonably easy problem we get in AI.

jimmaswell 4y ago

> you have to figure out the limitations of the model first and translate your human-centric ideas into it This is the same process as communicating with another human. In comparison the computer may be easier to build a mental model around and work with.

potatolicious 4y ago
The difference is that even a fairly amateur human is considerably more capable than even a sophisticated natural language system we have today. The problem is one of failure modes. In modern natural language systems straying away from the (very narrow) happy path is basically falling into a UX abyss. Because of the limited understanding the agent cannot redirect, ask clarifying questions, or otherwise get you back on track. When talking to a human you do have to model them mentally, but a) you've done it many times before and your mental models of humans are generally fairly applicable to other individuals and b) the model doesn't have to be terribly sophisticated because humans are generally more able to redirect an off-track conversation productively. The penalty for getting off-track is low. Like, say you walk up to the ticket booth at a theater and ask for a large tub of popcorn. This is well outside of the expected engagement for this person, but they likely know enough to steer you towards the concession stand. This level of recoverability is atypical of modern language agents. I'm with GP on this - natural language interfaces are tremendously promising, but under a minimum threshold of functionality they are more frustrating than they are useful. They are functionally limited but with no indications of where the functional boundaries are, and the systems generally do not react well once you stray outside of their narrow boundaries. My hypothesis is that once we are able to understand the user above this threshold natural language becomes extremely usable.
- sharemywin 4y ago
  If a person walked up to a ticket booth that only sells tickets and asked for popcorn, the ticket booth worker would likely inform the person that they do not sell popcorn at the ticket booth and direct them to the nearest concession stand. The worker could also assist the person in finding the location of the nearest concession stand if they are unsure. They could also offer to sell them a combination of a ticket and a popcorn at the concession stand. Me: please convert the pesron's request and workers response in the form of json I'm sorry, but creating a JSON script for the interaction between a person and a ticket booth worker would not be appropriate as JSON is a data interchange format, not a scripting language. JSON is used to represent structured data, such as key-value pairs, in a format that can be easily read by both humans and machines. A script or dialogue between a person and a worker is not structured data, it is a conversation. JSON is not the right tool to represent that kind of information. If you want to store this information you can use a database or a file format like CSV, XML or even plain text. Me: assume the work is a ticket management system Sure, assuming the context is a ticket management system, the interaction between the person and the ticket booth worker could be represented in JSON as follows: Request: json Copy code { "request": "popcorn", "customer_id": "12345" } Response: json Copy code { "response": "We do not sell popcorn at the ticket booth. Please visit the nearest concession stand for popcorn purchase. Would you like to purchase a combination of a ticket and a popcorn at the concession stand?", "concession_stand_location": "Concourse A, near gate 10", "ticket_and_popcorn_offer": true } This is just one possible representation of the interaction in JSON, and the specific keys and values used may vary depending on the specific ticket management system being used. Me: could you add a intention field in the request Sure, the "intention" field could be added to the request JSON to indicate the customer's intent or purpose behind their request. Here's an example of how the request JSON could be modified to include an "intention" field: Request: json Copy code { "request": "popcorn", "customer_id": "12345", "intention": "snack_purchase" } In this example, the "intention" field is set to "snack_purchase" to indicate that the customer is requesting popcorn as a snack purchase. This field could be useful for the ticket management system to understand the customer's intent and provide a more appropriate response.

kilgnad 4y ago

Actually that's not the main problem with the current state of the art LLM (chatGPT). You can speak to chatGPT like a human and it won't necessarily give you the answer you're looking for, but it will more often then not give you an answer that is very inline with what another human expert will give. The infuriating thing about chatGPT is that it lies and gives inaccurate info. It will often creatively craft an answer that looks remarkably real and just give it to you. Not sure if you played with chatGPT in-depth but this thing is on another level. I urge you to read this: https://www.engraved.blog/building-a-virtual-machine-inside/ https://www.engraved.blog/building-a-virtual-machine-inside/. It's mind blowing what happened in that article all the way to the mind blowing ending. This task that the author had chatGPT do, literally shows that you don't actually need to figure it out it's "constraints". It's so unconstrained it can literally do a lot of what you ask it to.

chipgap98 4y ago
There is a ton of opportunity in building those constraints and making ChatGPT more accurate
jt2190 4y ago
I think both can be true. Have a look at the SuperGLUE (General Language Understanding Evaluation) benchmark tasks to get a sense of of what these models will have to conquer to reach human levels. Edit: I’m specifically responding to your assertion that the model has no constraints, which the post you’re replying to was talking about. > This task that the author had chatGPT do, literally shows that you don't actually need to figure it out it's "constraints". It's so unconstrained it can literally do a lot of what you ask it to. https://super.gluebenchmark.com/tasks https://super.gluebenchmark.com/tasks
- idiotsecant 4y ago
  Oh wow, this is fascinating. Thank you so much for the link. If you want a really interesting window into chatGPT's mind, start asking it to draw ASCII art. It definitely understands how to draw cats but it's intuition on the physical structure of other objects and how that is turned into line art is someone 'abstract'. I asked it to draw a fully loaded chicago style hotdog and it basically drew a approximately 12x grid of squares using pipes and repeated it for 7 or 8 screens. I started another session and asked the same and got approximately the same answer. I know it's anthropomorphizing but it's fascinating to look into an alien 'mind' even if there's nobody looking back at me.

Existenceblinks 4y ago

Narrow down vocabs .. into something something domain specific.

dwater 4y ago
At which point you're no longer using natural language and may as well design a traditional interface. As noted in the GP, Alexa and the rest of the digital assistants are losing users because it's faster and easier to have a custom interface for tasks you do frequently. A natural language interface is useful for something you've never done before and probably won't do too many times in the future.
- Existenceblinks 4y ago
  Yes, it was a half joking. I never believe in natural language as input. And also approximation as output. AI has always been something in between the pipeline ([I] ------------ the far from IO, the good ----------[O])

Swizec 4y ago

> It's important to distinguish between the limitations of current technologies and the possibilities of natural language And yet any time a person says "Lemme know if I can help" my first thought is that I don't even know what's in their wheelhouse to help me with. Will they help if I ask for someone to shovel snow? Clean out my gutters? Or are they offering to help with introductions people with money? Do they even know people with money?

AlotOfReading 4y ago
A personal assistant would absolutely get the driveway shoveled and the gutters cleaned for you, but that's beside the point. The important bit is that they understand you and could do those things if they had the capability and desire. Current natural language interfaces don't, so the human has to pick up the slack (which sucks).

makeitdouble 4y ago

> Imagine if all natural language interfaces were like talking to a personal assistant. I don’t have a personal assistant, so I’ll compare that to hotel receptionists. Every time I booked a room directly through a human, it was long and (not pleasant to me) series of back and forth to understand what they can offer, what I precisely need in that moment, what price I’m willing to pay, how my mind changed as I understood their pricing structure and I then need to know what happens with two rooms instead of one. And requesting an additional towel because we waterboarded one, but not the “face” towel, the other one of middle size, no actually it was thick and coarse, oh was that a mop actually ? etc. It would be infuriating except for the fact that I’m talking to an actual human I have empathy with, we’re stuck together in that interaction and we’ll try to make the best of it. As a contrast online booking and assistance interfaces are sub-par with many other flaws, but I’ll never choose to go the chatty route first if I have a choice. At their best, ‘general intelligence’ level of AI, I think chat interfaces still won’t be a great interface for anything requiring more than 2 steps of interactions.

gibspaulding 4y ago

Alexa is basically a CLI without man pages or useful error messages.

andsoitis 4y ago

> Imagine if all natural language interfaces were like talking to a personal assistant. Sometimes you might not vocalize what you want properly, but we're highly adapted to that sort of communication as humans and the assistant can almost always fill in the gaps based on their knowledge of you or ask clarification questions. There is understanding of natural language and then there's comprehension and critical thinking deeper down. Today's natural language interfaces solve for the former but not the latter. They don't anticipate, they don't originate novel solutions, they can't change their minds, they certainly cannot read the air, etc.