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The expressive aspect is an important one I think! It’s hard to know what you CAN do when you just get given an empty text box. I don’t want more mile-long “wh

The expressive aspect is an important one I think! It’s hard to know what you CAN do when you just get given an empty text box. I don’t want more mile-long “what can I ask” example query lists from the Siri/Google Assistant/Alexa era.

brundolf 4y ago
Have you used an LLM firsthand? They're nothing like the major voice assistants
- graypegg 4y ago
  I know that currently, every example of conversational AI is presented as “the only one you need” but there’s not much economic benefit to let your “real world service” hook into someone else’s AI tool if you also offer one right? We’re going to end up with a Bing AI that can touch things in your Microsoft account, and a Google AI that can touch things in your Google account, and if you want one to talk to the other you’re going to be messenger between them. So now everyone needs to consider that while maybe the google AI can hallucinate when the next billing cycling for your Bing Assistant subscription will happen, you need to understand that it can’t know that unless you ask the “right” assistant. The one that’s capable of reaching into the sheltered data that isn’t exposed to the internet. At least I think. Maybe there’s some economic incentive to bundling it all into one and there won’t be blessed AI’s with special access to non public data. I’m doubtful though.
  - brundolf 4y ago
    Ok, but in the original comment you were talking about the conversations being stilted and mostly limited to pre-baked commands like Siri/Alexa/etc. That's what I was saying doesn't apply here Vendor lock-in is a whole separate question. I agree it will be interesting to see how it plays out, and as with most new technologies there will be plenty of opportunities for abuse. Though I'm also not sure this problem is one that's fundamentally new and specific to AI
    - graypegg 4y ago
      No I didn’t mean the output was stilted, more so that there was only so much reach Alexa/Siri/etc have, so when ever the UI was trying to get you to use it, the best UX any of them came up with was You can ask things like: What was the score last night? How tall is the Eiffel Tower? Turn off the lights. (Etc) I personally think that’s a pretty opaque way of showing what a device/application can do. Now that they can do MUCH more, these weird data borders get more invisible but still exist. How do you outline “this is what this AI can do” to users? In contrast to traditional UI with buttons and links that make the options comparatively more obvious. You can see all the options in front of you.
ben_w 4y ago
What you can do is rapidly approaching the same set of things you can do by asking a human who speaks every natural and programming language, and knows all domain jargon; the downside being mainly that it's like asking someone to answer off the top of their head, without pencil and paper let alone a search engine, and they also have Alzheimer's and are prone to confabulation. It's not useful to think in terms of examples any more; you can ask it for those.
- Talanes 4y ago
  I think slower when I'm trying to phrase speech than when I'm navigating most traditional UI set ups, which makes the downside having to use my brain's speech center for the task at all.
  - ben_w 4y ago
    That's fair, flow state (which is what I think you're describing) is amazing. But for most people, it's: > Give me a python script that takes an existing midi file (specified by command line argument) and outputs the following JSON to STDOUT: … (I've cut the example for the sake of clarity reading this comment) > Don't use any 3rd party libraries. which is an actual I've tried and it does 90% of what you want with 4 bugs (that I've found so far) in 135 lines. Not perfect, sure — and it would have to be perfect to actually replace us! — but it is amazing.

brundolf 4y ago

Have you used an LLM firsthand? They're nothing like the major voice assistants

graypegg 4y ago
I know that currently, every example of conversational AI is presented as “the only one you need” but there’s not much economic benefit to let your “real world service” hook into someone else’s AI tool if you also offer one right? We’re going to end up with a Bing AI that can touch things in your Microsoft account, and a Google AI that can touch things in your Google account, and if you want one to talk to the other you’re going to be messenger between them. So now everyone needs to consider that while maybe the google AI can hallucinate when the next billing cycling for your Bing Assistant subscription will happen, you need to understand that it can’t know that unless you ask the “right” assistant. The one that’s capable of reaching into the sheltered data that isn’t exposed to the internet. At least I think. Maybe there’s some economic incentive to bundling it all into one and there won’t be blessed AI’s with special access to non public data. I’m doubtful though.
- brundolf 4y ago
  Ok, but in the original comment you were talking about the conversations being stilted and mostly limited to pre-baked commands like Siri/Alexa/etc. That's what I was saying doesn't apply here Vendor lock-in is a whole separate question. I agree it will be interesting to see how it plays out, and as with most new technologies there will be plenty of opportunities for abuse. Though I'm also not sure this problem is one that's fundamentally new and specific to AI
  - graypegg 4y ago
    No I didn’t mean the output was stilted, more so that there was only so much reach Alexa/Siri/etc have, so when ever the UI was trying to get you to use it, the best UX any of them came up with was You can ask things like: What was the score last night? How tall is the Eiffel Tower? Turn off the lights. (Etc) I personally think that’s a pretty opaque way of showing what a device/application can do. Now that they can do MUCH more, these weird data borders get more invisible but still exist. How do you outline “this is what this AI can do” to users? In contrast to traditional UI with buttons and links that make the options comparatively more obvious. You can see all the options in front of you.

ben_w 4y ago

What you can do is rapidly approaching the same set of things you can do by asking a human who speaks every natural and programming language, and knows all domain jargon; the downside being mainly that it's like asking someone to answer off the top of their head, without pencil and paper let alone a search engine, and they also have Alzheimer's and are prone to confabulation. It's not useful to think in terms of examples any more; you can ask it for those.

Talanes 4y ago
I think slower when I'm trying to phrase speech than when I'm navigating most traditional UI set ups, which makes the downside having to use my brain's speech center for the task at all.
- ben_w 4y ago
  That's fair, flow state (which is what I think you're describing) is amazing. But for most people, it's: > Give me a python script that takes an existing midi file (specified by command line argument) and outputs the following JSON to STDOUT: … (I've cut the example for the sake of clarity reading this comment) > Don't use any 3rd party libraries. which is an actual I've tried and it does 90% of what you want with 4 bugs (that I've found so far) in 135 lines. Not perfect, sure — and it would have to be perfect to actually replace us! — but it is amazing.