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Nero was the first Roman Emperor to use a ghost writer for his speeches, and it was considered the death of literacy. To be worthy to wield power over an empir
by bloaf 3y ago
Nero was the first Roman Emperor to use a ghost writer for his speeches, and it was considered the death of literacy. To be worthy to wield power over an empire, people said, one ought to be able to organize and express their thoughts.
To notice that people can't use a natural language interface because they're bad at organizing and expressing their thoughts, then claim this is a failing of the interface is for the poor craftsmen to blame their tools.
To say that we should make language models that are somehow agnostic to a user's command of language is so obviously a fools errand its hard to know where to begin. The author is implicitly calling for mind-reading models.
- dragonwriter 3y ago> To notice that people can't use a natural language interface because they're bad at organizing and expressing their thoughts, then claim this is a failing of the interface is for the poor craftsmen to blame their tools. No, its not. The UI is the output of the craft, not the tool of the craftsman. And the blame isn't coming from the craftsman, anyway. It is just as true as the one about craftsmen, if not as popular a saying, that it is a poor toolmaker who blames the people who the tools are made for the tools' unsuitability for their purpose. If a user interface doesn't work for the actual users, it is a poor UI.
- bloaf 3y agoMy three points are meant to be taken together. You might say that the toolmaker's job is to make a foolproof tool that does its job completely independently of the user's skill. But my third line denies this possibility in the context of language models.
- anon373839 3y agoIf an application is for the general population, it seems there is some empirical evidence that open-ended text interfaces won’t meet those users’ capabilities. So exposing a language model directly to the end user is probably not a good design direction to go in.
- jstarfish 3y ago> To notice that people can't use a natural language interface because they're bad at organizing and expressing their thoughts, then claim this is a failing of the interface is for the poor craftsmen to blame their tools. No this is the equivalent of a hammer that only drives one very specific brand and size of nail. Language is a notoriously terrible tool.
- Aerbil313 3y ago> Language is a notoriously terrible tool. It is one of the best available. It's the default, built-in method of communication for humans.
- potatoman22 3y agoUsers don't need to directly interact with the language model. I think the article's saying that good UX shouldn't rely on the user having a great grasp on language. Engineers can abstract the function of the language model behind better things than a chat interface.
- bloaf 3y agoI am reminded of the scene in Idiocracy[1] where we see the receptionist picking conditions from a board containing a few dozen colorful icons. There certainly is a sense in which you could abstract e.g. medical diagnostics in a way that makes illiterate people better at getting an LLM to give advice to a patient. But to go back to my 3-part statement: do people who can't organize and express their thoughts really deserve to be in charge of your medical diagnosis? Or in other words, are UX designers catering to an audience that ought to not exist in the first place. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXzJR7K0wK0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXzJR7K0wK0
- potatoman22 3y agoYes. Most LLM-driven tools shouldn't need the user to engineer a prompt so they can function well. GitHub Co-pilot should work without you having to prompt the LLM in your code.
- cpill 3y ago"better things than a chat interface" like what? what interface comes more naturally to humans than the spoken word?