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This clearly elucidated a number of things I've tried to explain to people who are so excited about "conversations" with computers. The example I've used (with

This clearly elucidated a number of things I've tried to explain to people who are so excited about "conversations" with computers. The example I've used (with varying levels of effectiveness) was to get someone to think about driving their car by only talking to it. Not a self driving car that does the driving for you, but telling it things like: turn, accelerate, stop, slow down, speed up, put on the blinker, turn off the blinker, etc. It would be annoying and painful and you couldn't talk to your passenger while you were "driving" because that might make the car do something weird. My point, and I think it was the author's as well, is that you aren't "conversing" with your computer, you are making it do what you want. There are simpler, faster, and more effective ways to do that then to talk at it with natural language.

moffkalast 2y ago
Honestly that just says that the interface is too low level. Telling a car to drive you to some place and make it fast is how we interact with taxi drivers. It works fine as a concept, it just needs a higher level of abstraction that isn't there yet.
- MatekCopatek 2y ago
  This only works for tasks where the details of execution are not important. Driving fits that category well, but many other tasks we're throwing at AI don't.
- citrin_ru 2y ago
  Selecting pick-up/drop-off points on a map for me easier than explaining in words and that’s on of appeals of uber like services.
  - TeMPOraL 2y ago
    It's easier up until it's time to drop you off, and the selected dropoff point is suboptimal or plain impossible to stop at, and you want to give the car last-minute directions. Then the traditional, "human driver way" of looking out the window and telling them where to go based on what you see is far superior than trying to perspective-switch between the 3D situated view and imprecise, finicky 2D map interface.
    - citrin_ru 2y ago
      A perfect interface would be a combination of both ways. Also it depends on personal preferences. I learned to use a paper map as a teenager and it’s convenient for me but I know some people struggle to find a way even using a map on a smartphone.
guestbest 2y ago
If the driver could queue actions it would make chat interfaced driving easier since the desired actions could be prepared for implementation by button press rather than needed a dedicated button built at a factory built by an engineer.
phyzix5761 2y ago
You're onto something. We've learned to make computers and electronic devices feel like extensions of ourselves. We move our bodies and they do what we expect. Having to switch now to using our voice breaks that connection. Its no longer an extension of ourselves but a thing we interact with.
- namaria 2y ago
  Two key things that make computers useful, specificity and exactitude, are thrown out of the window by interposing NLP between the person and the computer. I don't get it at all.
  - TeMPOraL 2y ago
    [imprecise thinking] v <--- LLMs do this for you [specific and exact commands] v [computers] v [specific and exact output] v <--- LLMs do this for you [contextualized output] In many cases, you don't want or need that. In some, you do. Use right tool for the job, etc.
    - shakna 2y ago
      I don't think they give a specific and exact output, considering how nondeterminism plays a role in most models.
      - furyofantares 2y ago
        The diagram you're replying to agrees with this.
        walthamstow 2y ago
        Does it? The way I'm reading it, the first step is LLM turning human imprecise thinking into specific and exact commands
shubhamjain 2y ago
I had the same thoughts on conversational interfaces [1]. Humane AI failed not only because of terrible execution, the whole assumption of voice being a superior interface (and trying to invent something beyond smartphones) was flawed. > Theoretically, saying, “order an Uber to airport” seems like the easiest way to accomplish the task. But is it? What kind of Uber? UberXL, UberGo? There’s a 1.5x surge pricing. Acceptable? Is the pickup point correct? What would be easier, resolving each of those queries through a computer asking questions, or taking a quick look yourself on the app? > Another example is food ordering. What would you prefer, going through the menu from tens of restaurants yourself or constantly nudging the AI for the desired option? Technological improvement can only help so much here since users themselves don’t clearly know what they want. [1]: https://shubhamjain.co/2024/04/16/voice-is-bad-ui/ https://shubhamjain.co/2024/04/16/voice-is-bad-ui/
- JSR_FDED 2y ago
  And 10x worse than that is booking a flight: I found one that fits your budget, but it leaves at midnight, or requires an extra stop, or is on an airline for which you don't collect frequent flyer miles, or arrives it at a secondary airport in the same city, or it only has a middle seat available. How many of these inconveniences will you put up with? Any of them, all of them? What price difference makes it worthwhile? What if by traveling a day earlier you save enough money to even pay for a hotel...? All of that is for just 1 flight, what if there are several alternatives? I can't imagine have a dialogue about this with a computer.
  - fragmede 2y ago
    But that is how we used to buy a plane ticket. Long before flights.google.com's price table, you'd call a human up and tell them you'd like to go on holiday. They'd ask you where and when and how much you could afford, and then after a while with the old system (SABRE) clicking and clacking they'd find you a good deal. After a few flights with that travel agent, they'd hey to know you and wouldn't have to ask so many questions. Similarly, long before Waymo, you'd get into a taxi, and tell the human driver you're going to the airport, and they'd take you there. In fact, they'd get annoyed at you if you backseat drove, telling them how to use the blinker and how hard to brake and accelerate. The thing about conversational interfaces is that we're used to them, because we (well, some of us) interface with other humans fairly regularly, and so it's a fairly baseline level skill to have to exist in the world today. There's a case to be made against them, but since everyone can be assumed to be conversational (though perhaps not in a given language), it's here to stay. Restaurants have menus that customers look at before using the conversation interface to get food, in order to guide the discussion, and that's had thousands of years to evolve, so it might be a local maxima, but it's a pretty good one.
d3vmax 2y ago
Agree. Not all systems require convo mode. I personally find Chat/Convo/IVR type interface slow/tedious. Keyboard/Mouse ftw. However, A CEO using Power BI with Convo to can get more insights/graphs rather than slice/dicing his data. They do have fixed metrics but incase they want something not displayed.
scott_w 2y ago
> you couldn't talk to your passenger while you were "driving" because that might make the car do something weird. This even happens while walking my dog. If my wife messages me, my iPhone reads it out and, at the same time, I'm trying to cross a road, she'll get a garbled reply which is just me shouting random words at my dog to keep her under control.
pydry 2y ago
This rules out conversational UI for some tasks and applications but there are many where it will be useful and many where a hybrid would be best. Even in a car, being able to control the windscreen wipers, radio, ask how much fuel is left are all tasks it would be useful to do conversationally. There are some apps (im thinking of jira as an example) where i'd like to do 90% of the usage conversationally.
- la_oveja 2y ago
  > Even in a car, being able to control the windscreen wipers, radio, ask how much fuel is left are all tasks it would be useful to do conversationally. are you REALLY sure you want that? how much fuel there is is a quick glance into the dash, and you can control precisely the radio volume without even looking. 'turn up the volume', 'turn down the volume a little bit', 'a bit more',... and then a radio ad going 'get yourself a 3 pack of the new magic wipers...' and car wipers going off. id hate conversational ui on my car.
  - brookst 2y ago
    It’s less common now that car controls have somewhat standardized, but I’m old enough that I remember when rental cars were a pain because it would start raining and you couldn’t find the windshield wipers. Conversational interfaces are great for rarely used features or when the user doesn’t know how to do something. For repetitive, common tasks they’re terrible. But nobody is using ChatGPT for repetitive tasks. In fact the whole LLM revolution seems to be about letting users accomplish tasks without having to learn how to do them. Which I know some people look down on, but it’s the literal definition of management (which, to be fair, some people also look down on).
    - ryandrake 2y ago
      > It’s less common now that car controls have somewhat standardized, but I’m old enough that I remember when rental cars were a pain because it would start raining and you couldn’t find the windshield wipers. This is a problem of standardization across manufacturers, not something inherent in physical controls. I never have a problem using the steering wheel in a rental car because they're all the same. You'd have the same problem with voice interfaces: For some rental cars, turning on the wipers would be "Turn on the wipers". For others, you'd have to say "Activate the wipers." For others, "Enable the windshield wipers." There is no way manufacturers will be capable of standardizing on a single phrase.
johnnyanmac 2y ago
Yeah, it comes and goes in games for a reason. If it's not already some sort of social game, then the time to speak an answer is always slower than 3 button presses to select a pre-canned answer. Navigating a menu with Kinect voice commands will often be slower than a decent interface a user clicks through. Voice interface only prevails in situations with hundreds of choices, and even then it's probably easier to use voice to filter down choices rather than select. But very few games have such scale to worry about (certainly no AAA game as of now).
general_reveal 2y ago
[dead]
steveBK123 2y ago
Yeah I mean - haven't we already been doing this a decade with home voice assistant speaker things and all found them to be underwhelming? Theres 1-5 things any individual finds them useful for (timers/lights/music/etc) and then.. thats it. 99.9% of what I use a computer for its far faster to type/click/touch my phone/tablet/computer.
- ryandrake 2y ago
  I think a lot of these "voice assistant" systems are envisioned and pushed by senior leadership in companies like SVPs and VPs. They're the ones who make the decision to invest in products like this. Why do they think these products make sense? Because they themselves have personal assistants and nannies and chauffeurs and private chefs, and voice is their primary interface to these people. It makes sense that people who spend all their time vocally telling others to do work, think that voice is a good interface for regular people to tell their computers to do work.
  - steveBK123 2y ago
    That is actually a very interesting take I've not seen before and does make some sense. If your work revolves about telling people what to do and asking questions, a voice assistant seems like a great idea (even if you yourself wouldn't have to stoop to using a robotic version since you have a real live human). If your work actually involves doing things, then voice/conversational text interface quickly falls apart.
rurp 2y ago
An empirical example would be Amazon's utter failure at making voice shopping a thing with the Echo. There were always a number of obvious flaws with the idea. There's no way to compare purchase options, check reviews, view images, or just scan a bunch of info at once with your eyeballs at 100x the information bandwidth of a computer generated voice talking to you. Even for straightforward purchases, how many people trust Amazon to find and pick the best deal for them? Even if Amazon started out being diligent and honest it would never last if voice ordering became popular. There's no way that company would pass up a wildly profitable opportunity to rip people off in an opaque way by selecting higher margin options.

moffkalast 2y ago

Honestly that just says that the interface is too low level. Telling a car to drive you to some place and make it fast is how we interact with taxi drivers. It works fine as a concept, it just needs a higher level of abstraction that isn't there yet.

MatekCopatek 2y ago
This only works for tasks where the details of execution are not important. Driving fits that category well, but many other tasks we're throwing at AI don't.
citrin_ru 2y ago
Selecting pick-up/drop-off points on a map for me easier than explaining in words and that’s on of appeals of uber like services.
- TeMPOraL 2y ago
  It's easier up until it's time to drop you off, and the selected dropoff point is suboptimal or plain impossible to stop at, and you want to give the car last-minute directions. Then the traditional, "human driver way" of looking out the window and telling them where to go based on what you see is far superior than trying to perspective-switch between the 3D situated view and imprecise, finicky 2D map interface.
  - citrin_ru 2y ago
    A perfect interface would be a combination of both ways. Also it depends on personal preferences. I learned to use a paper map as a teenager and it’s convenient for me but I know some people struggle to find a way even using a map on a smartphone.

guestbest 2y ago

If the driver could queue actions it would make chat interfaced driving easier since the desired actions could be prepared for implementation by button press rather than needed a dedicated button built at a factory built by an engineer.

phyzix5761 2y ago

You're onto something. We've learned to make computers and electronic devices feel like extensions of ourselves. We move our bodies and they do what we expect. Having to switch now to using our voice breaks that connection. Its no longer an extension of ourselves but a thing we interact with.

namaria 2y ago
Two key things that make computers useful, specificity and exactitude, are thrown out of the window by interposing NLP between the person and the computer. I don't get it at all.
- TeMPOraL 2y ago
  [imprecise thinking] v <--- LLMs do this for you [specific and exact commands] v [computers] v [specific and exact output] v <--- LLMs do this for you [contextualized output] In many cases, you don't want or need that. In some, you do. Use right tool for the job, etc.
  - shakna 2y ago
    I don't think they give a specific and exact output, considering how nondeterminism plays a role in most models.
    - furyofantares 2y ago
      The diagram you're replying to agrees with this.
      - walthamstow 2y ago
        Does it? The way I'm reading it, the first step is LLM turning human imprecise thinking into specific and exact commands

shubhamjain 2y ago

I had the same thoughts on conversational interfaces [1]. Humane AI failed not only because of terrible execution, the whole assumption of voice being a superior interface (and trying to invent something beyond smartphones) was flawed. > Theoretically, saying, “order an Uber to airport” seems like the easiest way to accomplish the task. But is it? What kind of Uber? UberXL, UberGo? There’s a 1.5x surge pricing. Acceptable? Is the pickup point correct? What would be easier, resolving each of those queries through a computer asking questions, or taking a quick look yourself on the app? > Another example is food ordering. What would you prefer, going through the menu from tens of restaurants yourself or constantly nudging the AI for the desired option? Technological improvement can only help so much here since users themselves don’t clearly know what they want. [1]: https://shubhamjain.co/2024/04/16/voice-is-bad-ui/ https://shubhamjain.co/2024/04/16/voice-is-bad-ui/

JSR_FDED 2y ago
And 10x worse than that is booking a flight: I found one that fits your budget, but it leaves at midnight, or requires an extra stop, or is on an airline for which you don't collect frequent flyer miles, or arrives it at a secondary airport in the same city, or it only has a middle seat available. How many of these inconveniences will you put up with? Any of them, all of them? What price difference makes it worthwhile? What if by traveling a day earlier you save enough money to even pay for a hotel...? All of that is for just 1 flight, what if there are several alternatives? I can't imagine have a dialogue about this with a computer.
- fragmede 2y ago
  But that is how we used to buy a plane ticket. Long before flights.google.com's price table, you'd call a human up and tell them you'd like to go on holiday. They'd ask you where and when and how much you could afford, and then after a while with the old system (SABRE) clicking and clacking they'd find you a good deal. After a few flights with that travel agent, they'd hey to know you and wouldn't have to ask so many questions. Similarly, long before Waymo, you'd get into a taxi, and tell the human driver you're going to the airport, and they'd take you there. In fact, they'd get annoyed at you if you backseat drove, telling them how to use the blinker and how hard to brake and accelerate. The thing about conversational interfaces is that we're used to them, because we (well, some of us) interface with other humans fairly regularly, and so it's a fairly baseline level skill to have to exist in the world today. There's a case to be made against them, but since everyone can be assumed to be conversational (though perhaps not in a given language), it's here to stay. Restaurants have menus that customers look at before using the conversation interface to get food, in order to guide the discussion, and that's had thousands of years to evolve, so it might be a local maxima, but it's a pretty good one.

d3vmax 2y ago

Agree. Not all systems require convo mode. I personally find Chat/Convo/IVR type interface slow/tedious. Keyboard/Mouse ftw. However, A CEO using Power BI with Convo to can get more insights/graphs rather than slice/dicing his data. They do have fixed metrics but incase they want something not displayed.

scott_w 2y ago

> you couldn't talk to your passenger while you were "driving" because that might make the car do something weird. This even happens while walking my dog. If my wife messages me, my iPhone reads it out and, at the same time, I'm trying to cross a road, she'll get a garbled reply which is just me shouting random words at my dog to keep her under control.

pydry 2y ago

This rules out conversational UI for some tasks and applications but there are many where it will be useful and many where a hybrid would be best. Even in a car, being able to control the windscreen wipers, radio, ask how much fuel is left are all tasks it would be useful to do conversationally. There are some apps (im thinking of jira as an example) where i'd like to do 90% of the usage conversationally.

la_oveja 2y ago
> Even in a car, being able to control the windscreen wipers, radio, ask how much fuel is left are all tasks it would be useful to do conversationally. are you REALLY sure you want that? how much fuel there is is a quick glance into the dash, and you can control precisely the radio volume without even looking. 'turn up the volume', 'turn down the volume a little bit', 'a bit more',... and then a radio ad going 'get yourself a 3 pack of the new magic wipers...' and car wipers going off. id hate conversational ui on my car.
- brookst 2y ago
  It’s less common now that car controls have somewhat standardized, but I’m old enough that I remember when rental cars were a pain because it would start raining and you couldn’t find the windshield wipers. Conversational interfaces are great for rarely used features or when the user doesn’t know how to do something. For repetitive, common tasks they’re terrible. But nobody is using ChatGPT for repetitive tasks. In fact the whole LLM revolution seems to be about letting users accomplish tasks without having to learn how to do them. Which I know some people look down on, but it’s the literal definition of management (which, to be fair, some people also look down on).
  - ryandrake 2y ago
    > It’s less common now that car controls have somewhat standardized, but I’m old enough that I remember when rental cars were a pain because it would start raining and you couldn’t find the windshield wipers. This is a problem of standardization across manufacturers, not something inherent in physical controls. I never have a problem using the steering wheel in a rental car because they're all the same. You'd have the same problem with voice interfaces: For some rental cars, turning on the wipers would be "Turn on the wipers". For others, you'd have to say "Activate the wipers." For others, "Enable the windshield wipers." There is no way manufacturers will be capable of standardizing on a single phrase.

johnnyanmac 2y ago

Yeah, it comes and goes in games for a reason. If it's not already some sort of social game, then the time to speak an answer is always slower than 3 button presses to select a pre-canned answer. Navigating a menu with Kinect voice commands will often be slower than a decent interface a user clicks through. Voice interface only prevails in situations with hundreds of choices, and even then it's probably easier to use voice to filter down choices rather than select. But very few games have such scale to worry about (certainly no AAA game as of now).

general_reveal 2y ago

[dead]

steveBK123 2y ago

Yeah I mean - haven't we already been doing this a decade with home voice assistant speaker things and all found them to be underwhelming? Theres 1-5 things any individual finds them useful for (timers/lights/music/etc) and then.. thats it. 99.9% of what I use a computer for its far faster to type/click/touch my phone/tablet/computer.

ryandrake 2y ago
I think a lot of these "voice assistant" systems are envisioned and pushed by senior leadership in companies like SVPs and VPs. They're the ones who make the decision to invest in products like this. Why do they think these products make sense? Because they themselves have personal assistants and nannies and chauffeurs and private chefs, and voice is their primary interface to these people. It makes sense that people who spend all their time vocally telling others to do work, think that voice is a good interface for regular people to tell their computers to do work.
- steveBK123 2y ago
  That is actually a very interesting take I've not seen before and does make some sense. If your work revolves about telling people what to do and asking questions, a voice assistant seems like a great idea (even if you yourself wouldn't have to stoop to using a robotic version since you have a real live human). If your work actually involves doing things, then voice/conversational text interface quickly falls apart.

rurp 2y ago

An empirical example would be Amazon's utter failure at making voice shopping a thing with the Echo. There were always a number of obvious flaws with the idea. There's no way to compare purchase options, check reviews, view images, or just scan a bunch of info at once with your eyeballs at 100x the information bandwidth of a computer generated voice talking to you. Even for straightforward purchases, how many people trust Amazon to find and pick the best deal for them? Even if Amazon started out being diligent and honest it would never last if voice ordering became popular. There's no way that company would pass up a wildly profitable opportunity to rip people off in an opaque way by selecting higher margin options.