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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 superio

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.
  - nerdponx 2y ago
    And how many people book flights that way today?
    - wetoastfood 2y ago
      Many people today are booking flights for others, be it families, business leaders, or traditional travel agents. They’re communicating preferences and asking about preferred travel times, budget, seat selection, and more. When you book for and with someone else, these preferences get learned and you no longer have to ask if they prefer an aisle seat—you just pick it. The booking experience today is granular to help you find a suitable flight to meet all the preferences you’re compiling into an optimal scenario. The experience of AI booking in the future will likely be similar: find that optimal scenario for you once you’re able to articulate your preferences and remember them over time.
      - uoaei 2y ago
        And how many bad experiences do you expect people to tolerate before AI eventually learns the person's "real" preferences?
    - mschuster91 2y ago
      More than enough. Corporate flights are almost always handled that way, alone for compliance reasons (the travel agency knows about budget and "appearance" limits aka only c-level gets business class, everyone else gets economy). Anecdata: last year my wife and I went on a rail tour through Eastern Europe and god, I wish we had chosen to spend a few hundred euros on a travel agency in retrospect - I can't count just how much time we had to spend researching on what kind of rail, bus and public transit tickets you need on which leg, how to create accounts, set up payment and godknowswhat else. Easily took us two days worth of work and about two dozens individual payment transactions. A professional travel agency can do all the booking via Sabre, Amadeus or whatever...
    - fragmede 2y ago
      not how many, but which ones? As a regular person, I buy it myself, but do you think rich people do that? No, they just ask their (human) assistant to get a flight to New York around 7pm this Friday, and then move onto the next problem in their lives.
littlestymaar 2y ago
Why couldn't the interface ask you about your preferences? Because instead, what we have right now are clunky web interface that just cram every choice in the small screen in front of you and letting you understand how they are in fact different and sort out yourself how to make things work. Of course a conversational interface is useless if it tries to just do the same thing as a web UI, which is why it failed a decade ago when it was trendy, because the tech was nowhere clever enough to make that useful. But today, I'd bet the other way round.
- earnestinger 2y ago
  It can ask, but how much time do you want to spend answering stuff? Such dialog is probably nice for first time user, it is a nightmare for repeated user.
  - littlestymaar 2y ago
    What prevents the system to remember your previous choices? Then it can assume you choice haven't changed, and propose you a solution that matches your previous choices. And to give the user control it just needs to explicitly tell the user about the assumption it made. In fact, a smart enough system could even see when violating the assumptions could lead to a substantial gain and try convincing the user that it may be a good option this time.
    - nosianu 2y ago
      It still has to tell you. Visually in a form it's much faster. Similar reason why many people prefer a blog post over a video. Talking is not very efficient, and it's serial in fixed time. With something visual you can look at whatever you want whenever you want, at your own (irregular) pace. You will also be able to make changes much faster. You can go to the target form element right away, and you get immediate feedback from the GUI (or from a physical control that you moved - e.g. in cars). If it's talk, you need to wait to have it said back to you - same reason as why important communication in flight control or military is always read back. Even humans misunderstand. You can't just talk-and-forget unless you accept errors. You would need some true intelligence for just some brief spoken requests to work well enough. A (human) butler worked fine for such cases, but even then only the best made it into such high-level service positions, because it required real intelligence to know what your lord needed and wanted, and lots of time with them to gain that experience.
ramblejam 2y ago
> since users themselves don’t clearly know what they want. Knowing what you want is, sadly, computationally irreducible.
Propelloni 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. Amen to that. I guess, it would help to get of the IT high horse and have a talk with linguists and philosophers of language. They are dealing with this shit for centuries now.
indigoabstract 2y ago
And then there is the fact that voice isn't the dominant mode of expression for all people. Some are predominantly visual thinkers, some are analytic and slow to decide, while some prefer to use their hands and so on. I guess there's just no substitute for someone actually doing the work of figuring out the most appropriate HMI for a given task or situation, be it voice controls, touch screens, physical buttons or something else.

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.
- nerdponx 2y ago
  And how many people book flights that way today?
  - wetoastfood 2y ago
    Many people today are booking flights for others, be it families, business leaders, or traditional travel agents. They’re communicating preferences and asking about preferred travel times, budget, seat selection, and more. When you book for and with someone else, these preferences get learned and you no longer have to ask if they prefer an aisle seat—you just pick it. The booking experience today is granular to help you find a suitable flight to meet all the preferences you’re compiling into an optimal scenario. The experience of AI booking in the future will likely be similar: find that optimal scenario for you once you’re able to articulate your preferences and remember them over time.
    - uoaei 2y ago
      And how many bad experiences do you expect people to tolerate before AI eventually learns the person's "real" preferences?
  - mschuster91 2y ago
    More than enough. Corporate flights are almost always handled that way, alone for compliance reasons (the travel agency knows about budget and "appearance" limits aka only c-level gets business class, everyone else gets economy). Anecdata: last year my wife and I went on a rail tour through Eastern Europe and god, I wish we had chosen to spend a few hundred euros on a travel agency in retrospect - I can't count just how much time we had to spend researching on what kind of rail, bus and public transit tickets you need on which leg, how to create accounts, set up payment and godknowswhat else. Easily took us two days worth of work and about two dozens individual payment transactions. A professional travel agency can do all the booking via Sabre, Amadeus or whatever...
  - fragmede 2y ago
    not how many, but which ones? As a regular person, I buy it myself, but do you think rich people do that? No, they just ask their (human) assistant to get a flight to New York around 7pm this Friday, and then move onto the next problem in their lives.

littlestymaar 2y ago

Why couldn't the interface ask you about your preferences? Because instead, what we have right now are clunky web interface that just cram every choice in the small screen in front of you and letting you understand how they are in fact different and sort out yourself how to make things work. Of course a conversational interface is useless if it tries to just do the same thing as a web UI, which is why it failed a decade ago when it was trendy, because the tech was nowhere clever enough to make that useful. But today, I'd bet the other way round.

earnestinger 2y ago
It can ask, but how much time do you want to spend answering stuff? Such dialog is probably nice for first time user, it is a nightmare for repeated user.
- littlestymaar 2y ago
  What prevents the system to remember your previous choices? Then it can assume you choice haven't changed, and propose you a solution that matches your previous choices. And to give the user control it just needs to explicitly tell the user about the assumption it made. In fact, a smart enough system could even see when violating the assumptions could lead to a substantial gain and try convincing the user that it may be a good option this time.
  - nosianu 2y ago
    It still has to tell you. Visually in a form it's much faster. Similar reason why many people prefer a blog post over a video. Talking is not very efficient, and it's serial in fixed time. With something visual you can look at whatever you want whenever you want, at your own (irregular) pace. You will also be able to make changes much faster. You can go to the target form element right away, and you get immediate feedback from the GUI (or from a physical control that you moved - e.g. in cars). If it's talk, you need to wait to have it said back to you - same reason as why important communication in flight control or military is always read back. Even humans misunderstand. You can't just talk-and-forget unless you accept errors. You would need some true intelligence for just some brief spoken requests to work well enough. A (human) butler worked fine for such cases, but even then only the best made it into such high-level service positions, because it required real intelligence to know what your lord needed and wanted, and lots of time with them to gain that experience.

ramblejam 2y ago

> since users themselves don’t clearly know what they want. Knowing what you want is, sadly, computationally irreducible.

Propelloni 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. Amen to that. I guess, it would help to get of the IT high horse and have a talk with linguists and philosophers of language. They are dealing with this shit for centuries now.

indigoabstract 2y ago

And then there is the fact that voice isn't the dominant mode of expression for all people. Some are predominantly visual thinkers, some are analytic and slow to decide, while some prefer to use their hands and so on. I guess there's just no substitute for someone actually doing the work of figuring out the most appropriate HMI for a given task or situation, be it voice controls, touch screens, physical buttons or something else.