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Forcing humans to use written natural language when dealing with a machine (complete with politeness formulas, etc) seems like a dreadfully inefficient UX. Why

Forcing humans to use written natural language when dealing with a machine (complete with politeness formulas, etc) seems like a dreadfully inefficient UX. Why force users to type several sentences (minutes wasted on a mobile device) when a couple taps/click in a GUI would suffice? Not to mention the risk for ambiguity that lies in natural language processing (unless this company has already solved the problem of strong AI?).

woah 12y ago
Why conversational tone on hn Hn users programmers Understand efficient style Sarcasm in post
yummyfajitas 12y ago
Amy (the humanized name of the X.ai bot) is about the worst and most intrusive business tool I've encountered. My business partner uses the "amy" bot. It likes to spam me with 20 questions about when to schedule a meeting, each time asking me for other times whenever something doesn't work. And god help me if I ever forget to put an "IST" after every single time I mention. If I send it "8PM IST, 9PM IST or 10PM", there is a good chance it will give me a 10PM EST meeting. In contrast, consider doodle (http://doodle.com/ http://doodle.com/), which is exactly the GUI you are imagining. It shows me a grid of possible times. I click the times that are good. It detects my location and automatically displays times in IST. Takes me about 15 seconds to use with no confusion. X.ai seems to be solving the problem of "I wish I had a secretary, but can't afford one". That's not the same problem as "lets schedule meetings in the most efficient way possible". Dear x.ai folks, if any of you are reading this thread: please clone doodle and stick an x.ai/doodle link into the amy emails. If you do this, I'll consider deleting the gmail filter which currently blocks all emails from x.ai.
- zaroth 12y ago
  Doodle is interesting, thanks for mentioning them. But I was exploring their product and come to find they list SSL as a paid feature on their "Private" plan. SSL is really, truly not a paid feature. I found that off-putting and a bit shameful.
  - yummyfajitas 12y ago
    True, you need to pay them a shocking 2.5 euros/month in order to access all the important features (calendar integration, SSL, etc). Why don't the devs there just work for free? Incidentally I don't mean to suggest doodle as necessarily the best service of this sort. The only reason I remember doodle specifically is because someone used it on me last week.
    - zaroth 12y ago
      Hmm... You should absolutely pay for features, if you want them, I would never say otherwise. My point is that SSL is not a feature, it's table stakes. Are you saying you think SSL on your login form is an upsell? Having this discussion on Twitter right now with one of their developers. Go to their home page and click 'Sign in'. See the username/password prompt? Now, look at the URL bar. See something missing? In fact, the request is POST to https://.. https://... but the point is the user has no assurance that's the case. A web login form MUST be served from a top-level document under HTTPS. The weird thing is that, in fact, the dev said they do provide SSL when logged into the app all the time to all users. It's only SSL on their public site that they only provide to paying customers. Well, I don't get that at all. And anyway it seems broken because I have a 14-day Premium Trial and I'm not getting that "feature". Just altogether very weird vibe. Anyway, this is now way OT for this thread.
dmortensen 12y ago
It is very hard to do an asynchronous negotiation with another human in an APP like setting. It is also hard (perhaps impossible) to create a UX experience which anticipates all potential future requests. - Hi Amy, can we push the meeting tomorrow 20 min ? - Hi Amy, let’s do the meeting when John is back from holidays (Friday, yes?) - Hi Amy, Let’s do the meeting end of next week, preferably Thursday - Hi Amy, Have John call my Skype (if he's got an account) instead of Cell, and add Linda to the invite please. - Hi Amy, set something up with Jordy from Softbank next week, heck, I'll do something outside my scheduling hours as long as it is next week. I scheduled 1019 meetings myself as startup founder in 2012 [0] and this is all I want, which obviously does not equal us being able to pull it off. [0] https://x.ai/1019-meetings-in-2012/ https://x.ai/1019-meetings-in-2012/
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
azakai 12y ago
To provide a custom GUI, you would need people to click on a link in the email, which sends them to an external website. Or, you would need to have them use an app, and make sure it is installed. In both cases, the users would need to understand the UI. Even the most super-obvious UI takes a little focus to follow and use properly. Especially if they want something a little out of the ordinary ("if X is good, then X, otherwise Y, but only if Z"). Compared to those, writing a sentence in English actually sounds fairly convenient - that's how humans communicate naturally.

woah 12y ago

Why conversational tone on hn Hn users programmers Understand efficient style Sarcasm in post

yummyfajitas 12y ago

Amy (the humanized name of the X.ai bot) is about the worst and most intrusive business tool I've encountered. My business partner uses the "amy" bot. It likes to spam me with 20 questions about when to schedule a meeting, each time asking me for other times whenever something doesn't work. And god help me if I ever forget to put an "IST" after every single time I mention. If I send it "8PM IST, 9PM IST or 10PM", there is a good chance it will give me a 10PM EST meeting. In contrast, consider doodle (http://doodle.com/ http://doodle.com/), which is exactly the GUI you are imagining. It shows me a grid of possible times. I click the times that are good. It detects my location and automatically displays times in IST. Takes me about 15 seconds to use with no confusion. X.ai seems to be solving the problem of "I wish I had a secretary, but can't afford one". That's not the same problem as "lets schedule meetings in the most efficient way possible". Dear x.ai folks, if any of you are reading this thread: please clone doodle and stick an x.ai/doodle link into the amy emails. If you do this, I'll consider deleting the gmail filter which currently blocks all emails from x.ai.

zaroth 12y ago
Doodle is interesting, thanks for mentioning them. But I was exploring their product and come to find they list SSL as a paid feature on their "Private" plan. SSL is really, truly not a paid feature. I found that off-putting and a bit shameful.
- yummyfajitas 12y ago
  True, you need to pay them a shocking 2.5 euros/month in order to access all the important features (calendar integration, SSL, etc). Why don't the devs there just work for free? Incidentally I don't mean to suggest doodle as necessarily the best service of this sort. The only reason I remember doodle specifically is because someone used it on me last week.
  - zaroth 12y ago
    Hmm... You should absolutely pay for features, if you want them, I would never say otherwise. My point is that SSL is not a feature, it's table stakes. Are you saying you think SSL on your login form is an upsell? Having this discussion on Twitter right now with one of their developers. Go to their home page and click 'Sign in'. See the username/password prompt? Now, look at the URL bar. See something missing? In fact, the request is POST to https://.. https://... but the point is the user has no assurance that's the case. A web login form MUST be served from a top-level document under HTTPS. The weird thing is that, in fact, the dev said they do provide SSL when logged into the app all the time to all users. It's only SSL on their public site that they only provide to paying customers. Well, I don't get that at all. And anyway it seems broken because I have a 14-day Premium Trial and I'm not getting that "feature". Just altogether very weird vibe. Anyway, this is now way OT for this thread.

dmortensen 12y ago

It is very hard to do an asynchronous negotiation with another human in an APP like setting. It is also hard (perhaps impossible) to create a UX experience which anticipates all potential future requests. - Hi Amy, can we push the meeting tomorrow 20 min ? - Hi Amy, let’s do the meeting when John is back from holidays (Friday, yes?) - Hi Amy, Let’s do the meeting end of next week, preferably Thursday - Hi Amy, Have John call my Skype (if he's got an account) instead of Cell, and add Linda to the invite please. - Hi Amy, set something up with Jordy from Softbank next week, heck, I'll do something outside my scheduling hours as long as it is next week. I scheduled 1019 meetings myself as startup founder in 2012 [0] and this is all I want, which obviously does not equal us being able to pull it off. [0] https://x.ai/1019-meetings-in-2012/ https://x.ai/1019-meetings-in-2012/

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

azakai 12y ago

To provide a custom GUI, you would need people to click on a link in the email, which sends them to an external website. Or, you would need to have them use an app, and make sure it is installed. In both cases, the users would need to understand the UI. Even the most super-obvious UI takes a little focus to follow and use properly. Especially if they want something a little out of the ordinary ("if X is good, then X, otherwise Y, but only if Z"). Compared to those, writing a sentence in English actually sounds fairly convenient - that's how humans communicate naturally.