Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The case against conversational interfaces

julian.digital

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 225 posts

Re: The case against conversational interfaces

#191

Post by ryandrake »

steveBK123 wrote: post #177
ChuckMcM wrote: post #33

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…

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.

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.

Re: The case against conversational interfaces

#192

Post by ryandrake »

brookst wrote: post #152
la_oveja wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 y…

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 f…

> 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.

Re: The case against conversational interfaces

#193

Post by ryandrake »

throwaway290 wrote: post #159
lolinder wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> First thing an experienced and bright engineer will tell you is to leave the premises with your "few words about a desire" and not return without actual specs and requirements formalized in some way. No, that's what a junior engineer will do. The first thing that an experienced and bright senior engineer will do is think over the request and ask clarifying questions in pursuit of a more rigorous specification, then…

I used to think like you. My job is to ask questions etc. But after a couple decades I see if someone doesn't bother to even think about the idea enough to understand it himself beyond a few words he is not worth engaging with in this fashion. He doesn't really know what he wants. Today I ask a clarifying question he says one thing, next week he changes his mind or forgets and the result slowly becomes a mess > The p…

> Do not mistake software engineers and product people. These are very different things. Sometimes these things are done by the same person if the org has not enough money.

I worked for one of the largest, richest tech companies in the world, and (at least in our org) they did not have a dedicated product owner role. They expected this skill from the senior/lead engineers on the teams. Any coder can churn out code and you can call them senior after a few years. But if you want to be considered actually senior, you need to know how to make a product, not just code. IMO if you are a developer and all you know how to do is turn a fully-formed spec/requirements doc into software, and push back on anything that is not fully-formed, you're never going to truly reach "Senior" level, wherever you are.

Re: The case against conversational interfaces

#194

Post by steveBK123 »

ryandrake wrote: post #191
steveBK123 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

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.

Re: The case against conversational interfaces

#195

Post by jeremyjh »

ben_w wrote: post #139
jeremyjh wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was an episode where Beverly Crusher was alone on the ship, and controlled everything just by talking to the computer. I wondered why there is a bridge, much less a bridge crew. But yes it makes sense to use higher bandwidth control systems when possible.

If that was the episode where the crew disappeared with nobody else but her noticing, it doesn't really count because she was trapped in a Negative Space Wedgie pocket dimension based on her own thoughts at the time she was trapped.

Yes, that was it. I think though that she had a good enough understanding of the ship's capabilities that her private world would have been realistic in that respect.

Re: The case against conversational interfaces

#196

Post by TeMPOraL »

jeremyjh wrote: post #195
ben_w wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that was the episode where the crew disappeared with nobody else but her noticing, it doesn't really count because she was trapped in a Negative Space Wedgie pocket dimension based on her own thoughts at the time she was trapped.

Yes, that was it. I think though that she had a good enough understanding of the ship's capabilities that her private world would have been realistic in that respect.

Whatever understanding she had back then, "a lot has happened in the last 20 years" (30+ IRL) between then and that memorable ending of Picard S3 :).

Re: The case against conversational interfaces

#197

Post by xigoi »

furyofantares wrote: post #182
shakna wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tool may not even exist. LLMs are really terrible at admitting where the limits of the training are. They will imagine a tool into being. They will also claim the knowledge is within their realm, when it isn't.

At inference time you can constrain output to a strict json schema that only includes valid tools.

Just because the answer adheres to the schema does not mean that it’s correct.

Re: The case against conversational interfaces

#198

Post by rurp »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #33

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…

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.

Re: The case against conversational interfaces

#199

Post by furyofantares »

xigoi wrote: post #197
furyofantares wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At inference time you can constrain output to a strict json schema that only includes valid tools.

Just because the answer adheres to the schema does not mean that it’s correct.

Yes, we've been discussing "specific and exact" output. As I said, you might wish it called at different tool; nothing in this discussion is addressing that.

Re: The case against conversational interfaces

#200

Post by namaria »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #84
namaria wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[imprecise thinking] v In many cases, you don't want or need that. In some, you do. Use right tool for the job, etc.

Despite feeling like a "let me draw it for you" answer is a tad condescending, I want to address something here.

This would be great if LLMs did not tend to output nonsense. Truly it would be grand. But they do. So it isn't. It's wasting resources hoping for a good outcome and risking frustration, misapprehensions, prompt injection attacks... It's non-deterministic algorithms hoping P=NP, except instead of branching at every decision you're doing search by tweaking vectors whose values you don't even know and whose influence on the outcome is impossible to foresee.

Sure, a VC subsidized LLM is a great way to make CVs in LaTeX (I do it all the time), translating text, maybe even generating some code if you know what you need and can describe it well. I will give you that. I even created a few - very mediocre - songs. Am I contradicting myself? I don't think I am, because I would love to live in a hotel if I only had to pay a tiny fraction of the cost. But I would still think that building hotels would be a horrible way to address the housing crisis in modern metropolises.

Post reply on HN