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Show HN: What should the GUI for AI agents look like?

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Re: Show HN: What should the GUI for AI agents look like?

#51

Post by xtiansimon »

enriquto wrote: post #48

> Before GUIs, interacting with a computer was limited to strange terminal commands [...] Even though the strict syntax has been replaced with natural language This post, and particularly the two quoted sentences, has activated anger pathways in my brain that I didn't know existed... An extremely visceral, primary, response. I find it unbelievably jarring to read.

I know what you’re referring to, and after you said this I noticed the gui’s little control palette. I watch the user click this palette and then have to click the text palette to type a command.

And my mind sympathetically found this extra click offensive. Haha. One extra click and I got there. Hehe

Re: Show HN: What should the GUI for AI agents look like?

#52

Post by ilaksh »

I think there is going to be an intersection between a personal operational dashboard like this and the UI for an AI Company.

I've been predicting for awhile that 2026 is the year of the AI Employee (or serious attempts) and 2027 is AI Companies.

I have been seeing RFPs recently asking for end-to-end solutions to operate companies in particular industries with the goal of day-to-day only requiring infrequent human-in-the-loop.

Anyway, if you think about what for example some professionals might use a Marble like tool for, say managing their freelance business. You might want to create a task and then promote it to be scheduled and then have that artifact like a report have a dedicated place on the screen.

The difference with a vertical is that you will know a lot of the reports and data types you need ahead of time. The advantage with just prompting things dynamically as you go is you get exactly what you need and don't have to sort through a bunch of features that aren't important to you.

Even though a business vertical is qualitatively different, you still might use the same system to build it. Maybe something like a self organizing AirTable. A set of projects as departments.

Sorry I started rambling nevermind.

Re: Show HN: What should the GUI for AI agents look like?

#54

Post by altmanaltman »

axod wrote: post #31
altmanaltman wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would require consiousness and intent on part of the AI but we can have highly autonomous agents with no consiousness and intent as well and most likely that's what we will get. It still cannot just magically get free will, intent, and the ability to "eliminate humanity".

Wouldn't need any of that. An AI agent setup to "Do the best for the world" or some other broad claim, and with enough power to say crash the stock market, disrupt power supply, delivery, etc etc after reasoning that it's all for the best. If people start giving enough power to AI, with ill thought out goals, and no human in charge, don't be surprised... Why would it need "free will" or "consciousness" whatever that…

In your concerete example, how does the AI eliminate suffering? It has access to tools that let it kill people? If it has no intention and will, it means it will be provided with a charter or some rules to follow which it has to always. Why would humans put an LLM in a system that can eliminate suffering by genocide or whatever? And even if it did, if the AI is a complaint system, why will it not shut down when it has to follow its charter?

I get AI can be misaligned but that doesn't mean it gets the ability to crash the stock market lol or super powers like that. Life is not a sci fi movie

Re: Show HN: What should the GUI for AI agents look like?

#55

Post by lukasco »

For my autonomous agents, I'm using Github Issues as the UI. And yes, I know this is a total abuse of what a github issue is supposed to be. But it's better than spinning up an ephemeral web site, or hooking into Slack or Telegram (at least for now). We'll see how long it works or if I think of something better.

Re: Show HN: What should the GUI for AI agents look like?

#56

Post by malux85 »

The demo video is a great example of one thing I have been saying for ages - the quality of the LLM output depends heavily on the communication skills of the user.

Some people say AI is great and some people say AI is terrible - but how can anyone compare these things because they depend so much on the skill of the user.

Case in point - the demo video. The user says "find me all the HCI articles on hacker news" and then a research task started... ok great so far.

Then the user says "they should be made into slides"

What exactly do you mean by this? Do you mean "from the set of results you found, narrow them to be only the ones that have been made into slides" or does the user mean "I would like you to then take those results and make them into slides"

There will be people who read this and say its obviously the former and people who read this and say its obviously the latter, and neither of those is the point I am trying to make, the point is that its very ambiguous and if the AI did the "wrong" one, then the user would complain that AI is garbage but the real problem is that the instruction was very unclear because the users communication skill was poor.

Re: Show HN: What should the GUI for AI agents look like?

#57

Post by dormento »

tdeck wrote: post #43

I'm glad folks are experimenting with different paradigms. That said, Hacker News might not be the best audience for this informal survey. I'd wager at least 70% of the people reading this are still interacting with their computers using "strange terminal commands", by choice. We aren't representative of what normal people will use or prefer.

True, "strange terminal commands" gave me such a visceral reaction. "Its GUIs that are strange, with their strange buttons in different shapes and forms".

Re: Show HN: What should the GUI for AI agents look like?

#58

Post by stonedivot »

dormento wrote: post #57
tdeck wrote: post #43

I'm glad folks are experimenting with different paradigms. That said, Hacker News might not be the best audience for this informal survey. I'd wager at least 70% of the people reading this are still interacting with their computers using "strange terminal commands", by choice. We aren't representative of what normal people will use or prefer.

True, "strange terminal commands" gave me such a visceral reaction. "Its GUIs that are strange, with their strange buttons in different shapes and forms".

Just wait until the creators find out about those "strange languages" that people are still typing into computers to make software.

Re: Show HN: What should the GUI for AI agents look like?

#59

Post by jaggederest »

I believe, fundamentally, that interacting with AI will increasingly move in the same direction as interacting with coworkers.

Slack, video/audio meetings, shared screens, paired programming, cooperation in the classical sense. I expect humanoid robots to be a standard part of life by 2050, so then they'll be able to complain about the coffee at the office like everyone else, I guess.

Re: Show HN: What should the GUI for AI agents look like?

#60

Post by miguelacevedo »

dormento wrote: post #57
tdeck wrote: post #43

I'm glad folks are experimenting with different paradigms. That said, Hacker News might not be the best audience for this informal survey. I'd wager at least 70% of the people reading this are still interacting with their computers using "strange terminal commands", by choice. We aren't representative of what normal people will use or prefer.

True, "strange terminal commands" gave me such a visceral reaction. "Its GUIs that are strange, with their strange buttons in different shapes and forms".

To clarify, we meant "strange" from the perspective of a new user, not that terminals are bad. GUIs made common actions visible and discoverable: you could point, click, and drag instead of already knowing the command and syntax.
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