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AI: First New UI Paradigm in 60 Years?

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Re: AI: First New UI Paradigm in 60 Years?

#131

Post by bavell »

echelon wrote: post #43
webnrrd2k wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was thinking of imperative vs declarative, too. SQL is declaritive with a pre-defined syntax and grammar as an interface, where as the AI style of interaction has a natural language interface.

SQL and XSLT are declarative, but the outputs are clean and intuitive. The data model and data set are probably well understood, as is the mapping to and from the query. AI is a very different type of declarative. It's messy, difficult to intuit, has more dimensionality, and the outputs can be signals rather than tabular data records. It rhymes, but it doesn't feel the same.

Yeah, it's declarative but fuzzy and non-deterministic as well.

Re: AI: First New UI Paradigm in 60 Years?

#132

Post by ThomPete »

Here is how I think about it

The LLM's are infinity app stores. All you need is an LLM and a database plus the ability to speak english and you can replace most features provided by SaaS services today.

The GUI becomes a byproduct of the problem you want to solve rather than the gatekeeper to what you can solve.

https://twitter.com/Hello_World/status/1660463528984150018?s...

Re: AI: First New UI Paradigm in 60 Years?

#133

Post by bandrami »

yencabulator wrote: post #114
andrewstuart wrote: post #5

I would have said ChatGPTs interface is a descendant of Infocomm adventure games which are a descendant of Colossal Cave. When using ChatGPT it certainly evokes the same feeling. Maybe this guy never played adventure.

Well there's a thought. A zorklike where the game content is whatever generative ML hallucinates (instead of the built-in fixed maps & interactions) -- as long as a second ML system agrees that the answer follows some more general rules. For example: Rules say "In the beginning, the Enemy has a diamond. User cannot get the diamond from the Enemy if the Enemy is still alive. The Enemy is a fierce opponent and hard to…

Nethack procedurally generates a unique dungeon with constraints every time you start a new game and has since 1987.

Re: AI: First New UI Paradigm in 60 Years?

#134

Post by TeMPOraL »

JohnFen wrote: post #49
krm01 wrote: post #44

The article fails to grasp the essence of what UI is actually about. I agree that AI is adding a new layer to UI and UX design. In our work [1] we have seen an increase in AI projects or features the last 12 months (for obvious reasons). However, the way that AI will contribute to better UI is to remove parts of the Interface. not simply giving it a new form. Let me explain, the ultimate UI is no UI. In a perfect sce…

> the goal of Interface design is to find the least amount of things needed to get you from point A to the desired Destination as quickly as possible. That shouldn't be the primary goal of user interfaces, in my opinion. The primary goal should be to allow users to interface with the machine in a way that allows maximal understanding with minimal cognitive load. I understand a lot of UI design these days prioritizes…

> I understand a lot of UI design these days prioritizes the sort of "efficiency" you're talking about, but I think that's one of the reasons why modern UIs tend to be fairly bad.

IMO, the main problem is that this "efficiency" usually involves making assumptions that can't be altered, which achieves "efficiency" by eliminating choices normally available to the user. This is rarely done for the benefit of the user - rather, it just reduces the UI dev work, and more importantly, lets the vendor lock-in the option that's beneficial to them.

In fact, I've been present on UI design discussions for a certain SaaS product, and I quickly realized one of the main goals for that UI was to funnel the users towards a very specific workflow which, to be fair, reduced the potential for users to input wrong data or screw up the calculations, but more importantly, it put them on a very narrow path that was optimized to give results that were impressive, even if this came at the expense of accuracy - and it neatly reduced the amount of total UI and technical work, without making it obvious that the "golden path" is the only path.

It's one of those products I believe would deliver much greater value to the users if it was released as an Excel spreadsheet. In fact, it was actually competing with an Excel plugin - and all the nice web UI did was making things seem simpler, by dropping almost all useful functionality except that which happened to align with the story the sales folks were telling.

Re: AI: First New UI Paradigm in 60 Years?

#135

Post by yencabulator »

bandrami wrote: post #133
yencabulator wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well there's a thought. A zorklike where the game content is whatever generative ML hallucinates (instead of the built-in fixed maps & interactions) -- as long as a second ML system agrees that the answer follows some more general rules. For example: Rules say "In the beginning, the Enemy has a diamond. User cannot get the diamond from the Enemy if the Enemy is still alive. The Enemy is a fierce opponent and hard to…

Nethack procedurally generates a unique dungeon with constraints every time you start a new game and has since 1987.

Randomized according to fixed rules. Now imagine not needing to write those rules / not being bound by them. Consider generative ML coming up with whole new categories of monsters. Consider a Nethack variant that was never told to include a candelabrum or Amulet of Yendor.

Re: AI: First New UI Paradigm in 60 Years?

#136

Post by andrewstuart »

yencabulator wrote: post #114
andrewstuart wrote: post #5

I would have said ChatGPTs interface is a descendant of Infocomm adventure games which are a descendant of Colossal Cave. When using ChatGPT it certainly evokes the same feeling. Maybe this guy never played adventure.

Well there's a thought. A zorklike where the game content is whatever generative ML hallucinates (instead of the built-in fixed maps & interactions) -- as long as a second ML system agrees that the answer follows some more general rules. For example: Rules say "In the beginning, the Enemy has a diamond. User cannot get the diamond from the Enemy if the Enemy is still alive. The Enemy is a fierce opponent and hard to…

ChatGPT already does really good adventure games.

"Let's play an adventure game, you be the DM. I want it set on a spaceship arriving at a planet after 10,000 year journey. It should have a sense of mystery and a slight sense of foreboding and dread. It must have at least 20 locations. The objective of the game is to find 10 colonists in the ship and get them safely to the surface of the planet. Make it play in the style of an Infocomm adventure. Don't tell me all the locations in advance, make discovery part of the adventure."

Re: AI: First New UI Paradigm in 60 Years?

#137

Post by ilaksh »

retrocryptid wrote: post #67

Bardini's book about Doug Engelbart recaps a conversation between Engelbart and Minsky about the nature of natural language interfaces... that took place in the 1960s. AI interfaces taking so long has less to do with the technology (I mean... Zork understood my text sentences well enough to get me around a simulated world) and more to do with what people are comfortable with. Lowey talked about MAYA (Most Advanced Ye…

Sure, and not many people are seriously trying to suggest that one should hire an AI instead of a software engineer _at this point_, assuming you have a real budget.

But, especially with GPT-4, it is entirely feasible to create a convenient and relatively fast user experience for building a specific type of application that doesn't stray too far from the norm. AI can call the boilerplate generator and even add some custom code using a particular API that you feed it.

So many people are trying to build that type of thing (including me). As more of these become available, many people who don't have thousands of dollars to pay a programmer will hire an AI for a few tens or hundreds of dollars instead.

The other point is that this is the current state of generative AI at the present moment. It gets better every few months.

Project the current rate of progress forward by 5-10 years. One can imagine that if we are selling something at that point, it's not our own labour. Maybe it would be an AI that we have tuned with skills, knowledge, face, voice, and personality that we think will be saleable. Possibly using some of our own knowledge and skills to improve that recipe. Although there will likely be marketplaces where you can easily select the abilities or characteristics you want.

Re: AI: First New UI Paradigm in 60 Years?

#138

Post by yencabulator »

andrewstuart wrote: post #136
yencabulator wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well there's a thought. A zorklike where the game content is whatever generative ML hallucinates (instead of the built-in fixed maps & interactions) -- as long as a second ML system agrees that the answer follows some more general rules. For example: Rules say "In the beginning, the Enemy has a diamond. User cannot get the diamond from the Enemy if the Enemy is still alive. The Enemy is a fierce opponent and hard to…

ChatGPT already does really good adventure games. "Let's play an adventure game, you be the DM. I want it set on a spaceship arriving at a planet after 10,000 year journey. It should have a sense of mystery and a slight sense of foreboding and dread. It must have at least 20 locations. The objective of the game is to find 10 colonists in the ship and get them safely to the surface of the planet. Make it play in the s…

As a form of story telling, yes.

As a challenge, not really. You can just convince it to let you win. (Said differently: the meta-game is too easy.)

You need the second layer of output validation[1] to re-add the challenge of solving a puzzle.

[1] or some such mechanism; more rigorous system vs user input separation could also work

Re: AI: First New UI Paradigm in 60 Years?

#139

Post by ilaksh »

yencabulator wrote: post #114
andrewstuart wrote: post #5

I would have said ChatGPTs interface is a descendant of Infocomm adventure games which are a descendant of Colossal Cave. When using ChatGPT it certainly evokes the same feeling. Maybe this guy never played adventure.

Well there's a thought. A zorklike where the game content is whatever generative ML hallucinates (instead of the built-in fixed maps & interactions) -- as long as a second ML system agrees that the answer follows some more general rules. For example: Rules say "In the beginning, the Enemy has a diamond. User cannot get the diamond from the Enemy if the Enemy is still alive. The Enemy is a fierce opponent and hard to…

With the new function calling feature you may not need the second system. Only present options to ChatGPT that are valid. Feed it updated state information as JSON. Have it describe and elaborate on what the game engine is doing, or use functions to invoke entity creation that can then be tracked by the engine.

So for example the engine can do combat rolls and the LLM can give each a unique description of the type of attack and defense. Each monster or treasure can get its own unique description generated by the LLM that matches the stats given by the LLM.

Re: AI: First New UI Paradigm in 60 Years?

#140

Post by andrewstuart »

yencabulator wrote: post #138
andrewstuart wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ChatGPT already does really good adventure games. "Let's play an adventure game, you be the DM. I want it set on a spaceship arriving at a planet after 10,000 year journey. It should have a sense of mystery and a slight sense of foreboding and dread. It must have at least 20 locations. The objective of the game is to find 10 colonists in the ship and get them safely to the surface of the planet. Make it play in the s…

As a form of story telling, yes. As a challenge, not really. You can just convince it to let you win. (Said differently: the meta-game is too easy.) You need the second layer of output validation[1] to re-add the challenge of solving a puzzle. [1] or some such mechanism; more rigorous system vs user input separation could also work

True, but remarkably fun stories.

As an aside, there should be an AI encabulator.

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