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Chatbots are not the future

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Re: Chatbots are not the future

#141

Post by stephencoyner »

barking_biscuit wrote: post #134
stephencoyner wrote: post #99

I think the future interface is a smart assistant for your life that gives you suggestions on what you should be doing (both for work and personal life). Sure, there may be a prompting text box, but the assistants will be so good at suggesting that you won't need it very often (besides searching for the occasional thing or giving feedback). Driving these suggestions is all of your data as well as your goals and value…

This is the main scenario I see that leads to "Oops, we didn't see that one coming, but in retrospect that was NOT a good idea".

Can you expand on this?

Re: Chatbots are not the future

#142

Post by GaryWilder »

willio58 wrote: post #43
autokad wrote: post #15

> When I go up the mountain to ask the ChatGPT oracle a question, I am met with a blank face. What does this oracle know? I think if your attitude is that its an oracle, then you already have the wrong attitude for using the tool. Chatgpt is a tool, if you dont know how to use the tool, stop complaining that you don't like it. Imagine telling everyone scalpels are horrible tools because they tried to perform surgery…

Exactly. I use ChatGPT for help coding sometimes and it's like 50/50 if I get an answer that is truly helpful, but that's infinitely better of a tool than I thought we'd have 1 year ago.

[dead]

Re: Chatbots are not the future

#143

Post by swexbe »

brokencode wrote: post #115
swexbe wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you hit yourself with a hammer, that’s your fault because you did something wrong. Comparatively, you can pose a completely correct and unambiguous question to ChatGPT and still get a wrong answer. I don’t like this implicit shifting of blame to the user when it’s the tool that is flawed.

The design of the hammer makes it easy to miss the nail, and you need some skill in order to use it effectively. A nail gun is an example of a better tool for driving nails, since it’s faster and allows for greater accuracy. Similarly, you can ask ChatGPT for an answer and it might get something wrong. It takes some skill to know how to interpret and verify the response. If a user takes the response as truth without…

But it's not the users fault if the question is correct and unambiguous. To continue with the hammer analogy, that's like landing a perfect hit on a nail and the hammer's head somehow falls off and richochets into the user's eye.

Re: Chatbots are not the future

#144

Post by mejutoco »

arsome wrote: post #118
mejutoco wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If a piece of art is made by a computer based on detailed instructions, that art was made by a computer, not a person. I completely disagree with this. According to this, no code can be art. For instance, videogames. It has been enough time since ready-made (Duchamps urinal) and found objects, djing and sampling, and concept art. Art is not only drawing beautiful illustrations since at least the 2 world wars. > If…

> no code can be art. For instance, videogames. I feel like this is probably a pretty bad example, generally the "art" in video games comes from things like dialogue, storytelling, level design, graphical art, not the physics engine or the renderer. There is simply not art there, it's more engineering. There's little more art in the code portion of video games than there is in a jet engine.

Again, I hear art here often as "that nice cover illustration, or that 3d model". A bit like people talk about "content".

Art can be anything, and I definitely consider some videogames art. The same can be said about architecture.

Re: Chatbots are not the future

#145

Post by xtiansimon »

graiz wrote: post #98

Chatbots are the future but your points are valid. They don't provide affordances, however chatbots provide a form of progressive disclosure and direct interaction that was previously impossible. Toolbars and menus provide affordances but you still need to know what things are called and what order to use them. "I'd like to email this file as a PDF and I'd also like to print it." may be much easier in a chat UX than…

> “Chatbots are the future…”

I’m distressed by the growing use of chatbots in online payments. You do know the ontology—get balance information, make a payment, customer service.

I much prefer to not speak aloud to a robot on the phone, especially in the office, when there should only be three options.

Conversations with a robot speaking in a mixed tone of obsequiousness and superciliousness make me bananas.

Re: Chatbots are not the future

#146

Post by jhbadger »

hammyhavoc wrote: post #75
jhbadger wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the early days of Pixar, some traditionalist animators claimed that Pixar was "cheating" because they used 3D modelling tools rather than physically drawing the frames. The traditionalists didn't see computer animation as a "tool"; they saw it as the computer doing the work of the animator. Were they right? Computers make making things easier. But the human using the computer is the real creator.

Toy Story was not generative art though. Pointless comparison. Compare generative art tools to other generative art tools.

Programs take in input and produce output. The whole point of using any program is that the program produces more than you put into it -- otherwise why wouldn't you just use pen and paper? Either all programs are "generative" or none are.

Re: Chatbots are not the future

#147

Post by brokencode »

swexbe wrote: post #143
brokencode wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The design of the hammer makes it easy to miss the nail, and you need some skill in order to use it effectively. A nail gun is an example of a better tool for driving nails, since it’s faster and allows for greater accuracy. Similarly, you can ask ChatGPT for an answer and it might get something wrong. It takes some skill to know how to interpret and verify the response. If a user takes the response as truth without…

But it's not the users fault if the question is correct and unambiguous. To continue with the hammer analogy, that's like landing a perfect hit on a nail and the hammer's head somehow falls off and richochets into the user's eye.

I just don’t see what point you are trying to make here. Yes, ChatGPT can give the wrong answer given a correct input, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a useful tool.

Think about how GPS can give a bad route, especially if there is construction or snow on the road.

Or how keyboard autocorrect sometimes changes what you wrote into something silly and wrong, even if you originally spelled the word correctly.

Or how OCR and speech-to-text software sometimes makes mistakes.

Or how Google Translate uses unnatural or incorrect word choices sometimes.

Are these not useful tools even though they get things wrong?

Re: Chatbots are not the future

#148

Post by hammyhavoc »

Ferret7446 wrote: post #140
hammyhavoc wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, sure. But you know what makes most of human history's output of art, music, literature et al great? Intent, attention to detail and self-expression . Broad strokes are broad strokes. I can procedurally generate levels all day long in a video game, but for me, they're never going to be as compelling or interesting as a lower-resolution and low quality textured game from the '90s or '00s where every single tree an…

> But you know what makes most of human history's output of art, music, literature et al great? Intent, attention to detail and self-expression. What makes them great is that people enjoy them. Whether they were created with "Intent, attention to detail and self-expression" or monkeys banging on typewriters is irrelevant and indistinguishable.

People enjoy them because it resonates with them because it's intentful self-expression with an attention to detail. There's a reason that generative art is very uncanny valley.

Re: Chatbots are not the future

#149

Post by hammyhavoc »

anonymouskimmer wrote: post #74
autokad wrote: post #15

> When I go up the mountain to ask the ChatGPT oracle a question, I am met with a blank face. What does this oracle know? I think if your attitude is that its an oracle, then you already have the wrong attitude for using the tool. Chatgpt is a tool, if you dont know how to use the tool, stop complaining that you don't like it. Imagine telling everyone scalpels are horrible tools because they tried to perform surgery…

> As an experiment, I asked chatgpt to write a business plan (one my brother started). The business plan was very close to what my brother produced, after working on it for a month. That's powerful, that's worthy of being 'the future'. How much knowledge and ideas did your brother personally develop over this month in addition to the business plan? Being handed a working plan is sometimes less useful than the aggrega…

Case-in-point: why do some biz succeed under one CEO then fail under another quite unexpectedly? The former CEO likely understood their market, their product, their business model, maybe they even dogfooded and used what they made.

The "why?" is frequently more important than the "what?" with biz. An LLM doesn't really have an understanding of how the world works, so I would be very sceptical of its ability to write a sensible business plan. It doesn't even understand the product/service, and the nuances of what it does because it can't experience it.

The LLM is a yes-man with no experiences.

Imagine taking a year-old old book about what worked for someone's biz years ago, then naively assuming it'll work for yours today without considering how the world, market, people, technology et al may have changed in that time. This is the same thing. It assumes x is x. Usually x is not x. People used to compare their biz to Apple, despite not even being in remotely the same industry.

Re: Chatbots are not the future

#150

Post by swexbe »

brokencode wrote: post #147
swexbe wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it's not the users fault if the question is correct and unambiguous. To continue with the hammer analogy, that's like landing a perfect hit on a nail and the hammer's head somehow falls off and richochets into the user's eye.

I just don’t see what point you are trying to make here. Yes, ChatGPT can give the wrong answer given a correct input, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a useful tool. Think about how GPS can give a bad route, especially if there is construction or snow on the road. Or how keyboard autocorrect sometimes changes what you wrote into something silly and wrong, even if you originally spelled the word correctly. Or how OCR a…

> Or how keyboard autocorrect sometimes changes what you wrote into something

> silly and wrong, even if you originally spelled the word correctly.

> Or how OCR and speech-to-text software sometimes makes mistakes.

> Or how Google Translate uses unnatural or incorrect word choices sometimes.

When you point this out no one will jump in to defend them. If you say the same about ChatGPT your inbox will suddenly be full of people telling you you're just using it wrong (see this reply chain for example).

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