Live data from Hacker News

AI: First New UI Paradigm in 60 Years?

nngroup.com

151–160 of 219 posts

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

#151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But this is basically the absence of a query syntax, a way to query via natural language, and not just get back a list of results, but have it almost synthesize an answer. To everyone who isn't a software developer, this is a new paradigm with computers. Hell even for me as a software dev it's pretty different. Like I'm not asking Google to find me info that I can then read and grok, I'm asking something like ChatGPT…

For years I've just typed questions, in English, into browser search bars. It works great. Maybe that is why it doesn't seem like a new paradigm to me.

It's not the same. You can try the very query above "how do you configure eslint errors to warnings".

Using Google with Bard, the regular results from Google search for me are:

1) Is it possible to show warnings instead of errors on ALL of eslint rules? 2) Configure Rules - ESLint - Pluggable JavaScript Linter 3) ESLint Warnings Are an Anti-Pattern

None of them answers the question directly. Bard on the other hand returns with:

To configure ESLint errors to warnings, you can either: - Set the severity of the rule to "warn" in your ESLint configuration file. - Use the eslint-disable-next-line comment to disable the rule for a single line of code. For example, to set the severity of the "no-unused-vars" rule to "warn", you...

I'm not familiar with eslint and have no idea if the answer is correct, but it's definitely a more concise and to the point, and an upgrade over the regular search.

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

#152
post #63

This article isn't too helpful. There have been many "UI Paradigms", but the fancier ones tended to be special purpose. The first one worthy of the name was for train dispatching. That was General Railway Signal's NX (eNtry-Exit) system.[1] Introduced in 1936, still in use in the New York subways. With NX, the dispatcher routing an approaching train selected the "entry" track on which the train was approaching. The s…

> Both of those are systems which had to work right. Large language models are not even close to being safe to use in such applications. Until LLMs report "don't know" instead of hallucinating, they're limited to very low risk applications such as advertising and search. Are humans limited to low-risk applications like that? Because humans, even some of the most humble, will still assert things they THINK are true, b…

To your point,Humans are augmented by checklists and custom processes in critical situations. And very certainly applications include which mimic such safety checklists. We don't NEED to start from LLM perspective of our goal is different and doesn't benefit from LLM. Not all UI or architecture is fit for all purposes.

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

#153

> With this new UI paradigm, represented by current generative AI, the user tells the computer the desired result but does not specify how this outcome should be accomplished. This doesn't seem like a whole new paradigm, we already do that. When I hit the "add comment" button below, I'm not specifically instructing the web server how I want my comment inserted into a database (if it even is a database at all.) This i…

Ok, now let's tackle a slightly tricker UI.

Let's assume someone hasn't used Blender before.

"Draw me a realistic looking doughnut, with a shiny top and pink sprinkles"

Vs.

2 hour video tutorial to tell you what do 50 or so individual steps using the 2nd paradigm UI. Then clicking all the buttons.

-- Admittedly, the AI approach robs you of understanding of how the sausage (sorry doughnut) is made.

Rebuttal: Doughnut macro

Rebuttal Rebuttal: AI can construct things where a macro doesn't yet exist.

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

#154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Both of those are systems which had to work right. Large language models are not even close to being safe to use in such applications. Until LLMs report "don't know" instead of hallucinating, they're limited to very low risk applications such as advertising and search. Are humans limited to low-risk applications like that? Because humans, even some of the most humble, will still assert things they THINK are true, b…

> Are humans limited to low-risk applications like that? No, but arguably civilization consists of mechanisms to manage human fallibility (separation of powers, bicameralism, "democracy", bureaucracy, regulations, etc). We might not fully understand why, but we've found methods that sorta kinda "work". > could have caused That's why they didn't.

> No, but arguably civilization consists of mechanisms to manage human fallibility

Exactly. Civilization is, arguably, one big exercise in reducing variance in individuals, as low variance and high predictability is what lets us work together and trust each other, instead of seeing each other as threats and hiding from each other (or trying to preemptively attack). The more something or someone is unpredictable, the more we see it or them as a threat.

> (separation of powers, bicameralism, "democracy", bureaucracy, regulations, etc).

And on the more individual scale: culture, social customs and public school system are all forces that shape humans from the youngest age, reducing variance in thoughts and behaviors. Exams of all kind, including psychological ones, prevent high-variance individuals from being able to do large amount of harm to others. The higher the danger, the higher the bar.

There are tests you need to pass to be able to own and drive a car. There are tests you may need to pass to own a firearm. There are more tests still before you'll be allowed to fly an aircraft. Those tests are not there just to ensure your skills - they also filter high-variance individuals, people who cannot be safely given responsibility to operate dangerous tools.

Further still, the society has mechanisms to eliminate high-variance outliers. Lighter cases may get some kind of medical or spiritual treatment, and (with gates in place to keep them away from guns and planes) it works out OK. More difficult cases eventually get locked up in prisons or mental hospitals. While there are lot of specific things to discuss about the prison and mental care systems, their general, high-level function is simple: they keep both predictably dangerous and high-variance (i.e. unpredictably dangerous) people stashed safely away, where they can't disrupt or harm others at scale.

> We might not fully understand why, but we've found methods that sorta kinda "work".

Yes, we've found many such methods at every level - individual, familial, tribal, national - and we stack them all on top of each other. This creates the conditions that let us live in larger groups, with less conflicts, as well as to safely use increasingly powerful (i.e. potentially destructive) technologies.

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

#155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Both of those are systems which had to work right. Large language models are not even close to being safe to use in such applications. Until LLMs report "don't know" instead of hallucinating, they're limited to very low risk applications such as advertising and search. Are humans limited to low-risk applications like that? Because humans, even some of the most humble, will still assert things they THINK are true, b…

Can people please stop making this comment in reply to EVERY criticism of LLMs? "Humans are flawed too". We do not normally hallucinate. We are sometimes wrong, and sometimes are wrong about the confidence they should attach to their knowledge. But we do not simply hallucinate and spout fully confidence nonsense constantly. That is what LLMs. You remember a few isolated incidents because they're salient. That does no…

>We do not normally hallucinate.

Oh yes we do lol. Many experiments show our perception of reality and of cognition is entirely divorced from the reality of what's really going on.

Your brain is making stuff up all the time. Sense data you perceive is partly fabricated. Your memories are partly fabricated. Your decision rationales are post hoc rationalizations more often than not. That is, you don't genuinely know why you make certain decisions or what preferences actually inform them. You just think you do. You can't recreate previous mental states. You are not usually aware. But it is happening.

LLMs are just undoubtedly worse right now.

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

#156

> With this new UI paradigm, represented by current generative AI, the user tells the computer the desired result but does not specify how this outcome should be accomplished. This doesn't seem like a whole new paradigm, we already do that. When I hit the "add comment" button below, I'm not specifically instructing the web server how I want my comment inserted into a database (if it even is a database at all.) This i…

Ok, now let's tackle a slightly tricker UI. Let's assume someone hasn't used Blender before. "Draw me a realistic looking doughnut, with a shiny top and pink sprinkles" Vs. 2 hour video tutorial to tell you what do 50 or so individual steps using the 2nd paradigm UI. Then clicking all the buttons. -- Admittedly, the AI approach robs you of understanding of how the sausage (sorry doughnut) is made. Rebuttal: Doughnut…

In the future it’ll likely be that doing it manually will be considered specialty work. This is already the case with much of programming — as you’d bring in a higher level engineer to do something like tear into the source code of SDKs and monkey with them.

For something as “simple” as a doughnut, this will just improve the learning curve and let you learn some things a bit later, just like today you can jump into beginner JS without knowing any programming fundamentals

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

#157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can people please stop making this comment in reply to EVERY criticism of LLMs? "Humans are flawed too". We do not normally hallucinate. We are sometimes wrong, and sometimes are wrong about the confidence they should attach to their knowledge. But we do not simply hallucinate and spout fully confidence nonsense constantly. That is what LLMs. You remember a few isolated incidents because they're salient. That does no…

>We do not normally hallucinate. Oh yes we do lol. Many experiments show our perception of reality and of cognition is entirely divorced from the reality of what's really going on. Your brain is making stuff up all the time. Sense data you perceive is partly fabricated. Your memories are partly fabricated. Your decision rationales are post hoc rationalizations more often than not. That is, you don't genuinely know wh…

We don’t hallucinate in such a way / to the extend that it compromises our ability to do our job.

Currently no one will trust a LLM to even run a helpline - that just a lawsuit waiting to happen should the AI hallucinate a “solution” that results in loss of property, injury or death.

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

#158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We do not normally hallucinate. Oh yes we do lol. Many experiments show our perception of reality and of cognition is entirely divorced from the reality of what's really going on. Your brain is making stuff up all the time. Sense data you perceive is partly fabricated. Your memories are partly fabricated. Your decision rationales are post hoc rationalizations more often than not. That is, you don't genuinely know wh…

We don’t hallucinate in such a way / to the extend that it compromises our ability to do our job. Currently no one will trust a LLM to even run a helpline - that just a lawsuit waiting to happen should the AI hallucinate a “solution” that results in loss of property, injury or death.

>Currently no one will trust a LLM to even run a helpline - that just a lawsuit waiting to happen should the AI hallucinate a “solution” that results in loss of property, injury or death.

I'm not quite sure exactly what you mean by helpline here (general customer service or more specific ?) but assuming the former..

How much power do you think most helplines actually have ? Most are running off pre-written scripts/guidelines with very little in the way of decisional power. There's a reason for that.

Injury or death ? LLM hallucinations are relational. Unless you're speaking to Dr GPT or something to that effect, a response resulting in injury or death isn't happening.

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

#159
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you know the answer is right? Because it linked you to the source? Like a vector database would? Google offered to index sites since 1996.

We have internal search. Finding things isn't the problem. It's contextualizing massive amounts of text and making it queryable with natural language. The question I was trying to solve was -- "what is feature XYZ? How does it work in hardware & software? How is it exposed in our ABC software, and where do the hooks exist to interface with XYZ?" The answers exist across maybe 30 different Confluence pages, plus sourc…

So back to the question - how do you know the LLM didnt hallucinate an answer?

What do you think “indexed by an LLM” is?

Perhaps Anthropic with its 100K window can actually do it. But most LLM have such a small comtext window that it’s just Pinecone vector database indexing something and stuffing it in the prompt at prompt time. Come on.

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

#160
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you know the answer is right? Because it linked you to the source? Like a vector database would? Google offered to index sites since 1996.

We have internal search. Finding things isn't the problem. It's contextualizing massive amounts of text and making it queryable with natural language. The question I was trying to solve was -- "what is feature XYZ? How does it work in hardware & software? How is it exposed in our ABC software, and where do the hooks exist to interface with XYZ?" The answers exist across maybe 30 different Confluence pages, plus sourc…

The question to which you are replying still stands. How can you guarantee that the responses generated by the LLM are factually accurate? What if it refers to interfaces that don’t exist? One could argue that in your particular use case some inaccuracies can be tolerated, but in many use cases factual inaccuracies cannot be tolerated.
Post reply on HN