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Chatbots are not the future

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Re: Chatbots are not the future

#61

Post by alanbernstein »

kmtrowbr wrote: post #37
sitkack wrote: post #27

> Text inputs have no affordances It has all the affordances. You can turn it into anything you want. Want it respond with json, check, it can do that. Turn a wall of text into a Python data structures, check, it can do that too. You can take your LLM text interface and put what ever api you want on top. You start with clay and mold it into anything you need. You construct a parser so that the way data is already con…

I thought this was a funny statement too. Text is the most powerful, original medium. It's difficult to overstate how powerful and valuable it is. Of course, text won't necessarily be the only UI exposed for interacting with these "Large Language Models." But that UI can be built on top of the text -- which wouldn't work in the other direction.

I think the point is that a "chatbot" is, by (the author's) definition, a UI with only a bare text prompt. Once you start building more UI on top of that, you're ... doing what the article suggests.

Re: Chatbots are not the future

#62

Post by skybrian »

Learning how to use freeform text input can be pretty annoying when only a few things work. Some examples are playing a text adventure ("guess the verb") and using an unfamiliar command line interface. Good error messages can help.

Web search changed that. Most queries work, at least somewhat.

There's a point where freeform text input becomes better than structured input. A simple search box is what people mostly use instead of an advanced search form, let alone a web directory (like Yahoo! back in the day).

For web search, there are very few error messages. If you enter a query that doesn't work very well, you get back results that aren't very good or what you wanted, so you try something else.

With AI chatbots, expectations are sky-high, but there are times when they should refuse with a good error message, because they really can't do what you're hoping to do. An example is when you ask it to explain its reasoning. An LLM never knows why it wrote what it did, but it will try to invent a plausible explanation anyway. [1]

Better error messages that help users understand what chatbots can actually do would help avoid misconceptions, but this won't happen unless the error messages are trained in.

[1] https://skybrian.substack.com/p/ai-chatbots-dont-know-why-th...

Re: Chatbots are not the future

#63

Post by starmftronajoll »

anonylizard wrote: post #41
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…

Really? For a writer, if you write out a plot, you can get the AI to actually simulate the character's responses and dialogue (even voiced by AI!). There, you've LITERALLY brought a character to life, each character is driven by a different persona simulated by a different AI, the quality of stories that will create, will annihilate what came before. You want to write an adventure, but want to keep it unpredictable.…

Perhaps the resolution to your cognitive dissonance is not to conclude that artists hate art. Instead I’d suggest that often, artists’ love of art doesn’t stem from concepts like “annihilating what came before” or “outcompeting hard.” Perhaps, like the parent comment said, it comes from self-expression — the pleasure, for both creator and audience, of the “mirage created by the writer,” to borrow your poetic term.

Re: Chatbots are not the future

#64

Post by ukuina »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #34
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…

> Chatgpt is a tool When you use a hammer or a drill, do you expect it to sometimes not hit/screw the nail? If ChatGPT is a tool for knowledge transfer/extraction, it can't hallucinate/lie to you/be wrong/make stuff up. If it's a tool for potentially discovering some knowledge that may be true and needs to almost always be verified by either a compiler or a followup "find me a reference/discussion" Google search to m…

> When you use a hammer or a drill, do you expect it to sometimes not hit/screw the nail?

Not sure about drills, but this absolutely happens with drivers if you fumble mating the bit to the screw head, or if you miss the stud, or if you overtighten, or if you don't sometimes pre-drill, or if you strip the head, or if you don't correctly gauge underlying material composition, or thickness, or if you...

Re: Chatbots are not the future

#65

Post by tootie »

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…

I think the point of the article is that this does not constitute a chatbot. It's not conversational. It's not really general-purpose. That doesn't mean it isn't powerful, just that telling users to have a freeform conversation isn't going to work. It's also why everyone is getting excited for "prompt engineering" to make better use of it. The biggest user value is still going to be a level above the open-ended chat UI we have right now. He's not saying GPT is useless, he's saying we haven't put it into it's optimal context yet.

Re: Chatbots are not the future

#66

Post by hammyhavoc »

anonylizard wrote: post #41
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…

Really? For a writer, if you write out a plot, you can get the AI to actually simulate the character's responses and dialogue (even voiced by AI!). There, you've LITERALLY brought a character to life, each character is driven by a different persona simulated by a different AI, the quality of stories that will create, will annihilate what came before. You want to write an adventure, but want to keep it unpredictable.…

Well? So what?

If I was writing dialogue, I already know exactly what I want to say, that's why I'm writing it in the first place. Sure, some people might like that, but I never feel devoid of inspiration because I consider the greater narrative of a project.

Why would I want to ask the AI for ideas? The joy is in the process of having it my way by my own hand, word-for-word, pixel-by-pixel, note-by-note.

If other people enjoy another method, fine, but you are invalidating the traditional and highly enjoyable method. Creativity isn't about efficiency or whatever. This is why people leave AAA to go indie, and have it their way, not to whatever the budget is or what the shareholders or managers want, but because they have a vision and are naturally creative, making a labour of love they know every detail of because it's in their head.

I'd rather support the artists and pay the thousand bucks because it's all a part of the traditional process.

Indies already release anime on YouTube, Netflix, TV et al, and have done for decades.

Art isn't about the output for most artists. Art is about the process. People consume art. Artists enjoy the creative process and having it their way.

I hate attention. I haven't had a photo taken in 13 years. I've stopped all interviews. I mostly work behind-the-scenes on documentaries and games these days. I don't even care about if a project makes a return, we do it because we love it and enjoy the process.

There is no "best", art is subjective. Art isn't even a competition. Crass and vulgar. Are you sure you actually understand art and aren't conflating it with monetizing it in a business context?

Re: Chatbots are not the future

#67

Post by kmtrowbr »

alanbernstein wrote: post #61
kmtrowbr wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought this was a funny statement too. Text is the most powerful, original medium. It's difficult to overstate how powerful and valuable it is. Of course, text won't necessarily be the only UI exposed for interacting with these "Large Language Models." But that UI can be built on top of the text -- which wouldn't work in the other direction.

I think the point is that a "chatbot" is, by (the author's) definition, a UI with only a bare text prompt. Once you start building more UI on top of that, you're ... doing what the article suggests.

I see -- my apologies I must not have read it closely enough! :blush:

Re: Chatbots are not the future

#68

Post by slater »

freediver wrote: post #28
dang wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, but: " Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting. " https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Comments like this confirm that you are indeed reading every comment on the website, which should be out of the realm of humanely possible.

Or there's lots of people who click the flag link

Re: Chatbots are not the future

#69

Post by IanCal »

lxgr wrote: post #50
sitkack wrote: post #27

> Text inputs have no affordances It has all the affordances. You can turn it into anything you want. Want it respond with json, check, it can do that. Turn a wall of text into a Python data structures, check, it can do that too. You can take your LLM text interface and put what ever api you want on top. You start with clay and mold it into anything you need. You construct a parser so that the way data is already con…

But what if I don't know what I want? A graphical UI can provide much more and much more intuitive guidance than a chat input ever will. And I say that as a big fan of Unix and the shell.

You can ask it. You can explain your problem and ask how it might be able to help. You can discuss and narrow down with some back and forth what it is you want to do.

I could tell a chat bot I am finding the horizontal split in my editor is annoying because I have a wide monitor, and have it tell me there's a setting for that and ask if I want the default changed.

With a gui I might have to go through the files menu for settings, check if it's in edit-preferences, check tools-options, before maybe having to find out online it's if it's in some settings file.

Re: Chatbots are not the future

#70

Post by hammyhavoc »

JohnFen wrote: post #26
autokad wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not arguing artists are going to go away, just that story telling is going to become a lot easier. it also doesn't mean the content produced is necessarily painted with 'broad strokes' and absolutely doesn't mean its soulless. It means the barriers to entry for producing stories just came down a whole lot - akin to the printing press did for books.

But is the person using the tool an artist? I think this is an important question. If I give detailed instructions to a human ghost writer about a story I want them to write, I don't think anyone would say that I wrote the story. It was written by the ghost writer. If a piece of art is made by a computer based on detailed instructions, that art was made by a computer, not a person. If you are in the camp that you don…

It comes under the category of "generative art". It isn't intentional or self-expression, regardless of what the prompt engineers may kid you. Is it "art"? Sure. Is it traditional art? No.
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