What will LLM-powered software look like in the medium-term future?
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Re: What will LLM-powered software look like in the medium-term future?
#2Loving the ideas here. I'm especially fond of the machine-to-machine idea, the concept of a locally running LLM that knows about you, and a remote LLM in an app or whatever, interacting with eachother to create a highly individualized UX.
Seems like a perfect blend of keeping the core personality of the LLM trained on your data local, while still allowing permissioned access.
Re: What will LLM-powered software look like in the medium-term future?
#3A lot of this seems like a nerd’s fantasy. I share these fantasies / desires, but I don’t think its a sober, realistic take on what’s most likely.
> Even if an LLM could provide me with a recipe that perfectly suits what I’m looking for, I wouldn’t want to give up the experience of using a recipe search engine and browsing through a large collection of recipes.
Me too, but allrecipes.com has already switched from “search for what you want” to “we’ll tell you what you want”. This is a UX pattern that I hate but has proven a winner across many apps lately - e.g. TikTok. Streaming music still allows you to build playlists of specific songs, but auto-built radio stations are filled with a suspicious amount of whatever the major labels are pushing this quarter. Netflix/etc has shockingly fuzzy search which largely pushes whatever they want you to watch rather than what you’re searching for. YouTube is mostly also push rather than pull today.
I expect everything to continue moving that direction, against the wishes of the power users. The majority of users seem to go for the simpler UX, even if they sometimes complain about quality.
> In an ideal world, I’d like to have the underlying model be a swappable implementation detail. Llama 2 and similar developments make me optimistic.
This is a pipe dream. LLMs may be hot-swappable by developers but for 99% of apps + OSes this wont be a user-configurable thing.
Re: What will LLM-powered software look like in the medium-term future?
#4Some nice ideas here. I think some of these could see realisation, depending very much on how accessible those LLMs become.
At the moment I'm sure there are only a couple of user interfaces that people know and will resist l reuse. After all they'll want to take very little risk and use what they've seen works in other places. The full screen ChatGPT style page, or those annoying chatbot pop-ups that sit in the bottom right hand corner of sites I don't care about. Something to keep an eye on and see what emerges.
Re: What will LLM-powered software look like in the medium-term future?
#5I feel like us not being in that future right now means we won‘t get there so fast.
What‘s missing to get all of this now? What recolutionary research, product development that hasn‘t happened yet will happen in the coming year?
To me it looks like LLM tech is stagnating, after the hype peak we are close to the trough of disillusionment.
Re: What will LLM-powered software look like in the medium-term future?
#6> Even if an LLM could provide me with a recipe that perfectly suits what I’m looking for, I wouldn’t want to give up the experience of using a recipe search engine and browsing through a large collection of recipes. Even if an LLM could provide me with restaurant recommendations based on my preferences, I’d still seek out a map-based UX for exploring the variety present in my vicinity. The desire to replace all UX with LLMs seems like a desire to replace all serendipity with efficiency, and I think (or hope) that such a transition is much more appealing in theory than it would be in practice.
I guess the question is: how much of our web or software use is leisurely browsing (reading news or HN would be other likely candidates for this category) and how much is more task-like, e.g. send a message to some friends, add a note to a specific list, order some groceries?
We might also want to consider how much of a role such private use of software plays in shaping UX trends. If business software (sheets, Photoshop, CAD etc.) can be sped up with chat input, it will be, and people will be expected to use the quickest UI.
This is not to say that browsing will disappear, but I can totally see it being relegated to a second class UI in the long run, even in applications where it's currently the obvious choice, just because our default UX expectations will be different.
Re: What will LLM-powered software look like in the medium-term future?
#7All of this makes sense.
I would like to add my own prediction for 2027. I believe in the next 4 years, much more comfortable and capable mixed reality glasses and goggles may be somewhat common. Also AI generation and streaming of realistic avatars will have advanced. Quite possibly this will use low-latency Wifi to stream from a PC.
So if you want, you will be able to have a fairly realistic representation of the AI as a synthetic person in the room with you when you put the MR device on. It will have eye contact and seem quite similar to a real person (if you want). You will be able to just talk to it.
Another thing that might become popular could be larger 3d monitors. The type that have some stereoscopic effect tuned to your exact position. So your AI helper might just live in a virtual window or doorway or something like that.
You can actually already build something a bit like this, at least in 2d, without really inventing anything complex. You would use things like a HeyGen or D-ID API and maybe Eleven Labs or something. You won't get eye contact or a realistic 3d avatar that seems to be sitting on your couch, and there will be pauses waiting for it to respond. But theoretically, fast-forwarding several years, those things are not at all insurmountable.
Re: What will LLM-powered software look like in the medium-term future?
#8All of this makes sense. I would like to add my own prediction for 2027. I believe in the next 4 years, much more comfortable and capable mixed reality glasses and goggles may be somewhat common. Also AI generation and streaming of realistic avatars will have advanced. Quite possibly this will use low-latency Wifi to stream from a PC. So if you want, you will be able to have a fairly realistic representation of the A…
When we can interact by talking to a 2D cartoon in a Zoom call then I guess we'll be X% towards your 2027 vision.
Re: What will LLM-powered software look like in the medium-term future?
#9All of this makes sense. I would like to add my own prediction for 2027. I believe in the next 4 years, much more comfortable and capable mixed reality glasses and goggles may be somewhat common. Also AI generation and streaming of realistic avatars will have advanced. Quite possibly this will use low-latency Wifi to stream from a PC. So if you want, you will be able to have a fairly realistic representation of the A…
2037 maybe, but four years isn't very long.
Re: What will LLM-powered software look like in the medium-term future?
#109/10 requests for a simple sql query get a working query.
This isn't enough to enable a useful interface.
It takes a lot of scaffolding to get an llm powered interface to actually work.