Comment by Arizhel | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Arizhel | Hacker News Reader

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>The greatest UI in the history of films cannot be captured visually: it is the UI in Spike Jonze's "Her".

No, that was the absolute worst UI in the history of films. Spoken words simply cannot carry remotely as much information as visually-seen images. Haven't you ever heard the saying "a picture is worth 1000 words"?

Let me give a modern-day example: at a typical Panera Bread restaurant right now, you can order a sandwich either by talking to some teenager at the counter, or by using the touchscreen kiosk. Panera lets you customize sandwiches heavily, by changing the bread, adding cheeses, changing/adding toppings, etc. So I walk into a Panera and would like to order a tuna sandwich but I want to see all the different options and make it completely customized. They have probably 20 different kinds of bread alone, not to mention all the other options. So which do you think is more efficient, having some teenager rattle off 20 kinds of bread, or looking at them on a screen? And how do I know what these breads are anyway? How long is it going to take for some teenager to tell me what all those things are, and maybe show me samples, compared to just looking at some photos on the screen? How about just verifying the order? With the teenager, how long will it take him to read off the entire order to me, and what is the possibility that the information will be received incorrectly because I can't hear him that well, he speaks with an accent or lisp, there's too much noise, or he just misspeaks or skips something? With a screen, I can see the order printed out exactly.

There are a few benefits to the Her interface:

1. Your hands are free to read a novel

2. You don't have to carry a screen around

3. Even if there is a small, finite set of options that you can present on a screen, you should still be able to select them verbally.

4. If you want to ask a question, or ask for a suggestion, you should be able to do so free form.

5. If "Her" knows your preferences and allergies, she can just suggest the cluster of good ones.

6. Once you know what you want, you can just tell her "the usual"

7. In the "Her" interface, the teenager will never misspeak, any more than the screen will show you the wrong picture or misunderstand your touch.

8. If there is a screen or board present, the Her interface should be able to see it as well, and sort of work with you to make a selection. <- I know some indecisive people who would love this, and their loved ones would love this even more.

The Her interface like all fictional voice interfaces benefits from the actors reading from a script.

Try dictating a simple email sometime. The best voice recognition in the world won't solve the problem that it's very hard to do (also, that movie utterly left out important corrollaries like all the people everywhere he was would have been speaking in weird monosyllabic commands and leaking personal information in public). As I write this in a hotel foyer, I'm very glad for my predictive keyboard.

The Her interface looks good only because its in a scripted movie. Because its the Wish-fulfillment interface in the plot.

> 1. Your hands are free to read a novel

You're going to find it harder to read that novel while engaging in complex vocal communication. Both tasks compete for your phonological loop. Look up articulatory suppression.

The teenager has a job, which is a small but positive increment in the health of your community. For that, I would be willing to endure the (real) risks you mention.

Yeah I'd rather have the teenager (or, actually, since it's been awhile since I saw a fast food clerk under the age of 40, the probable mom of several teenagers) for that reason.

Even though it may be more efficient for the customer to have the touch screen, I don't think service automation is so black and white.

So you're willing to suffer reduced inefficiency just so someone else has a job? Why not just hire the teenager to stand around doing nothing then? Then you get the benefits of both!

Risks? I also cited actual, real benefits. How do I order my sandwich with a different kind of bread with the teenager? I don't. It's not possible. The customers behind me will get very mad if I ask the teenager to list off all 20 different kinds of bread, and to show them all to me personally too. The teenager likely will not do as I ask here, plus it's a massive waste of my time too. Ordering from humans works OK when you have a very short and simple menu so there's little chance for confusion, but this means it's quite impossible to have a lot of selection.

How about this idea: let's get rid of computer monitors, and replace them with verbal-only interfaces. How well do you think it's going to work out if you want to order a pair of shoes on Amazon.com (or any online store) when you can't even see them, and just have something reading text into your ear? Or, because you're so concerned about employment, maybe we should ban computer users from reading monitors, and require them to hire people to read stuff from the screen to them!

Finally, would you mind if I came over and smashed your car windows? You shouldn't; you should be happy, because that means someone will have a job replacing those windows.

There is a difference between digging a ditch and working on a rockpile. One has dignity--it is useful work one is paid for; the other is a punishment.

I don't, in fact, think it's wise to automate the people behind sandwich counters out of a job; it doesn't follow from that that I would prefer a pneumatic tube to my computer monitor.

I acknowledged that the benefits you cited were real, by using the word "real." I assure you I'm not some kind of paperclip-AI-zealot when it comes to employing people for tasks that could be automated.

I wonder if there is any level of peristent unemployment--25%, say? at which you would prefer to halt the growth of the kind of automation which is drying up the job pool? Or does it never matter whether there are jobs behind sandwich counters? Enjoy the bread selection.

I'm sorry, I just don't see the point in keeping people uselessly employed doing tasks that are better done by machines. Do you think we should stop using travelocity.com and go back to using travel agents? Do you think we should make Domino's stop taking orders over the web or phone app and go back to only taking orders over the phone? Do you think we should eliminate banking ATMs, and go back to making people show up during banker's hours and talk to a teller? Do you think we should eliminate self-checkout lanes at grocery stores(/Walmart/etc.) and go back to having fully-manned checkout lanes? Were you complaining about all these things before, or did you only start when touchscreen kiosks started showing up in chain eateries? ATMs, in particular, go back to the 1980s. How about pumping gas? Are you opposed to self-service gas stations too?

How is there any "dignity" in doing a job that's better and more conveniently (to the customer) done by automation, or by the customer themselves (pumping gas)? That's nothing more than make-work. If you want to put people to work, give them something to do that isn't so easily done by machine. I can come up with plenty of suggestions offhand: 1) like in the New Deal, we could employ people fixing up the National Park system. Building benches, improving hiking trails, building park buildings, etc., aren't things easily done by current machines. 2) America's infrastructure is in atrocious shape. Tons of bridges desperately need to be replaced. Lots of people could be employed in construction here. Bridges can't be built by robots yet (or any time soon since they're all one-off projects and vary so much, plus they're so huge). 3) There's supposedly a shortage of nurses. Send some people to nursing school. You only need a 2-year degree for the entry-level jobs. We don't have robots yet which can start an IV or do a sponge-bath. 4) We need more mass transit in this country. Put people to work building tunnels for subways and building subway stations.

>Or does it never matter whether there are jobs behind sandwich counters? Enjoy the bread selection.

Or does it never matter whether there are jobs behind bank counters? Enjoy your cash from the ATM. If you use ATMs, or your bank's website, or your bank's phone app, then you're a hypocrite.

> If you use ATMs...

Guilty as charged. Before my bank had an ATM, I organized my time differently, but I survived.

As for dignity, it's not versus "a job that can be more efficiently done by automation", it's versus "being unable to find a job."

Forget the sandwich clerk; schoolteachers are found somewhere along this trajectory.

I would answer almost all of the questions in your first paragraph "yes." I agree with all of your ideas in paragraph 2, so I think there is much we agree on, despite that.

I think it is in society's interest to arrange for there to be a number of job-vacancies of the Panera-kid-type available, even if that is not the sandwich-delivery mechanism of minimum cost. In principle, we could do better, but I am skeptical that it will happen.

>I think it is in society's interest to arrange for there to be a number of job-vacancies of the Panera-kid-type available

I completely disagree. It's actively making things worse to not use more efficient methods. Now if a restaurant wants to keep one of those people around for people who don't like the kiosks, or maybe to talk to if they have a question about something or want to ask for something the kiosk can't do, then that's great, because that's where people are actually useful: for handling things that automation can't, like special cases. Of course, you don't need as many humans this way, since there aren't that many people who the kiosk can't serve.

But having people employed just for the sake of employment is nothing more than make-work. It's just like the Soviet factories where they built wooden crates on one side of the factory, then moved them to the other side of the factory where another team disassembled them for recycling, then moved the wood to the other side of the factory where it was used for building crates, .... There's no dignity in make-work. If you're worried about there not being enough jobs, the answer is the UBI: give people a regular stipend and let them spend it however they want. At least some of them will find some new enterprise on their own, whether it's writing a book (like JK Rowling, who was on welfare when she wrote the books that made her a millionaire--she's worth almost $800M), or writing a phone game, or just doing odd jobs and not having to worry so much about having enough for rent because of the irregularity. The other answer is to get the government to invest in its people by providing education, and by financing important projects (like replacing those bridges). There's plenty of work to be done without resorting to make-work.

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