Not saying mobile's going away, but this could be the thing that does to mobile what mobile did to desktop.
The problem with those other platforms that this doesn’t address include:
- discoverability. How do you learn what features a service supports. On a GUI you can just see the buttons, but on a chat interface you have to ask and poke around conversationally.
- Cost/availability. While a service is server bound, it can go down and specifically for LLMs, the cost is high per request. Can you imagine it costing $0.1 a day per user to use an app? LLMs can’t run locally yet.
- Branding. Open table might want to protect their brand and wouldn’t want to be reduced to an API. It goes both ways - Alexa struggled with differentiating skills and user data from Amazon experiences.
- monetization. The conversational UI is a lot less convenient to include advertisements, so it’s a lot harder for traditionally free services to monetize.
Edit: plugins are still really cool! But probably won’t replace the OSes we know.
They could bring in calendar, payment, other UI functionality...
Basically they could rethink how everything is done on the Web today.
Sure, maybe OpenTable would like to retain control. But they'll probably just use the AI API to implement that control and run the app.
- Discoverability. I think we'll move into a situation where the AI will have the context to know what you will want to purchase. It'll read out the order and the specials and you just confirm or indicate that you'd like to browse more options. (In which case the Chat window could include an embedded catalogue of items)
- Cost/availability - With the amount of people working in this area, I don't think it'll be too long before we're able to get a lighter weight model that can run locally on most smart phones.
- Branding - This is a good point, but also, I imagine a brand is more likely to let itself get eaten, if the return will be a constant supply of customers.
- Monetization - The entire model will change, in the sense that AI platforms will revenue share with the platforms they integrate with to create a mutually beneficial relationship with the suppliers of content. (Since they can't exist without the content both existing and being relevant)
> I think we'll move into a situation where the AI will have the context to know what you will want to purchase
My partner who lives in the same house as me can't figure out when we need toilet paper. I'm not holding my breath for an AI model that would need a massive and invasive amount of data to learn and keep up.
Also, Alexa tried to solve this on a smaller scale with the "by the way..." injections and it's extremely annoying. Thank about how many people use Alexa for basically timers and the weather and smart home. They're all tasks that are "one click" once you get in the GUI, and have no lists and minimal decisions... Timer: 10 min, weather: my house, bedroom light: off. These are cases where the UI necessarily embeds the critical action, and a user knows the full request state.
This is great for voice, because it allows the user to bypass the UI and get to the action. I used to work on a voice assistant and lists were the single worst thing we had to deal with because a customer has to go through the entire selection. ChatGPT has a completely different use case, where it's great for exploring a concept since the LLM can generate endlessly.
I think generative info assistants truly is the sweet spot for LLMs and chat.
> in the sense that AI platforms will revenue share with the platforms they integrate with to create a mutually beneficial relationship with the suppliers of content.
Like Google does with search results? (they don't)
Realistically, Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri all failed to build out these relationships beyond apps. Companies like to simply sell their attention for ads, and taking a handout from the integrator requires either less money, or an expensive chat interface.
Most brands seem to want to monetize their own way, in control of themselves, and don't want to be a simple API.
"Yet" is a big word here when it comes to the field as a whole. I got Alpaca-LoRA up and running on my desktop machine with a 3080 the other day and I'd say it's about 50% as good as ChatGPT 3.5 and fast enough to already be usable for most minor things ("summarize this text", etc) if only the available UIs were better.
I feel like we're not far off from the point where it'll be possible to buy something of ChatGPT 3.5 quality as a home hardware appliance that can then hook into a bunch of things.
How so? Surely people are going to ask this thing for product recommendations, just recommend your sponsors.
Honestly I see this as a positive change, I'd rather be the customer than the product.
The whole ecosystem, culture and metaphor of having a 'device' with 'apps' is to enable access to a range of solutions to your various problems.
This is all going to go away.
Yes, there will always be exceptions and sometimes you need the physical features of the device - like for taking photos.
Instead, you'll have one channel which can solve 95% of your issues - basically like having a personalised, on-call assistant for everyone on the planet.
Consider the friction when consumers grumble about streaming services fragmenting. They just want one. They don't want to subscribe to 5+.
In 10 years, kids will look back and wonder why on earth we used to have these 'phones' with dozens or hundreds of apps installed. 'Why would you do that? That is so much work? How do you know which you need to use?'
If there was one company worrying about change, I would think it would actually be Apple. The iPhone has long been a huge driver of sales and growth - as increasing performance requirements have pushed consumers to upgrade. Instead, I think the increasing relevance of AI tools will inverse this. Consumers will be looking for smaller, lighter, harder-wearing devices. Why do you need a 'phone' with more power? You just need to be able to speak to the AI.
I think you just proved it won't happen anytime soon.
Consumers obviously would prefer a "unified" interface. Yet we can't even get streaming services to all expose their libraries to a common UI - which is already built into Apple TV, fireTv, Roku, and Chromecast. Despite the failure of the streaming ecosystem to unify, you expect every other software service to unify the interfaces?
I think we'll see more features integrated into the operating system of devices, or integrated into the "Ecosystem" of our devices - first maps was an app, then a system app, now calling an uber is supported in-map, and now Siri can do it for you on an iPhone. But I think it's a long road to integrate this universally.
> If there was one company worrying about change, I would think it would actually be Apple.
I agree that apple has the most to lose. Google (+Assistant/Bard) has the best opportunity here (but they'll likely squander it). They can easily create wrappers around services and expose them through an assistant, and they already have great tech regarding this. The announcement of Duplex was supposed to be just that for traditional phone calls.
Apple also has a great opportunity to build it into their operating system, locally. Instead of leaning into an API-first assistant model, they could use an assistant to topically expose "widgets" or views into existing on-device apps. We already see bits of it in iMessages, on the Home Screen, share screen and my above Maps example. I think the "app" as a unit of distribution of code is a good one, and here to stay, and the best bet is for an assistant to hook into them and surface embedded snippets when needed. This preserves the app company's branding, UI, etc and free's apple from having to play favorite.
Edit: apple announcing LLM optimizations already indicates they want this to run on apple silicon not the cloud.
The space is in a land-grab phase, where everyone wants to position themselves as the next Google, and control the channel.
Will be interesting to see how this all plays out.
Having somebody else in the house speaking out loud each time they want infos from the internet could become annoying.
Apart from having a mind reading device, I don't see so far a solution to this problem better than text input with a physical keyboard or a virtual keyboard on the device.
Phones with apps have been around for 29 years. I'm calling BS on your prediction now.
My hot take on ChatGPT plugins is a bit mixed - should be very powerful, and maybe significant revenue generator, but at same time doesn't seem in the least bit responsible. We barely understand ChatGPT itself, and now it's suddenly being given ability to perform arbitrary actions!
Not only did the hype not pan out, but it feels as if they were completely forgotten.
In a nutshell that's why I'm still largely dismissive of anything related to GPT. It's 2016-2018 all over again. Same tech demos. Same promises. Same hype. I honestly can't see the big fundamental breakthroughs or major shifts. I just see improvements, but not game-changing ones.
In this scenario, it seems dramatically faster to type or speak "Find me a dinner reservation for 4 tomorrow at a Thai or Vietnamese restaurant near me." than to browse Google Maps or OpenTable. It then comes down to the quality and personalization of the results, and ChatGPT has a leg up on Google here just due to the fact that their results are not filled with ads and garbage SEO bait.
This is not the case. The difference between current state of the art NLP and chatbots 3 years ago is so massive, it has to be seen as qualitative. Pre GPT-3 computers did not understand language and no commerical chatbot had any AI. Now computers can understand language.
"understand"
It seems to me that the argument you're trying to make can be extended more or less indefinitely, though. But there's a point at which "it's a pattern extrapolator" becomes less of an explanation and more of a largely irrelevant piece of trivia.
Google gatekeeps everything currently, it s in the browser, the search button, the phone etc. Having chatbots instead of google is better
Also I think there will be little interest in delegating that level of control to a single source for anything that’s important. For example, say I’ve got 5k to spend on home theatre gear, why on earth should I trust Shopify’s AI to suggest what I need and find the best price? The incentives aren’t in alignment.
How is it going to do that? OpenTable's value isn't in the tech, a 15 yo could implement that over the weekend. Or maybe chatGPT can be put in the restaurant, and somehow figure out how to seat you. And then you'd have a human talking to chatGPT and chatGPT talking to another chatGPT to complete the task. That'll be interesting, but otherwise this is overly complicated for all parties involved.
Would be nice to keep the ecosystem open.
The main limits are that unless they are integral and trained-in (which is less flexible), each takes space in the prompt, and in any case the interaction also takes token space, all of which reduces the token space available to the main conversation.
I think there's also a global challenge (actually, opportunity IS the right word here) that by-and-large the makers of operating systems aren't the ones ahead in the language AI game right now. Bard/Google may have been close six months ago, but six months is an eternity in this space. Siri/Apple is so far behind that its not looking likely they can catch up. About a week ago a Windows 11 update was shipped which added a Bing AI button to the Windows 11 search bar; but Windows doesn't really drive the zeitgeist.
I wonder if 2023/4 is the year for Microsoft to jump back into the smartphone OS game. There may finally be something to the idea of a more minimalist, smaller voice-first smartphone that falls back on the web for application experiences, versus app-first.
Apple doesn’t make any money from OpenTable.
The limitations on making Siri more useful is just adding and refining its intent system. It already integrates with Wolfram Alpha for instance.