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Comment by 9rx | Hacker News Reader

> The issue is that they're working on it the wrong way.

So is everyone else, to be fair. Chat is a horrible way to interact with computers — and even if we accept worse is better its only viable future is to include ads in the responses. That isn't a game Apple is going to want to play. They are a hardware company.

More likely someday we'll get the "iPhone moment" when we realize all previous efforts were misguided. Can Apple rise up then? That remains to be seen, but it will likely be someone unexpected. Look at any successful business venture and the eventual "winner" is usually someone who sat back and watched all the mistakes be made first.

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> Chat is a horrible way to interact with computers

Why? We interact with people via chat when possible. It seems pretty clear that's humanity's preferred ineraction model.

We begrudgingly accept chat as the lowest common denominator when there is no better option, but it's clear we don't prefer it when better options are available. Just look in any fast food restaurant that has adopted those ordering terminals and see how many are still lining up at the counter to chat with the cashier... In fact, McDonalds found that their sales rose by 30% when they eliminated chatting from the process, so clearly people found it to be a hinderance.

We don't know what is better for this technology yet, so it stands to reason that we reverted to the lowest common denominator again, but there is no reason why we will or will want to stay there. Someone is bound to figure out a better way. Maybe even Apple. That business was built on being late to the party. Although, granted, it remains to be seen if that is something it can continue with absent of Jobs.

> In fact, McDonalds found that their sales rose by 30% when they eliminated chatting from the process, so clearly people found it to be a hinderance.

That's a good supporting argument, but I don't think McDonald's adequately represents more complex discussions.

What is representative, though, is simple use: All you have to do is use chat to see how awful it is.

It is better than nothing. It is arguably the best we have right now to make use of the technology. But, unless this is AI thing is all hype and goes nowhere, smart minds aren't going to sit idle as progression moves towards maturity.

I imagine it's like how humans converse: we talk, but sometimes we need diagrams and pictures.

"What burgers do you have?"

(expands to show a set of pictures)

"I'll have the thing with chicken and lettuce"

The problem with UX driven by this kind of interface is latency. Right now, this kind of flow goes more like:

"What burgers do you have?"

(Thinking...) (4 seconds later:)

(expands to show a set of pictures)

"Sigh. I'll have the thing with chicken and lettuce"

(Thinking...) (3 seconds later:)

> "Do you mean the Crispy McChicken TM McSandwich TM?"

"Yes"

(Thinking...) (4 seconds later:)

> "Would you like anything else?"

"No"

(Thinking...) (5 seconds later:)

> "Would you like to supersize that?"

"Is there a human I can speak with? Or perhaps I can just point and grunt to one of the workers behind the counter? Anyone?"

It's just exasperating, and it's not easy to overcome until local inference is cheap and common. Even if you do voice recognition on the kiosk, which probably works well enough these days, there's still the round trip to OpenAI and then the inference time there. And of course, this whole scenario gets even worse and more frustrating anywhere with subpar internet.

Right. We talk when it is the only viable choice in front of us, but as soon as options are available, talk goes out the window pretty quickly. It is not our ideal mode of communication, just the lowest common denominator that works in most situations.

But, now, remember, unlike humans, AI can do things like materialize diagrams and pictures out of "thin air" and can even make them interactive right on the spot. It can also do a whole lot of things that you and I haven't even thought of yet. It is not bound by the same limitations of the human mind and body. It is not human.

For what reason is there to think that chat will remain the primary mode of using this technology? It is the easiest to conceive of way to use the technology, so it is unsurprising that it is what we got first, but why would we stop here? Chat works, but it is not good. There are so many unexplored possibilities to find better and we're just getting started.

I think chat will remain dominant, but we'll go into other modes as needed. There's no more efficient way to communicate "show me the burgers" than saying it - thinking it is possible, but sending thoughts is too far off right now. Then you switch to imagery or hand gestures or whatever else when they're a better way to show something.

> Chat is a horrible way to interact with computers

Chat is like the command line, but with easier syntax. This makes it usable by an order of magnitude more people.

Entertainment tasks lend themselves well to GUI type interfaces. Information retrieval and manipulation tasks will probably be better with chat type interfaces. Command and control are also better with chat or voice (beyond the 4-6 most common controls that can be displayed on a GUI).

> Chat is like the command line, but with easier syntax.

I kinda disagree with this analogy.

The command line is precise, concise, and opaque. If you know the right incantations, you can do some really powerful things really quickly. Some people understand the rules behind it, and so can be incredibly efficient with it. Most don't, though.

Chat with LLMs is fuzzy, slow-and-iterative... and differently opaque. You don't need to know how the system works, but you can probably approach something powerful if you accept a certain amount of saying "close, but don't delete files that end in y".

The "differently-opaque" for LLM chatbots comes in you needing to ultimately trust that the system is going to get it right based on what you said. The command line will do exactly what you told it to, if you know enough to understand what you told it to. The chatbot will do... something that's probably related to what you told it to, and might be what it did last time you asked for the same thing, or might not.

For a lot of people the chatbot experience is undeniably better, or at least lets them attempt things they'd never have even approached with the raw command line.

> Chat is like the command line

Exactly. Nobody really wants to use the command-line as the primary mode of computing; even the experts who know how to use it well. People will accept it when there is no better tool for the job, but it is not going to become the preferred way to use computers again no matter how much easier it is to use this time. We didn't move away from the command-line simply because it required some specialized knowledge to use.

Chatting with LLMs looks pretty good right now because we haven't yet figured out a better way, but there is no reason to think we won't figure out a better way. Almost certainly people will revert to chat for certain tasks, like people still use the command-line even today, but it won't be the primary mode of computing like the current crop of services are betting on. This technology is much too valuable for it to stay locked in shitty chat clients (and especially shitty chat clients serving advertisements, which is the inevitable future for these businesses betting on chat — they can't keep haemorrhaging money forever and individuals won't pay enough for a software service).

My experience with Claude Code is a fantastic way to interact with a (limited subset) of my computer. I do not think Claude is too far off from being able to do stuff like read my texts, emails, and calendar and take actions in those apps, which is pretty much what people want Siri to (reliably) do these days.

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