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Comment by sert_121 | Hacker News Reader

It's interesting to see how chatgpt is becoming more and more of a starting point of the web exploration, at which they're like, why even bother searching at this point, we'll just have default workflows for maps, buy (integration of stripe already marks it), booking airlines etc, which covers so much basic stuff people would do anyways.

The biggest bottleneck for this for the past two years imo wasn't the models, but the engineering and infra around it, and the willingness of companies to work with openaio directly. Now that they've grown and have a decent userbase, companies are much more willing to pay/or involve themselves in these efforts.

This has eventual implications outside user-heavy internet use (once we see more things built on the SDK), where we're gonna see a fork in the web traffic of human centric workflows through chat, and an seo-filled, chat/agent-optimized web that is only catered to agents. (crossposted)

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I’m not sure how many people there are like me outside of this website but there’s not a single bone in my body that wants to use AI for these things.

Buying plane tickets for example. It’s not even that I don’t trust the AI or that I’m afraid it might make a mistake. I just inherently want to feel like I’m in control of these processes.

It’s the same reason I’m more afraid of flying than driving despite flying being a way safer mode of travel. When I’m flying I don’t feel like I’m in control.

I have very normie and not-so-normie friends that ask ChatGPT almost anything. My parents consistently make use of it, and they're almost 70, and not that tech-literate. There was a fun release from Anthropic about the type of queries that they're receiving, and code-gen is minority. I think we're, once again, not the average user.

I wonder how many of those “average users” will actually happily pay what the true cost is though? Are they really getting perceivable value for it or is it just more convenient than present day Google.

They all pay the price of google (micro-brainwashing by ads to buy things they don't need).

I think the average person will happily pay the same price to OpenAI (being micro-brainwashed by the AI to buy things they don't need, i.e. ads). I feel confident OpenAI will be able to charge even more for ads than Google since OpenAI will be able to influence people even more strongly, and hide the ads even better.

But OpenAI's costs are exponentially higher than Google's (even taking into account the various Google freebies they don't charge for).

Google wasn’t always profitable.

But they weren't losing money on paid users, and their cost base was never so high.

When you say "true cost" I've interpreted that to mean the down-sides of using an AI ChatBot as a primary information source, so my reply below is in context of that interpretation:

There is a sizeable chunk of people who (perhaps foolishly) trust ChatGPT despite knowing it can produce errors. They use it because it does the "research" for them, and does so quickly. This presents a type of tech-agility that they themselves do not possess. So on balance they may be more tech-empowered by using a flawed AI ChatBot than they are by manually reading news, websites and blogs.

There is also an issue of trust. A novice reading the top 5 search results has no real idea if the information being presented is biased, error free, or even factual. Google's work to blend paid and organic placement also presents the flaw of dollars over quality. ChatGPT on the other hand presents a known level of trust to them.

A similar scenario plays out with the way novices are more trusting of apps that appear on a curated store rather than seeking out software via web searches.

I think that users on HN take for granted that they have outsized experience and skill in developing trust in the tech landscape, and have a mental list of news, websites and software providers that they deem trustworthy. This can lead to not understanding the motivation for relying on an AI ChatBot, or compartmentalising people who use those services as some kind simpleton.

I don’t see why you wouldn’t book a flight using an AI assistant. No one’s saying it should do it completely unsupervised (maybe that’ll come much later), but having something that can research the best routes based on my criteria and show me several options — with a single click to purchase the one I find most convenient — is something I’d love.

It could even work against the dynamic pricing algorithms airlines use to maximize revenue: if I have a tireless assistant exploring every possible combination to find the cheapest ticket, it’ll probably do a much better job than I ever could.

There's probably little danger to the savvy user who understands how manipulative technology like this can be.

The problems come when vulnerable users are targeted using dark patterns. How AI dark patterns will evolve is very uncertain [1] however I suspect they will be extremely subtle and very effective.

What's the worst that can happen if someone vulnerable is persuaded to buy a flight by an AI. I don't know, maybe depression and bad credit after the chatbot's promises weren't met. If they're persuaded to buy a weapon, that's a different matter.

At least current advertising is somewhat public, although that's increasingly less true as ads get more targeted.

This is new territory where ads will be so extremely private it will be only known by the user (maybe they won't even notice) and someone reading the subpoenaed chat logs after a user does something terrible. Those chat logs will likely be inconclusive anyway.

[1] https://venturebeat.com/ai/darkness-rising-the-hidden-danger...

I suppose you just have to trust that it's incentivized to find you the best route and not only offer you 3 options which it says are the best, but are actually paid promotions.

It depends too on what you value. I’d be more than happy to pay a premium if it meant the time for me looking for a flight and having a seat booked is drastically reduced.

We used to get that through the services of a travel agency. Maybe we will soon have that luxury again?

I would try using AI to book flights - then double check if I can't get a better offer. Do this a couple of times and when I see AI is as good or even better at getting me flights, then sure, why not use it.

Extrapolating from my experience testing it for coding tasks the result is not reliable even if it was right a couple of times. A risk I'm not willing to take. And I can't say that AI powered chat assistants on web pages have been much help either.

You can even automate this kind of testing in the AI model. I think the Google ADK has a built-in system for tests you use to confirm the reply quality.

I suspect the cost of the AI will end up being more than the difference in flight pricing, but we'll see.

I feel the same, but Airline and big hotel websites have way too many dark patterns made to confuse the user and force them to pay extra.

Booking an emergency flight last time I had a family issue was a mind-fucking experience. I had to go through 10 screens trying to sell me stuff and constantly hiding the skip button in different places. Maybe HN will say that I "shouldn't have had a family emergency in the first place" but reality is realty.

And honestly it's not just booking websites, it's anything tech that they do. For example, the last checkin kiosk I used also had an incredibly convoluted path for the case where someone else booked my luggage but it was a different size.

> but Airline and big hotel websites have way too many dark patterns made to confuse the user and force them to pay extra.

And sooner or later these websites will implement new dark patterns to confuse the LLMs...

I’m with you. My elderly parents always ask me to book a ticket for them every time they need to fly because the airline websites are so full of dark patterns, it drives them anxious that they’ve missed something or spent money on something they don’t need.

This is sadly prevalent in some niches (e.g. low cost travel), but I don't think LLMs would be able to navigate those dark patterns better than humans would.

Ah, yeah. I assume from this comment you aren't in either US or EU, the only places this is better. It sucks.

That's the crazy part: I'm in the EU, where it's supposed to be better.

Indeed this problem could become worse. Dark patterns are darker when you cannot see them at all

I would argue a website made to buy you tickets (skyscanner f.e.) is always gonna be a better interface than chat.

Right now I cant imagine an AI (esp. chat) being more convenient for me than skyscanner or Google Hotels, but maybe I’m missing the imagination.

Flexibility is the advantage. In a chat interface, you can type literally whatever you want and ChatGPT will do its best to serve you. In a website like Skyscanner, you are inherently limited by their UI design.

If all you want is the cheapest flight on a specific day, Skyscanner is really great. But what if you need to book a bus at the other end of your flight? Skyscanner is not going to help you with that, but ChatGPT might! It could search up different bus providers in your destination and cross-reference them against the available flights.

How much you trust ChatGPT to actually do this well is up to you. But I suspect a lot of people will trust it, and I would probably be willing to use it for low-stakes tasks at least.

I would argue Skyscanner or whatever other company is better in offering additional services (hotels, taxis, buses) than ChatGPT, because it’s specialized.

I think if you really exactly know what you want the input in AI might be faster "book me on the flight tomorrow at 1pm from x to y on airline xyz -y" This I could imagine being faster, but it would still require verification by me to actually pay. I wonder if AI is faster in doing that given the added latency compared to me visiting airline xyz and doing the search manually (even perceive loading time taking in consideration) as it will be perceived less time if you are active.

>you can type literally whatever you want and ChatGPT

And ChatGPT will answer whatever it wants

It will just iframe whatever page/app you would have been browsing anyway but potentially with ChatGPT directly being able to operate on the App state. So if configured, I guess ChatGPT will be just a handy middle layer to your usual interfaces.

It baffles me that people seem to think that chat is limited to text and text only. We're not there yet but the moment chats get excellent embedded interfaces is when we see this tech really come to fruition - at least from a consumer point of view.

Here's somewhat of a counter example. At work our llm project can schedule you time off. Workday already has a dedicated UI for this, so text interface can't be better right? Well it's a very popular feature, people use it all the time. In my opinion it's not better than a dedicated UI, but for some people it's good enough and more convenient (our site loads much faster than workday, they are likely already using it throughout their day, etc.)

Ahh great point thank you very much this makes a lot of sense.

I see my mistake now. I evaluate based on how it could be useful for me. As a heavy computer user, familiar with shortcuts and user interfaces, interacting with UX works very good.

But for a lot of users text will be more natural and easier. I might be able to get the flight I want easiest with Skyscanner, but other users might not be and will come to a better result with texts.

It’s the same as I prefer documentations over Youtube tutorials, but it’s different on different stages.

It's not a case of wanting to it's a case of going to ChatGPT first instead of going to Google or the iOS App Store.

Currently GPT gets you better answers than Google so people are gonna be going there first.

That says a lot more about what Google has become, than GPT.

That was my intention, they've completely dropped the ball lately and I don't know if its incompetence or just they through there would never be another option so felt the need to optimize for another metric than search success.

The majority of americans are more concerned with AI. Only like 22% are optimistic. And why would they be optimistic that it'll result in a better life for them

But, hear me out.

If (when) companies want their things to be present in ChatGPT replies, they need to provide an AI-compatible way to get it. Just shoving a full-ass web page at it is inefficient and error-prone.

They have to either build a version of their site that's AI-accessible or provide an API (or MCP) for it to access the data.

Now that the API is built and the cost is paid, we can use it for non-AI uses.

In India, it is pretty common to call a travel agent and book tickets, in fact it is the preferred method for those who can afford it. It is super convenient, everything including the transfer of funds is taken care of by the agent.

This experience is 10x better than online alternatives. AI agents can replicate this at marginal cost.

And knowing the Indian mindset and education level of the people, there are most likely a 1000 startups doing just that right now =)

you don't have to go so far as it buying the tickets for you if you don't trust it enough to do that. I built a deep research agent and one of the tasks that i found it very useful for was taking complex requirements and building a report for me to review and make decisions based off of. I live in one city, my travel partner lives in another, and we each want flights to get to a city around the same time, options for airbnbs, and travel activities. I may not trust ai to do this without human intervention but i certainly trust it to assemble this information for me with options and i can make decisions based on that

Same here. Neither do I trust these tools to be working accurately, nor do I have the patience to wait for them to complete the given task when I ca do that manually 10x faster already.

There's no way I give an AI access to my wallet, every expense he makes should be approved at least.

I dismay at the possibility of this happening. What’s the point of an internet at all if one company controls, filters, and governs our entire usage of it?

I understand an argument can be made that google is doing similar, but at least you can still search and end up on an actual site, rather than just play telephone via chatgpt. This concept is horrifying for so many reasons.

I agree with the fact that a monopolized web is not friendlier to anyone. But seeing the trajectories of tech companies in the past decade, the unfortunate north star is distribution and the relentless pursuit of it.

Even in that dire circumstance, I wish that the web versions keep up/are maintained, instead of being slowly deprecated, which happened for a lot of mobile-native versions of applications.

> What’s the point of an internet at all

Going back to first principles, we need to recall that the internet is for the dissemination of cat pictures, and at the end of the day every technical and organizational change must be analyzed through the lens of its impact on the effective throughput of these pictures.

Just like I won't trust voice assistants to make purchases for me, or make decisions that actually matter, there is no way in hell that I'm letting an LLM be able to charge my credit card, let alone book flights for me lol

Think of how much work it'll create to correct these charges. I bet there's application for understanding and issuing refunds & corrections…

I suspect our future is going to be a lot more frustrating, both from AI screwups and the atrophied skills of humans

You'll be dealing with AI agents all the way down.

A decade ago, I used one of the hotel aggregator sites to reserve rooms for vacation, and as I call the hotel to double check something on my way to the airport, I find out that I don't actually have a reservation and my room is already occupied. They couldn't do anything about it, as it was the 3rd party aggregator's mistake.

Just getting the aggregator to admit, that no, even though their system says I have a reservation, the hotel confirmed it didn't exist took over an hour. I had to go through several layers of customer service, and I suspect different call centers, until someone called the hotel themselves and issued a refund.

It was miserable and stressful to do from the airport, I would have lost my mind if I had to deal with chatbots for what was already a terrible experience with an automated purchase.

As I understand it, ChatGPT loads the app, performs safe actions, but in the end shows you an UI to confirm the purchase.

The main showstopper here is trust.

I just can't let anything AI make decisions that have consequences, like spending money, buying anything, planning vacations, flights etc. It's so bad now (I've just tried) that I'm not sure if it will ever gain my trust.

I see your point in user trust, and that's fair, but the same concerns have been prevalent since GPT3 rolled out , that no one would trust these tools to write or edit anything. However, since then users are growing to be more and more attuned to filter and distinguish the quality of the responses (doing invisible A/B testing of these responses), so maybe that's what providers want to capitalize on.

ChatGPT has become one of the top-most browsed websites, and they want to capitalize on it even if 2% of the people actually trust the new integrations.

You can build your own system and set the model temperature to 0.0, then it won't guess or be fancy. It'll present the data exactly.

not to mention the privacy concerns associated with connecting my entire life to OpenAI or Anthropic. If you have the memory feature enabled, it's scary how much ChatGPT knows about you already and can even infer implicit thoughts and patterns about you as a person.

I am sure it already knows a lot regardless of the memory feature, as long you're sharing your chat history/ have your history enabled, but I agree, it'd simply worsen it.

OpenAI has had this opportunity to do this since their meteoric adoption and fumbled it with plugins and then GPTs. Ironically, Anthropic's MCP could be just the ingredient needed to capture this position.

Why would you go inside a chat box and try to force fit applications and show the applications in weird ways and then finally link out to the actual application instead of just putting a chat box inside the application which is the accepted way.

If I had a human assistant, I'd ask them to book my flight. The chat box is your window to your AI assistant. Maybe this new assistant hasn't earned your trust yet, but it makes sense that trust-aside, you'd ask your assistant to do whatever they could do for you.

Right. But my assistant wouldn't show me a new screen and ask me to do things in it :)

It’s an assistant to the assistant

Years ago (in the age of flip phones, think pre 2001) I worked at a bank.

When we launched our mobile banking platform, one of the PM's there swore up and down that we should be piloting banking by text message. He was fabulously wrong at the time and in the end got a lot of things right.

There are a lot of applications that could fit in a text box provided that your not doing the work rather that your delegating it.

This is basically Super App, most super apps was based off chat, this one is also chat, except the chat is with AI, or let’s be honest, with millions of dead people or poor workers.

Searching? Google has become shit and ads.

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