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Comment by lysecret | Hacker News Reader

It’s funny how every podcaster/public ai figure is so certain text as a Ui will go away and it’s not going anywhere.

A few days ago I was trying to unsubscribe to a service (notably an AI 3D modeling tool that I was curious about).

I spent 5 minutes trying to find a way to unsubscribe and couldn't. Finally, I found it buried in the plan page as one of those low-contrast ellipses on the plan card.

Instead of unsubscribing me or taking me to a form, it opened a convos with an AI chatbot with a preconfigured "unsubscribe" prompt. I have never felt more angry with a UI that I had to waste more time talking to a robot before it would render the unsubscribe button in the chat.

Why would we bring the most hated feature of automated phone calls to apps? As a frontend engineer I am horrified by these trends.

It's probably increased during my lifetime. People used to talk, now they sit and text into smartphones.

There might be some confusion about the transition to what some call post-literate era: era where text is not the primary medium. That’s not necessarily bad because you get the advantages of other mediums - oral and visual but it is something to keep in mind.

I'm bit skeptical that a post-literate era is happening. I gather it appears in some sci-fi but I don't see much sign in reality. I mean here we are on a text only site. If anything we seem to be heading for a 100% literate society. Literacy graphs here: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cross-country-literacy-ra...

I don’t think the post-illiterate era means that text will disappear. I think it’s just not going to be dominant anymore but I also have my reservations since I do prefer the text medium.

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