DmytriPeople who grew up playing Zork and other Infocom games know that chat interfaces don't have to be perfect to be magical. Conversational interfaces are awesome, and it's amazing to see them develop.
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I definitely prefer a conversational interface to a Byzantine GUI, but then my favourite UX remains the Linux command line.
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The trouble is that a lot of the hype is based around chatbots not being an interface, but a universal knower and doer, as a kind of silver bullet for automation in general, as well as a creator of code, text, images, movies, etc.
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When the chatbot is an interface, the skill and effort remain with the user. They are using a conversational interface to make something worth making or to find something worth knowing, and that skill and effort is what makes it valuable.
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When the idea is you can offload the knowing and doing to the AI, that the chatbot is not an interface but a skilled servant, then it's presumed that the user isn't adding any skill or effort of their own. This is where things go off the rails.
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Feasibility comes into question, like can "AI" (LLMs, etc.) really know and do things without human skill and knowledge? Early results don't look good. And economic questions, like if it can be produced with no skill and effort, is it worth anything?
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6/11
Well, technically the answer is no, not unless supply can be constrained.
When the dust settles, the AI wars will be settled in one of two ways.
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One is a small set of companies effectively prevents competition by hoarding capital, hardware, and network resources, effectively blocking new entrants and stifling innovation. Let's call that the #enshittification path.
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8/11
The other is that companies focus on conversational interfaces, not on the agency of the chatbot, but on the agency of the people using them, whether they are shopping, creating software, writing, or whatever, focusing on maximizing the agency of the person.
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Let's call this the #dialogic path, where rigid complex GUIs give way to fluid language-based interfaces.
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While the #enshittification path depends on centralization and hoarding to create an all-knowing oracle, the #dialogic path depends on diffusion, openness, and human-centred design to create a powerful, expressive lever for human agency.
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Walrus 🏴Many years before Linux, I really liked the command line on the Nascom Z80 computer I built from a kit, and the CP/M command line it eventually had.