People said this about Alexa/Siri et al and it didn’t happen. ChatGPT is way better at understanding you, so that’s a big boost. It could be a great tool/assistant but it probably won’t replace apps.
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.
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.
An interface based on voice only has an issue: people tend to not live alone. As children they live with their parents. As adult, many want to live with a significant other.
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.
> Consider the friction when consumers grumble about streaming services fragmenting. They just want one. They don't want to subscribe to 5+.
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.
> 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?'
Phones with apps have been around for 29 years. I'm calling BS on your prediction now.
I was thinking the same way, but here's where I could imagine things being different this time (Fully aware that I just like anyone else is just guessing about where we'll end up)
- 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 spent a lot of time working on the product side in the Voice UI space, and therefore have a lot of opinions. I could totally end up with a wrong prediction, and my history may make me blind to changes, but I think a chat assistant is a great addition to a rich GUI for simple tasks.
> 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.
Agree that Alpaca is Important. I got the smallest one running on a pathetic notebook… 2 cores, 8GB RAM. It was slow. It was sloppy. But it worked. Getting these things running on GPU/NPU will be very compelling, especially if we don’t hit a wall on compression. I think a sweet spot exists where consumer clients are powerful enough and models are small enough to deliver value and privacy.
I think you're missing the fact that the LLM could also generate the frontend on the fly by e.g. spitting out frontend code in a markup language like QML. What's a multi-activity Android app if not an elaborate notebook? Branding can just be a parameter.
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.
Chat can be an interface, but its also essentially a universal programming language which can be put behind (or generate itself) any kind of interface.
It almost certainly won't take the form of a text format. Impersonating a chatbot or a search engine GUI is just the fastest way for OpenAI to accumulate a few hundred million users, to leave the competition for user data and metadata behind.
This moves the advertisement opportunity to the chat owner. If you want to use chat (+api) to book a table at a restaurant, then the reservation-api company loses a change to advertise to you vs. if you used a dedicated reservation-web-app.
Oh I see what you mean, yes. The reservation api company will have to get money through other means (either from the user via OpenAI or from the restaurant).
Honestly I see this as a positive change, I'd rather be the customer than the product.
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.