I am simultaneously bullish Apple while being bearish iMessage as an interface.
The rise of Poke, Interaction, and these other claws are great! But in no way do I believe that a text based chat interface (or Voice is not the ideal interface for that matter) is the ideal shape.
Typing is really quite a drag.
Most people are very lazy.
Picking from a list of options takes much less effort than typing out a response. People like to click choose!
Predicting the next desire
I think the crux here is mainly that the agent puts in absurd amount of reasoning effort "behind the scenes". What the user sees / interacts with is just steering in necessary direction.
If we move from predicting the next token to predicting the next desire then what is the format for it?
Most of the tokens being churned will be spent on modelling what the user wants passively.
See The surface or the system?.
Examples of "induced fit"
- Choosing from precomputed options, a list of dropdowns.
- What to eat for dinner
- Who to meet after work?
- "Visualizations"
See Learning, creating, communicating.
The medium
What is the ideal interface for diffusion models? What about text? Are they the same thing? What is different?
When I rotate and play with ideas in my head? How can I make a system that helps that?
How can I have induced fit with the ideas of the mind and the medium?
How can the medium reach out to greet you?
See Maybe it's just HTML.
Your operating system was not made for you
Our current reality is so stiflingly rigid.
It will seem archaic to your children that you grew up playing deterministic videogames.
That any thirst for information you had could only be quenched by the work of another human.
Every system you interact with has strict rules and bounds that you cannot control, you cannot tune, you cannot change.
The world you inhabited was monomorphic.
Interactions you have digitally existed within the same, bland, stale, operating system. Where you were the one that had to morph yourself around the system, rather than the system being free putty for you to mold in your hands.
It will be unjust that we had to spend so long at the mercy of these rigid systems. You have wasted countless hours learning the layouts of software that have long died. You have dragged yourself through website menus and forms, burning your precious synapses on menial tasks that simply do not matter, a tragedy of circumstance. Much like the fate of your ancestors toiling in the fields because that was simply the way the world worked.
Not to mention you had to be tethered to the screens in order to suck out the fresh juice of knowledge. The portal between the physical and digital world haven't yet ruptured and (merged) beautifully. You had to cling to your glass rectangle sitting like a volcanic amoeba.
Your operating system was not made for you.