[derekcheng08]

I suspect there are many, many things for which chat is a great interface. And by positioning ChatGPT as the distributor for all these things, they get to be the new Google. But you're also right that many domains for which a purpose-built interface is the right approach, and if the domain is valuable enough, it'll have someone coming after it to build that.

[munk-a]

I have yet to see a chat agent deployed that is more popular than tailored browsing methods. The most charitable way to explain this is that the tailored browsing methods already in place are the results of years of careful design and battle testing and that the chat agent is providing most of the value that a tailored browsing method would but without any of the investment required to bring a traditional UX to fruition - that may be the case and if it is then allowing them the same time to be refined and improved would be fair. I am skeptical of that being the only difference though, I think that chatbots are a way to, essentially, outsource the difficult work of locating data within a corpus onto the user and that users will always have a disadvantage compared to the (hopefully) subject matter experts building the system.

So perhaps chatbots are an excellent method for building out a prototype in a new field while you collect usage statistics to build a more refined UX - but it is bizarre that so many businesses seem to be discarding battle tested UXes for chatbots.

[peab]

agree.

Thing is, for those who paid attention to the last chatBot hype cycle, we already knew this. Look at how Google Assistant was portrayed back in 2016. People thought you'd be buying starbucks via the chat. Turns out the starbucks app has a better UX

[sanj]

Hard disagree.

At least in my domains, the "battle-tested" UX is a direct replication of underlying data structures and database tables.

What chat gives you access to is a non-structured input that a clever coder can then sufficiently structure to create a vector database query.

Natural language turns out to be far more flexible and nuanced interface than walls of checkboxes.

[raducu]

> I have yet to see a chat agent deployed that is more popular than tailored browsing methods.

Not an agent, but I've seen people choose doctors based on asking ChatGpt for criteria and the did make those appointments. Saved them countless web interfaces to dig through.

ChatGpt saved me so much money by searching for discount coupons on courses.

It even offered free entrance passwords on events I didn't know had such a thing (I asked it where the event was and it also told me the free entrance password it found on some obscure site).

I've seen doctors use ChatGpt to generate medical letters -- Chat Gpt used some medical letters python code and the doctors loved the result.

I've used ChatGpt to trim an energy bill to 10 pages because my current provider generated a 12 page bill in an attempt to prevent me from switching (because they knew the other provider did not accept bills of more than 10 pages).

Combined with how incredibly good codex is, combined with how easily chat gpt can just create throw away one-time apps, no way the whole agent interface doesn't eat a huge chunk of the traditional UX software we are used to.

[anal_reactor]

> the tailored browsing methods already in place are the results of years of careful design and battle testing

Have you ever worked in a corporation? Do you really think that Windows 8 UI was the fruit of years of careful design? What about Workday?

> but it is bizarre that so many businesses seem to be discarding battle tested UXes for chatbots

Not really. If the chatbot is smart enough then chatbot is the more natural interface. I've seen people who prefer to say "hey siri set alarm clock for 10 AM" rather than use the UI. Which makes sense, because language is the way people literally have evolved specialized organs for. If anything, language is the "battle tested UX", and the other stuff is temporary fad.

Of course the problem is that most chatbots aren't smart. But this is a purely technical problem that can be solved within foreseeable future.

[foobarian]

I knew it!

-diehard CLI user