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by burkaman 1272 days ago
> you want to book your table at restaurant so you tell your AI which will inform restaurant's AI to book a table for you. In this whole scenario where is UI?

- "book me a table at Dorsia's tonight around 6"

- "The closest available reservation is at 8:30pm, would you like me to book that?"

- "no that's too late, are any other days open?"

- "The next available 6pm reservation is on Monday next week, would you like me to book that?"

- "no I just mean 8:30 tonight is too late because I have an early thing tomorrow, I'll take any time on another day"

- "Ok, there is a 10pm reservation available tomorrow night, would you like me to book that?"

- "ok I didn't mean literally any time, is the kitchen even still open at 10? can you just show me a calendar with availability and I'll pick a good time"

I can't think of any task that I currently accomplish using an online interface that would be more enjoyably or efficiently accomplished by having a conversation with an AI (or a human). The AI doesn't replace the interface, it replaces the communication protocol, which is obviously a bad idea. Clicking Reserve and sending a TCP request is a lot more predictable, efficient, and repeatable than instructing your AI to chat with their AI.

1 comments

You made an imaginary scenario designed to make the AI look bad. Of course that’s not a great display of the use case.

How about this?

> Book me a table for me and Michele tonight at Kingsley’s.

> “Okay, I checked in at Kingsley’s but there’s nothing available until 9pm. I see you have an early flight tomorrow and won’t be returning until Friday so may I suggest The Lancaster instead? There’s space at 6:30. Michele has rated The Lancaster a 9/10.”

> Sounds good!

> “Reservation confirmed. I’ve created an event in your calendar and invited her. Also, it looks like there’s a basketball game happening downtown tonight so I suggest leaving by 5:37pm”

——

I think it’s hard to see past the uncanny valley of AI but the reality is that we’re not going to abandon AI when it’s only 85% there. You could say the same thing about speech-to-text a half decade ago (“I can’t imagine fixing the mistakes will be faster than just typing it yourself”), but I dictated this entire post. Technology moves quickly.