[basch]

Exactly. Unfortunately, I think the "chat" aspect is obscuring what is actually happening here, and distracting from the achievement.

First, the human input is extremely flexible, but can include instructions. It is natural language programming.

Second, the "conversation" has state. I can give an instruction, and then a followup instruction that adds to the first instruction. Someday down the road there will be two states, your account state (instructions you taught it that it retains as long as you are logged in. Maybe my account can have multiple state buckets/buildings I can enter, one of one set of rules, one for another. Could call them programs or routines. (computer execute study routine)) and temporary state (instructions it retains only for the duration of the conversation/search.)

The exciting part here is being able to query data and manipulate it in memory. Making a search, refining the search, redirecting the search in a different direction when its not working. That collaborative, iterative type search doesnt really exist at the moment. I cant tell google "the results you just returned are garbage, here is why, try again."

It is more like a fuzzy commandline. The chatbotness is just a layer of cute on top, that isnt completely necessary.

[cjauvin]

I never thought of this, but now that I see your idea of the "two levels of state", I find it incredibly likely and clear that it's going to work like that eventually, yes.

[basch]

And lets look at the natural evolution/expectation from a corporation like Microsoft. They will sell this as a service to businesses. It is again, like Vista and others, an enterprise product being beta tested on consumers Joe Public.

The enterprise product will start with its own state. It will be something you can limit to specific tasks. Youll be able to write an app that takes instructions and outputs data in magical ways completely different than anything before. Normal data manipulation programming will be replaced by this weird opaque black box, that is ever changing, and you will need to trust consistently outputs the same thing given an identical input.