[jameshart]

It's actually worse than that.

Why do we need web apps or iOS apps? They're just task specific computer interfaces.

It's possible that this kind of AI tech eliminates the need for task specific computer interfaces at all.

You don't need to tell the LLM to code up a TODO list app so you can sell it in the App Store.

The user doesn't even need to tell an LLM to make them a TODO list app.

Given an LLM that can persist and restore context, the user can just use the LLM as a personal assistant that keeps track of their TODO list.

Whatever the software is that we're working alongside our AI colleagues to build in ten years' time, I don't think it's going to be automated tests for apps and websites.

[amluto]

I’m somewhat skeptical, at least for LLMs per se. They are language models. They have, in many respects, superhuman abilities, but I wouldn’t really want to trust things that require accuracy to an unaided human or even an unaided superhuman.

I would expect better results from LLMs using programming languages, perhaps ones tailored to LLMs, to prepare tasks on behalf of their users.

(Also, LLMs doing anything direct are an incredibly inefficient use of computing resources. There are quite a few orders of magnitude of difference between the FLOPs needed to do basic calculations and the FLOPs needed to run inference on a large model that may be able to do those calculations if well trained.)

[jameshart]

The thing is, a lot of tasks don't require accuracy.

We force accuracy on them when we computerize them, because computers historically haven't handled ambiguity well. That demands the skill of 'programming' - interpreting fuzzy real world problems, making them precise enough to be modeled in a way that classical computing can handle, and making computer routines to help.

But the underlying problem humans are looking for a bicycle-for-the-mind to make easier often didn't start off 'precise' at all.

[karmasimida]

Task interface is for human though, when LLM goes wrong, you can intervene. But I agree, it will be less critical moving forward.