ChatBotsAsInterface

Context: ChatBots

(ReadWith) : ChatGPT, CardsInTheStream, TheNewFlowInternet, the BotEconomy

2024 : AskMyBook / NotebookLM are starting to make chat the interface to collections of documents.

2022 : ChatGPT has revolutionized everyone's thinking about how powerful a UI chat can actually be. See important assertions on AIAndEducationExploded

Previously

Chat is the new user-interface.

• we've stopped going to web-sites
• we've stopped installing new apps on our mobile devices
• we're increasingly in high flux rivers ... WalledRiver, FaceBook, Slack, Telegram, RocketChat
• we want to interact and engage with our computer systems by having thing participate in these streams ... as if they were agents ... capable of responding to questions, posting notifications and instigating new interactions.

Hence the return of Chat-bots. Agentlike front-ends to other remote systems that can be invoked within chat / flow contexts.

AlistairCroll on On Chat as Interface

Nice ... they use text. And are (as of today, new and therefore simple ... an open space for outsiders to experiment).

The new PlatformWars

FaceBook have now embraced them. A move which will probably see them control even more of our online lives. How soon before chats within Messenger become the preferred or only way that organizations deal with members of the public.

Questions

• Will there be common API for bots to work in both Messenger AND WhatsApp?

Counter

Bots won't replace Apps

It’s no stretch to see WeChat and its ilk not as SMS replacements but as nascent visions of a mobile OS whose UI paradigm is, rather than rigidly app-centric, thread-centric (and not, strictly speaking, conversation-centric).