Chat is AI’s command line
As we build interfaces for these new AI models, we keep leaning on familiar ones. Increasingly, everything is chat. Much in the same way that everything used to be a command line.
We kept the command line as computing evolved, but we also added new ways to work (and think).
Chat is great for giving rough direction. It’s less suited to the fine-grained changes and little tweaks that follow. Sometimes I just want to reach in and move something.
Get your hands on it. Ivan Sutherland’s Sketchpad let people draw on a screen with a light pen. Move a point and its connected lines followed. The computer maintained relationships as you moved things around.
Let me directly change the thing we’re working on! What if AI automatically visualized the day we’re planning on a timeline? Let me move lunch a little later, make room for the zoo, swap between dinner options. The computer keeps track of travel time and opening hours while I tweak things directly.
Friday in Taipei
Learn by editing. VisiCalc let people change a value and watch dependent calculations update. A spreadsheet became a working model. Try an assumption and see where it leads.
Let the computer contribute while I experiment! I move lunch across the neighborhood and the walking route changes with it. A park or an old-house walk appears along the way. Maybe we should stop there? I add it and see how the afternoon unfolds. Cmd/Ctrl+Z takes me back a step. Moving things around gives me new ideas.
Friday in Taipei
Loading Taipei streets…
Give the work somewhere to live. Xerox Star brought documents, folders, and other office objects into a unified desktop. Select objects directly and modify them. The interface made state visible and created a world for your work to live in.
Let me see where everything stands! I choose a restaurant and ask the computer to reserve a table. It’s checking availability; the museum is already booked; the night market is still a maybe. A question about dinner appears beside the restaurant. I pick a time, and the confirmation slips into place. The state of the work is right there in the work.
Friday in Taipei
I want more of this! Trying something, seeing what happens, having another idea. Intelligence woven into the interface. Learning and building the way we did in the sandbox. I want a world built to make ourselves more capable with AI, not just to have more capable agents to talk to.