Matt Webb continues to write the internet’s most thought provoking meditations on AI:
If we are going to have AIs living inside our apps in the future, apps will need to offer a realtime NPC API for AIs to join and collaborate […]
You create a “pool” or a cursor park or (as I call it) an embassy on the whiteboard. The NPCs need somewhere to hang out when they’re idle. […]
NPCs can be proactive! The painter dolphin likes to colour in stars. When you draw a star, the painter cursor ventures out of the embassy and comes and hovers nearby… “oh I can help” it says. It’s ignorable (unlike a notification), so you can ignore it or you can accept its assistance. At which point it colours the star pink for you, then goes back to base till next time. […]
Cursor distance = confidence. When an NPC wants to be proactive, it can hover nearby. It can be pushy when it knows it can help. (It can remember not to pipe up again if it is banished.) There’s a lot of resolution to explore here.
Visual interfaces need a ‘suggestion language’ which is as good as ghosted text is for autocomplete.
Chat is a language model’s terminal interface—a critical affordance when low level input is required but a poor choice when discovery and intuitive ease of use is a priority.