When we got a form of such search, it searched all of the internet alongside with the functions of your software on your computer. You had to tell it manually what software you have and when it found something you had to fish out the description of what to click to get the functionality you are seeking and then click through some dumb ui to actually invoke it.
Agents are the first thing that can lead you directly from "I know what I want my computer to do." to "Actually doing it."
Success of agents is founded on the profound and sustained failure of all of the software designers and developers ever.
apropos ?
Obviously I'd prefer to ask specific questions to my expert human friend sitting at the next desk over, but sadly they don't exist.
I just hope there is a future where this tech exists without such big downsides.
Even the data centre using this probably uses less net energy, and costs less, to build one of these dumb arrows than the aggregate sum of the energy used to keep you alive while you Googled for the answer. (Including heating/cooling the building, powering the equipment growing the food you eat, etc.)
People have been saying "we don't need docs", "nobody reads docs", "they'll figure it out". They experience the pain of a new employee onboarding but never treat this as a signal for the user experience. The user can't just walk over to the developer's desk. But luckily we got stack overflow, blogs, and Google. Somewhere someone explains it! The problem became finding it!
But hey, why do things the "hard" way when you can just throw money at the problem? Or better yet, dismiss the problem by calling the user an idiot.
You're right. What a time to be alive. We've created a world where this product is useful. And not even to because dark patterns exist, but simply because we've always wanted to avoid taking a step back and thinking or getting an outside view. Because it isn't obvious if a robot has to teach you what button to press. If it does, you probably should be ashamed (there are, as always, exceptions)
That said, I do think there's still a lot of utility you this. Those exceptions aren't uncommon. This'll help people learn programs like FreeCAD or Blender, or whatever. Where the complexity is naturally high. But also I do think we should recognize the silliness of many problems that this does solve that shouldn't be problems in the first place.
Garage sale signs are a good example of this. The person making the sign knows what it says, so they can "read" it from farther away than someone who doesn't already know what it says.
Indeed, what a time to be able.
/s