ChatGPT was launched simply over a yr in the past (on the finish of November 2022), and numerous individuals have already written about their experiences utilizing it in all kinds of settings. (I even contributed my very own scorching take final yr with my O’Reilly Radar article Real-Real-World Programming with ChatGPT.) What extra is left to say by now? Well, I guess only a few of these individuals have truly chatted with ChatGPT. And by “chat” I imply the unique sense of the phrase—to carry a back-and-forth verbal dialog with it similar to how you’ll chat with a fellow human being. I not too long ago chatted with ChatGPT, and I need to use that have to mirror on the usability of voice interfaces for AI instruments based mostly on Large Language Models. I’m personally on this subject since I’m a professor who researches human-computer interplay, consumer expertise design, and cognitive science, so AI voice interfaces are fascinating to me.
Here’s what I did: In December 2023 I put in the official ChatGPT iOS app from OpenAI on my iPhone and used its voice enter mode to carry a number of hour-long conversations with it whereas driving long-distance on California highways. I wore customary Apple earbuds with a built-in mic and talked with ChatGPT similar to how I’d be speaking to somebody on the cellphone whereas driving. These lengthy solo drives have been the right alternative to check out ChatGPT’s voice characteristic as a result of I couldn’t work together with the app utilizing my fingers for security causes.
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I had a really clear use case in thoughts: I wished a dialog companion to maintain me awake and alert whereas driving long-distance on my own. I’ve discovered that listening to music or podcasts doesn’t maintain me alert after I’m drained as a result of it’s such a passive expertise—however what does maintain me awake is having somebody to speak to, both within the automobile or remotely on the cellphone. Could ChatGPT exchange a human dialog companion on this position?
The Good: ChatGPT Made Personalized Podcasts to Keep Me Engaged While Driving
To not bury the lede, it seems that it did a outstanding job! As I used to be driving I used to be in a position to have interaction in a number of hour-long conversations with ChatGPT that ended solely as a result of I needed to take a relaxation cease or hit the utilization restrict for GPT-4. (I pay for a ChatGPT Plus subscription so I can use essentially the most superior GPT-4 mannequin, however that comes with a utilization restrict that I often hit after about an hour.)
The greatest method to describe my expertise is (borrowing a beautiful time period my pal coined) that it felt like listening to a personalised podcast. Since ChatGPT did a lot of the speaking, it was a principally passive listening expertise on my half apart from occasions after I wished to ask follow-up questions or direct it to vary matters. Critically, this meant I may nonetheless focus most of my consideration on driving safely with a degree of distraction on par with listening to a podcast. But it stored me extra alert than a daily podcast since I may actively direct the move of the dialog.
For a concrete instance of what such a customized podcast felt like, I began one dialog by straight-up asking ChatGPT to maintain me awake whereas I used to be driving in Southern California from Los Angeles to San Diego. So it began by making small-talk about highway journeys typically and asking me about numerous California landmarks that I’ve visited, culminating in asking me extra about San Diego (the place I dwell). When it requested me what locations I preferred visiting essentially the most right here, I discussed the San Diego Zoo and it began telling me a bit about what makes this specific zoo notable. It talked about the idea of “naturalistic enclosures”—a time period I had not heard earlier than—so I requested it to elaborate on what this meant. ChatGPT’s clarification of this idea bought me within the historical past of zoos, particularly the development from holding animals in cages to right this moment’s cage-less naturalistic enclosures, which intention to be higher for animal welfare. During that phase it talked about the time period “menagerie” in passing, which I had not heard of in that context earlier than, so I requested it to elaborate extra. It then went again farther in historical past to explain how a menagerie refers back to the phenomenon of historic rulers holding unique animals for show with out as a lot regard for the animals’ well-being. Listening to that made me notice that I had truly heard the time period menagerie in reference to a Star Trek episode of some kind, however I forgot which one, so I requested ChatGPT to jog my reminiscence. It seems that The Menagerie was a really well-known episode of the unique Star Trek tv sequence, so after chatting about that episode and different well-known Star Trek episodes for a bit, we bought onto the subject of why that present was canceled after solely three seasons however later discovered a a lot bigger viewers in syndication (i.e., re-runs). That in flip bought me curious concerning the idea of syndication within the tv enterprise, so ChatGPT dived extra into this subject. Just a few extra conversational twists and turns later, then I abruptly realized that the hour had flown by and it was time to drag over for a loo break. Success!
Now, I don’t count on you to care in any respect concerning the particulars of the dialog I simply described because it wasn’t your dialog—it was mine! But I actually cared about it on the time since I used to be genuinely curious to study extra concerning the matters that ChatGPT talked about, typically offhand within the midst of telling me about one thing else. It felt a bit like diving down a Wikipedia rabbit gap of following associated hyperlinks, the place every follow-up query I requested led it down one other meandering path. It was excellent for holding me from becoming bored and sleepy throughout my lengthy drive.
ChatGPT isn’t simply good at this form of superficial “personalized podcast about Wikipedia-level trivia” … it may additionally have interaction me in a extra substantive dialog a few process I truly wanted assist with for the time being. In one other hour-long automobile chat, I prompted ChatGPT to assist me design a technique to prepare my large assortment of just about 30 years’ value of non-public and work-related information for backup. I’ve been diligent about knowledge backup all through my life, however my information are fragmented amongst totally different media through the years—burning CDs and DVDs again within the day, a number of generations of exterior onerous drives (which might be in numerous states of decay), college servers, Dropbox, and different cloud companies. For years I had an aspirational aim of unifying all of my backups into one central listing tree, akin to the idea of a monorepo in software program improvement. I’ve not too long ago been brainstorming concepts for tips on how to design such a system and tips on how to take care of the sensible challenges of scaling and upkeep. So I figured that ChatGPT may assist me brainstorm throughout one in every of my lengthy drives. Again it did a superb job at partaking me on this bespoke dialog, and the hour flew by earlier than I needed to take a relaxation cease. I gained’t bore you with particulars of what we mentioned, but it surely felt like speaking with an professional in knowledge administration who was giving me recommendation about tips on how to take care of my specific problem.
Intermission: Why It Feels Kind of Magical
Skeptical readers could also be pondering at this level, “What’s the big deal, it’s just ChatGPT under the hood. I can already do all this from my computer by typing into the ChatGPT text box!” Although that’s technically true, there’s one thing magical about with the ability to do that all hands-free through voice. If you don’t consider me, simply attempt it for an hour. My people concept is that talking and listening are hard-wired into our mind’s innate language circuitry, however writing and studying are discovered expertise (i.e., “software” somewhat than “hardware” in our brains). And that’s why it feels extra magical to carry a verbal dialog with an AI versus having the very same dialog in a textual content field on a display screen. If the AI is nice sufficient, then it nearly feels such as you’re speaking to an actual particular person … at sure occasions after I was getting deep right into a back-and-forth dialog I practically forgot I used to be speaking to a machine. However, that phantasm broke in a number of methods …
The Not-So-Good: Usability Limitations of the ChatGPT Voice Interface
Despite my constructive experiences with ChatGPT’s voice mode, it nonetheless didn’t dwell as much as the gold customary of feeling like I used to be speaking with a fellow human being. That’s okay, although, since that is an extremely excessive bar! Here are a number of the methods it fell brief.
- Must communicate whole request abruptly: Most notably, it felt unnatural to have to talk my whole request abruptly with out pausing. Whenever I paused for too lengthy, ChatGPT would interpret what I mentioned as far as my request and begin processing it. As an analogy, when typing a request in a textual content chat, you may hit the Enter or Send buttons … think about how bizarre it will be if ChatGPT began answering you the very second you stopped typing for one second! Note that in human conversations, particularly face-to-face, we use visible cues to inform whether or not our dialog companion is completed speaking or whether or not they’re pausing a bit to consider the following factor to say. Even over the cellphone, we are able to inform by vocal inflections whether or not they’re briefly paused and need to maintain speaking, or whether or not they’re performed with their flip and prepared for us to reply. Since ChatGPT can’t do any of that (but!) I typically needed to suppose onerous about what I wished to say after which say it abruptly with out pausing. This was nice for easy requests like “Tell me more about naturalistic enclosures in zoos,” however for extra advanced requests like describing some aspect of my knowledge backup setup, it was painful to should blurt out as a lot as I may with out pausing. Even extra annoyingly, I’d typically make errors when speaking a lot abruptly with out pausing. Ideally the app would do a greater job at detecting pauses in human speech, taking each context and vocal intonations into consideration. An simpler hack can be to have a voice command like “DONE” or “OVER” (like when individuals use walkie-talkies) to sign that I’m performed speaking; nevertheless, this is able to additionally really feel unnatural for informal customers.
- Unpredictable wait occasions: Wait occasions (latency) for ChatGPT’s responses are unpredictable, and there aren’t audio cues to assist me set up an expectation for the way lengthy I would like to attend earlier than it responds. There’s a click on sound when it begins processing my request, however then I might have to attend a number of seconds in silence earlier than listening to a response … possibly it’s just one second or possibly it’s 5 seconds. That mentioned, if I ask it to browse the online, then it performs a steady ready sound; net looking takes longer, possibly ten to twenty seconds, however at the very least I get to listen to a “waiting” sound. (I don’t thoughts ChatGPT taking longer right here since a human would additionally take extra time to browse the online. However, net looking is annoying after I don’t explicitly ask it to browse. Oftentimes I need a quick reply however one thing I say triggers a browse with out me desiring to.) In distinction, when talking with a human face-to-face, I can use visible cues to inform whether or not the opposite particular person is deep in thought or when they’ll probably reply; and even over the cellphone the opposite particular person could say “ummm” or “hold on one sec, lemme think” or “ok let me look this up on the web, hang tight for a while …” in the event that they want extra time to suppose via their response. However, since I don’t get any of those verbal cues from ChatGPT, unpredictable wait occasions break the phantasm of speaking to an individual.
- Cannot interrupt whereas it’s talking: I at all times needed to watch for ChatGPT to fully end speaking earlier than it will take heed to my subsequent request. And since I by no means know forward of time how lengthy it deliberate to speak for throughout a selected flip (i.e., what number of phrases its LLM-generated response is), after I wished to say one thing mid-way it was aggravating to have to attend. I later noticed that I may truly interrupt it by tapping on the app on my cellphone display screen, however since I used to be driving and hands-free, I couldn’t safely do this. Also, that looks as if a cumbersome interplay; I ought to be capable to simply speak after I need to, even when it’s speaking. This limitation made the dialog really feel like we have been utilizing a walkie-talkie the place just one celebration can speak without delay. And it’s not simply me—this idea of overlapping speech is widely-studied in linguistics and communication analysis. Humans naturally speak over each other for numerous causes, so not with the ability to do that with ChatGPT made our dialog really feel much less fluid. Even implementing a characteristic like a voice command for interruption can be nice, like possibly if I say “pause” or “wait” then it may cease and await my request.
- Speech recognition errors: ChatGPT’s speech recognition system (presumably based mostly on OpenAI’s open-source Whisper mannequin) is excellent, but it surely does at occasions misread what I’m saying. What’s stranger is that typically it thinks I mentioned one thing after I didn’t, possibly as a result of it picked up on background rumbles in my automobile. Several occasions I wouldn’t be saying something and abruptly it responds out of the blue; and after I verify the written transcript later, it thinks that I mentioned one thing like “Thank you for watching!” (which I by no means mentioned). At different occasions it tries to prematurely finish the dialog though I’m not performed, possibly as a result of it mistakenly detected that I mentioned one thing alongside the strains of “Thanks …” with none follow-up. Misrecognizing phrases is forgivable, however I really feel that it shouldn’t ever interpret background sounds as phrases. Of course, if there have been different individuals within the automobile with me and both they talked or I used to be speaking to them, then I may additionally perceive how ChatGPT would mistakenly interpret that as being a request for it; always-listening house assistants like Alexa have had this difficulty for years. A extra superior AI would study to filter out each different individuals’s voices and in addition infer after I was talking with another person and never it. For occasion, when it detects that my sentence is approach off subject, possibly meaning I’m talking with another person within the automobile; it may at the very least ask me “Were you talking to me just now?” when it’s unsure. More usually, the concept of explicitly asking me for clarification when it’s unsure would go a great distance towards making these interactions really feel extra human; that’s what I (a consultant human!) would do if I have been on a loud cellphone reference to somebody and didn’t hear them clearly.
- Overly-agreeable synthetic tone: Lastly, it’s nonetheless ChatGPT beneath the hood, so all of the common limitations of ChatGPT apply right here. Most notably, ChatGPT is tuned to be overly-friendly and overly-agreeable (sounding like a customer support agent) so it should merely associate with no matter you are saying. Thus, by default it is not going to be good at pushing again on you or difficult your pondering in any significant methods, similar to the way you wouldn’t count on a customer support agent to problem what you say. Moreover, the overly-friendly tone of its responses may come off as insincere and nearly sarcastic at occasions, though that wasn’t the designers’ intent. Relatedly, it had an inclination to ask me superficial questions after it responds, which sound mildly condescending and break the move of our chat, like, “Sooo, what do YOU think about the San Diego Zoo? What’s YOUR favorite part of the zoo?!?” … when a traditional human wouldn’t break the conversational move so awkwardly like that. Lastly, ChatGPT is educated on knowledge on the general public web (and may also browse the online to get extra up to date net contents), so it gained’t do as nicely when you’re asking about issues that haven’t been mentioned a lot on-line.
To summarize the above limitations, chatting with ChatGPT on my cellphone felt like utilizing a walkie-talkie over a loud channel to speak to an overly-agreeable however socially-unaware customer support agent who has in depth data concerning the contents of the general public web.
Parting Thoughts: Cautiously Optimistic About the Future
Despite these limitations, I’m excited to see what’s in retailer for future voice interfaces to LLM-based AI instruments like ChatGPT. My early experiences of speaking with ChatGPT whereas driving gave me a glimpse into what many people have seen rising up in sci-fi exhibits similar to Star Trek, the place individuals can speak to an omnipresent pc to ask questions, maintain conversations, or difficulty instructions. Hands-free operation isn’t helpful solely whereas driving—it might probably make computing really ubiquitous by letting us seamlessly work together with computation whereas we’re within the midst of doing house responsibilities, cooking, or childcare; and it might probably make computing extra accessible to broader teams of individuals, similar to these with mobility impairments.
We nonetheless have an extended method to go, although. Right now the ChatGPT iPhone app isn’t hooked as much as exterior instruments beside a primary net browser, however with the recently-announced GPT retailer (and sure upcoming LLM app shops from different corporations) it should quickly be doable to hook up LLMs to quite a lot of instruments that may handle our emails, procuring lists, private funds, house automation, and extra. Recent analysis has began exploring these concepts by connecting ChatGPT to house assistants similar to Amazon Alexa (2023 arXiv paper PDF). Another promising line of labor is best context consciousness: for example, Meta and Ray-Ban not too long ago introduced new Smart Glasses which permit customers to talk with an AI assistant that may see what they’re seeing (evaluate from The Verge). In my driving situation, you might think about carrying these glasses and having the AI act extra like a passenger sitting alongside you within the automobile seeing what you see somewhat than somebody on the opposite finish of a cellphone name. Critically, a passenger can pause the dialog and inform you to observe the highway extra rigorously in the event that they see a doable hazard forward; a future AI powered by such good glasses might be able to do the identical factor. Alternatively, vehicles at the moment are beginning to immediately embed AI into leisure programs (e.g., Volkswagen announcement at CES 2024), so future iterations may combine cameras and 3-D monitoring to enhance LLMs. One may additionally think about smartglasses-based multimodal interactions the place you level to things in any bodily surroundings and begin conversations with the AI assistant about your environment (try this MKBHD YouTube Short displaying AI chat with good glasses).
Of course, these increasingly-intense ranges of AI interplay and automation include dangers, similar to consumer overreliance, unintended command execution, psychological or bodily well being hazards, and safety/privateness violations. Thus, will probably be vital to design methods to each handle these dangers and educate customers about tips on how to safely function these increasingly-powerful programs. Thank you very a lot for studying. Sooo, what do YOU take into consideration ChatGPT’s voice mode?!? What’s YOUR favourite and least favourite elements?