This kind of reminds me of when there was a lot of hype around messenger apps and this idea that we'd just do everything through a chat interface / chat bot.
It never panned out, arguably because the technology wasn't quite there yet (this was well before ChatGPT came out), but I thought the bigger problem was that people thought that a chat UI was the ultimate user interface. Just didn't feel right to me. For simple tasks, sure, but otherwise it felt like for "exploratory" tasks it made more sense to have a graphical user interface of some kind.
Same sentiments apply to the hype around agents. Even in a hypothetical world where agents work as well as any human I don't think an agent/chatbot UI is necessarily the ultimate user interface. If I'm asking an agent questions, it makes sense for it to show rather than tell in many contexts. Even in a world where agents capture much of the way we interact with computers, it might make more sense for them to show us using 3rd party SaaS apps.
It was the same then as it is now. Chatbot providers had bots to sell, now autocomplete providers have autocomplete to sell. Marketing people just say what they get paid to say.
It never panned out, arguably because the technology wasn't quite there yet (this was well before ChatGPT came out), but I thought the bigger problem was that people thought that a chat UI was the ultimate user interface. Just didn't feel right to me. For simple tasks, sure, but otherwise it felt like for "exploratory" tasks it made more sense to have a graphical user interface of some kind.
Same sentiments apply to the hype around agents. Even in a hypothetical world where agents work as well as any human I don't think an agent/chatbot UI is necessarily the ultimate user interface. If I'm asking an agent questions, it makes sense for it to show rather than tell in many contexts. Even in a world where agents capture much of the way we interact with computers, it might make more sense for them to show us using 3rd party SaaS apps.