When it comes to the consumer technology business, the UI is the biggest roadblock and enabler. Notice I didn’t say consumer technology engineering, but business. You see, for engineering, the UI isn't any more important than the backend, processing, sensors, or any other major part. But for the business side, the UI is what creates new evolutions in personal tech products. And I think that one unexpected effect of LLMs is going to be a whole new way we interface with our tech.

UI causes tech product evolutions?

Yup.

Looking at personal computing, the graphical user interface (GUI) is what evolved the business machines of the past into the PCs and laptops of today with cursors and windows and drag and drop and all that stuff you wouldn’t be able to live without. Even if you’re not a normie and you know a terminal like the back of your hand, you have to admit you would hate to have to use it for normal things like browsing the internet (when was the last time you did any online shopping from the terminal?)

The next evolution in personal devices was the capacitive touchscreen, which led to the smartphone revolution. I don’t think I have to explain this one too much; typing 44 33 555 (wait for a second) 555 666 just to write “hello” might be cute nostalgia, but that's all it’s good for. It could be worse, you could still be using a Blackberry.

If you wanna get more technical then the compiler is what facilitates high-level programming languages like C, python, or even (if you remove all constraints on quality) javascript. These are all just UIs for the programmer to interface with machine code. And the fact that that is abstracted away from us leads to a huge boost in productivity and a much more accessible experience. And I get it; you're a tech wizard and you get your self-worth from knowing the x86 instruction set. But you need to be honest with yourself: humans can write better assembly than a compiler, but you can’t. So you need the compiler.

What's the next one?

LLMs and speech interfaces.

The only reason we need input devices that have us provide them with objective, mathematical inputs (a sequence of letters, an x,y position on a 2d screen, a positive signal like a click or a tap) is that they can’t understand us in the ways we normally express our needs and imperatives: speech.

We have to parse the unique language of this big convoluted interface on a screen, translate our wishes into a series of equally convoluted mathematical inputs, and finally have the machine perform what we want. This, instead of doing what we actually want, which is just saying “What's that song that goes "concrete jungle, wet dreams, tomato. there's nothing you can't do”.” (Empire State of Mind btw)

But now that LLMs have solved NLP, we don’t have the restriction of machines being unable to understand what we mean. Now tech companies will be able to revisit the unfulfilled promise and potential of voice assistants like Alexa and Siri. We will soon be able to talk to our devices to communicate what we want, and won’t have to look at a screen unless our end goal is to see something like a movie, a presentation, or some data.

What's next after the PC and the smartphone? Real-life versions of sci-fi AI assistants like HLA 9000 or Jarvis.

Let me be a bit bolder

The biggest effect LLMs will have won’t be their potential as AGI, but their ability to understand verbal commands in a generalized manner. When people say that LLMs will replace white-collar jobs, it won’t be AGI that will be able to make strategic and tactical decisions in an organization.

LLMs will be a general-purpose interface for productivity tools and the people who will be replaced are those whose job is to be an interface between the tools and the people making the real decisions. If your job is to just pump out cookie cutter, color-by-numbers websites or spreadsheets or things like that, then you need to worry. But if you make actual decisions with consideration to your organization as an entity and its efficient operation within its environment, then you will just be unburdened from a lot of busywork

TL;DR

UI innovations lead to new consumer computing products
GUI led to personal computers
Touchscreen led to smartphones
LLMs will lead to the next evolution of personal computing devices
These will be speech interfaces like the ones from Sci-Fi