Do Cognitive Abilities Predict Performance in Everyday Computer Tasks? (scitechdaily.com) 107
"Researchers say that a person's intelligence plays a bigger role in their computer proficiency than previously believed," writes SciTechDaily, "so much so that practice alone may not be enough to ensure ease of use."
A new study has found that general cognitive abilities, such as perception, reasoning, and memory, are more important than previously believed in determining a person's ability to perform everyday tasks on a computer... "It is clear that differences between individuals cannot be eliminated simply by means of training," says Antti Oulasvirta [a professor at Finland's Aalto University who conducted extensive human-computer interaction research with his team and the University of Helsinki Department of Psychology]. "In the future, user interfaces need to be streamlined for simpler use. This age-old goal has been forgotten at some point, and awkwardly designed interfaces have become a driver for the digital divide.
"We cannot promote a deeper and more equal use of computers in society unless we solve this basic problem," Oulasvirta says...
This is the first-ever study to measure users' actual ability to perform daily tasks on a PC, as previous studies have relied on participants self-assessing their abilities via questionnaires... "The study revealed that, in particular, working memory, attention, and executive functions stand out as the key abilities. When using a computer, you must determine the order in which things are done and keep in mind what has already been done. A purely mathematical or logical ability does not help in the same way," says university lecturer Viljami Salmela [from the University of Helsinki].
"Our results suggest that contemporary user interfaces are getting so complex that their design is starting to affect inclusivity," their paper concludes, saying that it ultimately raises a question. "How can we design user interfaces to decrease the role of cognitive abilities."
A new study has found that general cognitive abilities, such as perception, reasoning, and memory, are more important than previously believed in determining a person's ability to perform everyday tasks on a computer... "It is clear that differences between individuals cannot be eliminated simply by means of training," says Antti Oulasvirta [a professor at Finland's Aalto University who conducted extensive human-computer interaction research with his team and the University of Helsinki Department of Psychology]. "In the future, user interfaces need to be streamlined for simpler use. This age-old goal has been forgotten at some point, and awkwardly designed interfaces have become a driver for the digital divide.
"We cannot promote a deeper and more equal use of computers in society unless we solve this basic problem," Oulasvirta says...
This is the first-ever study to measure users' actual ability to perform daily tasks on a PC, as previous studies have relied on participants self-assessing their abilities via questionnaires... "The study revealed that, in particular, working memory, attention, and executive functions stand out as the key abilities. When using a computer, you must determine the order in which things are done and keep in mind what has already been done. A purely mathematical or logical ability does not help in the same way," says university lecturer Viljami Salmela [from the University of Helsinki].
"Our results suggest that contemporary user interfaces are getting so complex that their design is starting to affect inclusivity," their paper concludes, saying that it ultimately raises a question. "How can we design user interfaces to decrease the role of cognitive abilities."
OMG is this the stupidest obvious point ever? (Score:1)
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It's mostly wishful thinking. Some people would very much like there to be a single number that can be used to rank everyone with a single definitive test, ideally administered as young as possible.
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Aaaaand fail. Property value, education, health, age, credit rating, etc., etc..
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Indeed. But that is because most people are not smart enough to get anything multi-dimensional.
Re: OMG is this the stupidest obvious point ever? (Score:2)
Or most software is still too basic to effectively interact with people?
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It's mostly wishful thinking. Some people would very much like there to be a single number that can be used to rank everyone with a single definitive test, ideally administered as young as possible.
There are folks that would love to see Gattaca style "test the DNA and push out the invalids" style society built in reality. I have this sneaking suspicion we'd see our political class devastated if it ever came to pass.
Re: OMG is this the stupidest obvious point ever? (Score:2)
Re: OMG is this the stupidest obvious point ever? (Score:4, Informative)
Here is a link to the actual study. It's far more interesting than the slash summary.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/... [sciencedirect.com]
Some of it is not obvious to me. For one thing, there are some intelligence factors that do not help. One of the main points of this study is to drill down and measure which soecific cognitive factors, experience, age, educational attainment, etc make in difference in performance and which do not.
Secondly, some people seem to think the word " diverse" is talking about other races. That's not the usage here. E.g. people with prior experience in a task and those without is the kind of diverse they're talking about in this study.
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In other news, cognitive abilities also affect ability to read and understand the paper.
Dumbed Down (Score:2)
In the future, user interfaces need to be streamlined for simpler use
Great. Just fucking great. /s
I can't wait for the user interface to be *further* dumbed down.
Re: Dumbed Down (Score:2)
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It may seem obvious to those of us who write code every day. But the mantra, mostly by educators, has long been that we need to "educate" everyone, teach kids how to code, so they can make good money and have a good life. There are a LOT of people for whom it's NOT obvious, that intelligence (or at least, a certain type of intelligence) is required.
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Low intelligence or (even worse) unwillingness to use one's intelligence is evently distributed over all of humanity. Obviously, especially stupid people like raceists (which come in all skin-colors as well) try to use the "strategy" of claiming they are better because of their "race". Obviously, that is never the case, but these people deeply believe that because in actual reality they have nothing of value to offer and are instead a problem.
Re: OMG is this the stupidest obvious point ever? (Score:1)
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I think they might, in fact, be pointing out how it's not a factor and you stopped reading too early.
Which... really doesn't speak to well for your... you know what... nevermind.
Prove it. (Score:2)
Researchers say that a person's intelligence plays a bigger role in their computer proficiency than previously believed
Really? You’re going to really claim that bullshit excuse is valid for the Touchscreen Generation who couldn’t figure out what to do with setup.exe with both hands and a Microsoft founder? We LITERALLY build UIs for fucking children now, because target audience to maximize addiction.
If it requires more intelligence to operate a computer today, then the computer operators of yesterday are making MENSA feel stupid.
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If it requires more intelligence to operate a computer today, then the computer operators of yesterday are making MENSA feel stupid.
You seem to be working hard to disprove their theory with the invalidity of your argument.
The claim is that it always required more intelligence to operate a computer well than most people have, not that it requires more now than it used to, and that practice will never make some people good at it because they simply don't have the necessary faculties.
This is a good reason for the interface to coddle people who need coddling, so long as it can also be configurable not to do that so it can get out of the way
Re:Prove it. (Score:4, Informative)
I have the same experience. At work we supply iPhones to our administrative level employees, with one of the reasons being it is simpler to use. It may have been true in the past, but not any longer. Most users struggle at the most basic of things. They don't even know there is a search function, and those who know don't know what to search for. You tell them to install an app, which they know they must search for, and they install the one app that comes on top, which is always an ad. You tell them to reset the phone to factory before returning it for service or replacement, and most just stare at you. The users who have private android phones, seem to go through the tasks in the phone quicker, searching and finding the settings they want without much of an issue. These users are at parity when it comes to cognitive abilities, age, and even share some of the same functions within the organization. So, Google is doing something right with the UX, Apple is not.
Re: Prove it. (Score:1)
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I think the difference here is that the "users who have private android phones"... Have private android phones! They use them for more than just work functions, so they're more used to them in general. I'd also guess that many of the people who are issued Apple work phones also have personal Android phones. That's actually kind of a detriment. I use Apple phones all the time, and Android and I are *not* friends. There are a lot of differences between the two brands and it takes me forever to figure out h
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Most people struggle at the most basic things. Computers use is just an example.
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Most people struggle at the most basic things. Computers use is just an example.
It's not just that, though. Computers have gotten appreciably harder to use over the past twenty years or so. The reason for this is that innovation in the computer industry is driven by need for growth to serve the stockholders, rather than by any actual flaw in the technology that needs to be solved.
Because of that flawed motivation, tech companies feel the need to add something new every year, even if that new thing doesn't make sense. Some of the new features are mostly harmless, but some of them are
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I mostly agree. What we really need is for OSses and software to fionally become a commodity. Obviouslt, some enterprises do nto want that at all (MS, for example), because they they would have to a) deliver quality and b) do it at non-excessive profits. And hence the enshittification continues.
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The last OSes I liked were 10.4 and perhaps up to 10.6.
Mouse wise I have everything switched off, too
The only "special" function keys I use are volume and brightness, and for that I press the Fn-key.
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The last OSes I liked were 10.4 and perhaps up to 10.6.
Mouse wise I have everything switched off, too The only "special" function keys I use are volume and brightness, and for that I press the Fn-key.
Yup. Snow Leopard was the best UI-wise, though there were a few really nice things under the hood after that, like NSURLSession (10.9), NSURLComponents (10.9, but with significant improvements in support for query items in 10.13). So under the hood, I'd say, High Sierra was the high point.
I guess I was reasonably happy with 10.6, 10.9, 10.13, and 10.14 (Mojave), and generally not so happy with all the releases in between or since. After Mojave, they started really breaking things — kexts, 32-bit su
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Yeah, iPhones are quite hard to do many random things on.
I remember switching my work phone to an iPhone a few years ago and during the first 6 months I had to google at least 8 of "How do I?" type things.
Back when I got my first Androind phone I do not remember Googling anything. And less than that total during the many years.
Part of it is likely that i was more used to Android and thus wanted more than I did originally on the Angroid phone, but some functionality is just clunky.
A simple example: on androi
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A simple example: on android setting up voice mail was: It asked for the number when I pressed the voice mail button. on iOS it just said no voice mail number ser and I had too google the magic # code to set it.
For what it's worth, in nearly 20 years I've never had to manually set up voicemail on an iPhone.
Step 1: Insert SIM
Step 2: Voicemail works
Maybe something to do with your carrier?
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If it requires more intelligence to operate a computer today, then the computer operators of yesterday are making MENSA feel stupid.
You seem to be working hard to disprove their theory with the invalidity of your argument.
I get your point. Does every modern business get it? Because I see computers on the desk and in the hands of basically every employee in the 21st Century. Meaning few to none have an assumed problem with understanding or operating them. I’m also guessing given the massive popularity in HR for years that the baseline for computer literacy is as high as any other related requirement for a DEI hire.
The claim is that it always required more intelligence to operate a computer well than most people have, not that it requires more now than it used to, and that practice will never make some people good at it because they simply don't have the necessary faculties.
I joked about setup.exe being replaced by a rather idiot-friendly App Store. We DO literally build UIs
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You used the concept of search as something that the average person isnâ(TM)t going to have a âoebackgroundâ in. When speaking to the Google Generation.
The younger people are going to get it. The older people aren't. But even the younger people won't necessarily know what to search for. At work we have a tool for finding resources. We have many different but similar keywords for the same documents so that people can find them even if they cannot remember the exact name.
But donâ(TM)t worry. If itâ(TM)s still not enough, us meatsacks will be relegated to speaking into a black box with no keyboard or mouse soon.
As it turns out, those interfaces are still really dumb, and if you can read then you do better with a menu with filtering.
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You used the concept of search as something that the average person isnâ(TM)t going to have a âoebackgroundâ in. When speaking to the Google Generation.
The younger people are going to get it. The older people aren't. But even the younger people won't necessarily know what to search for. At work we have a tool for finding resources. We have many different but similar keywords for the same documents so that people can find them even if they cannot remember the exact name.
We can have our doubts today and even tomorrow as to what AI will ultimately be able to do and do well, but I can certainly see AI crushing the human capacity and taking over the tedious responsibility of building search indexes, hash tags, comments, footnotes, and any other thing we meatsacks might require to dig through our data hoarding addictions.
If Search is the tool we must assume enables everyone to utilize the internet in the future, then Search will become as natural as breathing eventually.
But donâ(TM)t worry. If itâ(TM)s still not enough, us meatsacks will be relegated to speaking into a black box with no keyboard or mouse soon.
As it turns out, those interfaces are still really dumb, and if you can read then you do better with a menu with filtering.
For n
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And sadly, I can no longer assume if even a high school graduate is capable of reading well.
I share your sorrow here. High schools are graduating illiterates in ever-greater numbers. Writing is an awesomely efficient way to store and distribute information, but it's worthless if the recipient cannot decode it.
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The younger people are going to get it. The older people aren't.
30 years ago that may have been a reasonable statement, but computer literacy is going down, not up. These days young people with a broken computer have to find an old person to fix it for them.
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I develop software for Android, so I use Androids from different manufacturers for testing. Sometimes I have to rely on search because there's not enough consistency between devices as to how the preferences are structured.
Aim Lower (Score:3)
We LITERALLY build UIs for fucking children now, because target audience to maximize addiction.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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The comments on that video are terrifying.. "OMG so smart".. "I never knew chimps were so smart!c etc etc.
Jesus fucking christ.
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Abtraction if for smart people and makes them much more effective. The thing is that most people are not smart.
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Text interfaces can be just as mind-numbing, trying to recall some arcane sequence of letters and numbers to do something you find you must do after doing it 5 years ago....once. And that text interface is only presenting what its designers are going to allow you to do, it isn't some magic portal into untold realms of power. And that's after you read the incomprehensible documentation that brings in a lot of terms that refer to fuck all.
There are interfaces and there are interfaces. Apple had.a wonderful on
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How about Unix and LInux gui writers give us something like that
We do have something like that. We have a fairly complex tab completion system that, when correctly configured, presents only valid options when the tab key is pressed.
But I do agree that something more like that is desirable; ideally all commands would come with a file that describes their options which could be used for both purposes. It reminds me of SMIT, which was a fairly good tool for that which came with AIX. In a very classic Unix way, it was a wrapper for administrative commands on the system; as
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How about Unix and LInux gui writers give us something like that
We do have something like that. We have a fairly complex tab completion system that, when correctly configured, presents only valid options when the tab key is pressed.
I turn these off. They are never any good and often stand in my way. Plus, when I look at the environment, I do not want 1000's of lines there.
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Some commands' completion is poor, some is quite good. I do agree that the environment poisoning is irritating, and wish that tab completion could be handled in some other way. I'd really like the option to hit perhaps control-tab and get a popup menu of choices instead of a scrolled list, and maybe some explanatory text.
Perhaps a future bash will have some way to handle completions without stuffing everything into the environment. In fact, doesn't it seem like the completions could just loaded from the fil
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Text interfaces can be just as mind-numbing, trying to recall some arcane sequence of letters and numbers to do something you find you must do after doing it 5 years ago....once.
You know what I have for that? I have nice SVN archive with all those things. Yes, I get that doing syuch an archive is wayyyy beyond most people.
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I actually make for nearly everything I do a script, with a relatively long name, or at least an alias in my .alias file.
And if I googled stuff to make it, the hits I used are in the documentation.
Everything under version control, obviously.
I make aliases for every git command, most of them are absolutely counter intuitive to me.
Bonus point: if someone asks me about a rarely used git command, I just look into my aliases: $ alias | grep git
Withdraw their funding retroactively (Score:3)
"Our results suggest that contemporary user interfaces are getting so complex that..."
Are you _ing kidding me? Are you? Is this some weird troll?
Go on, show me what you can do on a Unix-flavored command line. I get that many people can't figure out how to connect to wifi by tapping a few buttons, but the problem is not that the "contemporary user interfaces" have gotten too complex to use.
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Let me introduce you to the ribbon menus in Office apps. Most. Obstructive. UI. Ever.
Followed closely by the right-click menu in Windows 11 which hides the most important items at least one more layer deep.
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Then try windows 11, where you have to Google everything ... And the answers are YouTube videos, instead of 3 sentences and 2 screenshots.
The Immediate Gratification Generation (Score:3)
We live in a time where people are lack the patience to take the time to learn something.
The result is dumbed down interfaces which are inefficient to use for those who are willing to take the time to learn something.
Next they'll insist that pianos need to have their keys replaced by a play button so that everybody has the same opportunity to make pleasing tunes with the instrument.
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In most (all?) browsers you can switch off search suggestions.
Lately fooled around a bit with a browser called "Min", looks interesting, pretty fast, too!
https://minbrowser.org/ [minbrowser.org]
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Think about it from a product perspective.
The more users who can easily understand your UI, the more likely they are to use your product successfully -- or to put it more bluntly, to give you money. And guess what? Users with lower computer literacy or reduced cognitive ability also have money to spend. In fact, for most products, there are a lot more of them than there are of the self-styled power users “willing to take the time to learn something”.
Whether catering to the latter group -- by bui
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We've had both old people using computers and certain tasks for which a computer is basically mandatory for some time now; but we have not, historically, had both colliding on the scale of pretty much the entire developed world were companies are trying to sell 'use the app' as viable customer service and the target audience isn't getting any younger.
It seems to be collective indifference and a wide variety of individual half-assed jobs and not bothering
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Maybe the level of commitment to changing the UI as soon as a significant percentage of users have figured it out is the problem?
Ideally, people who alter working UIs would be permanently eliminated from the workforce. With extreme violence^w prejudice.
Google, I am looking at you!
--
You have the right to remain dead.
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I have the patience to take the time to learn something. The problem is, every piece of software you want to use for even 5 minutes "takes the time to learn something". Eventually it gets old to have to constantly "take the time to learn something".
Streamlined User Interfaces (Score:3)
I'm all for streamlined user interfaces, with an absence of unnecessary fluff. Let's take the best example: vim. Vim has no extraneous window furniture, and most tasks can be accomplished with a minimum of fuss. Anybody can learn vim given the right training.
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There's also gvim, which has menus. The menus show the commands to do the same things without the menu, so they teach the user how to use the program. On the other hand, if you're not using it all the time, it's easy to forget the less common key combinations. I can remember how to do a complex search and replace (the biggest reason I use vim any more is when I need to do a bunch of this, otherwise I use kwrite) just fine, or how to save and/or quit and so on, but there's lots of stuff I just forget the syn
Re: Streamlined User Interfaces (Score:1)
Yes but why would they want to when they can use emacs?
Useless paper is useless (Score:2)
Re: Useless paper is useless (Score:1)
Maybe they need some Brawndo...it's got what plants dumbass soyboy genzers crave!
That's just about precisely ... (Score:2)
... what the term "cognitive ability" (PC speak for intelligence) means.
Who even designs these studies? Is tax money used for stuff like this?
Re:That's just about precisely ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Calm down. "Finland's Aalto University " and "University of Helsinki" aren't getting your precious tax dollars. Those are still going towards providing tax cuts for the ultra wealthy.
Well duh... (Score:5, Insightful)
News at 11, the more you use it, the more capable you become.
It's with everything. The more you challenge yourself the more adept and agile your mind will become, it does not only apply to the use of computers and technology in general, but the more problem solving you do - the more likely you are to think things through and become better at decision making as well, even if it was computers.
I've noticed this cognitive ability with myself as well. For example, if I took a look at myself 30 years ago, if I had a down period were I was lazy, not caring, didn't push myself in any way, then the poorer decisions I would make.
I am in a very stressful job these years, and it's been asking more of me than any time in my life, and I have noticed the difference in the other parts of my life that I am simply making better decisions, it's so obvious that I can see it from the real results that is my life, I plan for things better, I don't overreact, I am way better prepared, I focus on things that matter quicker instead of just "spinning" the same loopy wheel like one tends to do if nothing better to do.
It's all about training that brain "muscle" of ours, and it shows results over time.
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"It is clear that differences between individuals cannot be eliminated simply by means of training," says Antti Oulasvirta
To be more precise, what she meant is, "We don't know how to train these people. The things we tried didn't work." I'll bet if they were less condescending it would help.
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I think you are projecting here. Studies like this one are typically pretty solid. Of course they tell many people things they do not want to hear, so denial sets in. A really stuopid form of denial (which you just used) is to resort to an AdHominem attack.
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Studies like this one are typically pretty solid.
A paper in social sciences, studying intelligence, with a sample size of 88, is typically pretty solid? No, you're wrong. To begin with, they didn't properly adjust the error bars when they adjusted for age gender and education. They do get credit for using an actual IQ test, rather than a quick quiz for estimation, which is what I actually expected them to do.
Also, you'd be less wrong if you were less condescending.
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That is the idea. But with ever changing interfaces, that is not the case anymore. Case in point: On Linux I use fvwm. Know how old my config is (with one half-day redesign when fvwm2 came out)? Almost 30 years. Obviously I find everything and are very efficient with it. Then you look at win11 or the "ribbon" crap and it becomes obvious where the problems are. These morons cannot even keep the main UI paradigm stable. They always have to mess with something in order to be able to claim "new" (which it is) a
Continuous Adaptation (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, intelligence helps but I'd argue is not in the way these researchers think.
The complexity of user interfaces is not the actual problem here. The problem is that those interfaces change nearly every day and users are forced to adapt every day.
There are two types of intelligence - fluid intelligence and crystallized intelligence. Fluid intelligence is the one that helps us figure things out, that helps us with discovering new solutions and adapting to change. This fluid intelligence is often described as the IQ score.
When we are born we are allocated a certain starting intelligence attribute value (IQ). As we age, our fluid intelligence decreases due to declining brain functions.
Crystallized intelligence can be compared to experience, knowledge and wisdom. It is when our fluid intelligence habits build and solidify into our everyday life. Crystallized intelligence increase with age. Like a slider being shifted left to right from fluid to crystallised.
This is the real reason why an average Joe/Joanne and senior citizens struggle to keep up in the digital world. The pace of change. Having to continuously adapt every day, with every update. We are forced to learn from scratch every day and our capability to adapt depends on the cards we were given at birth and our age.
Meanwhile, all the high-IQ individuals designing interfaces at big tech companies are not able to see the simple truths of life and that not everyone is as smart as them. All that matters is continuous progress for the sake of progress, and making money...
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It's honestly gotten to the point where there's a certain charm in a UI that is merely bad in an earnest and artless sort
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The permanent changes are one thing. The other thing are outright malicious design goals. When the "success" of a product is measured in "engagement time", making people waste more time with it becomes a goal. Ever wondered what the "ribbon" does or the Win11 UI design? Exactly: It wastes more user time and that is by intent.
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All intelligence is prediction. Crystalized intelligence is essentially one-step prediction - you've seen/done if before and remembered, so you can do it again. Fluid intelligence, aka reasoning, is multi-step prediction - chained what-if "tree search" (if one chain/branch of reasoning, then abandon that and try another).
The key to both types of reasoning is pattern recognition - the more patterns you've experienced (= more experience), the more capable you will be. Reasoning also depends on reasoning/logic
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I don't think you've really understood what the researchers think. The question they appear to have been addressing (based on TFS, I haven't RTFA) is which cognitive abilities are most important. The fact that they highlight working memory and not memory is suggestive that learning how to do the task is not as critical as keeping track of what you've just done, which seems to align with your comments.
Well, duh? (Score:3, Funny)
Intelligence makes it easier for you to perform complex tasks. News at 11:00.
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The idea is that these should nto be complex tasks. Of course, the average person is really dumb, so to an average person simple things may qualify as complex task.
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Good thing we have phones for them. [msn.com]
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That gives new meaning to the term "dumb-phone"....
Early days in computing (Score:4, Interesting)
circa 1972, IBM DOS was dominant in the military-industrialized USA and basis of Computer Science taught and basis on which you were expected to encounter in the modern computer workforce. Even at that time, it was readily apparent that business friendly Cobol was #1 and Assembly the academic domain of engineering and science.
But cracks were already apparent that Basic and APL languages were two very different learning styles that demanded functionally opposite skillsets to concur. To the afficianado one or the other provided a much easier, faster way to "program" than Assembly or Cobol – but not both. It was APL I found fluency but painstakingly slow at Cobol and mindnumbingly perplexed in ASSEMBLY. APL worked in a language my brain intuited and quickly groked with out first learning grammer and syntax. Sadly, no jobs were begging in 1973-75 for APL ComSci people so I found converting mainframes over to next generation machines a gift horse.
It was the insane security, windowless basements and not seeing the sunshine that ultimately decided my career path - not skills. I ended up running large design, engineering and construction projects that needed logic and categorization abstracted from reams of requirements and RFPs that separated the old hands from the new computer literate. The Compaq while revolutionary in portable computing wasn't the game changer that the Apple Macintosh made - at the footprint and less than ½ the cost — 1/6th the weight. Were it not for BSD unix, AAPL would not even exist today.
Apple failed to leverage its platform by insisting on Obj-C to program and bifurcated the world into Basic for dummies and gurus who worked larger corporations that did the heavy lifting i.e. algorithms and DBs. The world conformed to a duopoly until unix, which was unfortunately co-opted into duopoly compliance except in science and engineering niches.
You wanna change the compute environs - back to education you need to go – today jobs in high tech don't require hardware/software knowledge much less skills — 6 figure Engineers handle bits and ComSci is no longer needed to Apple or Microsoft your way through your day. Mathematicians have moved-in with algorithmic solutions. And AI is breathing down their necks and those of what knowledge workers that remain critical to Enterprise computing. Slowly, corporations, their plaforms and the promise of cheaper, faster threaten any of those lasting geniuses with bots and agents.
All of education tilts in the wind of change toward the lowest common denominator - profit for profit sake. Dummies get new toys, products to play with, wrangle and never question much less analize their larger first principle value metrics, architecture or orthogonal scalability. Those are above paygrade.
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Apple failed to leverage its platform by insisting on Obj-C to program
They chose the platform where development is based on ObjC (NeXTStep) instead of the one based on C++ (BeOS.) ObjC was the platform. It took them some time to be able to gracefully support development in other languages. It's my opinion that BeOS would have been a better OS to go forward with, because of its undeniable advantage in UI performance, but that's not what happened.
IQ predicts a *lot* of things (Score:2)
But it's not distributed evenly amongst groups, so we aren't generally permitted to know that, or to say so.
(Sure, that makes me a "racist" to some - a, er, pro- Mandarin Chinese and Ashkenazim "racist", I guess?)
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I always found it odd that we can widely acknowledge border collies are the smartest dog. Pugs are the dumbest. Put bulls the most violent. Chihuahua the most neurotic. All compatible with each other sexually... But humans don't work like that --- At all... Not one bit, nope! Don't look. Nothing to see here.
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But humans don't work like that
Correct. Humans don't come in "breeds", there is more difference between members of an ethnic group than there are between average members of ethnic groups. Even those humans who have been deliberately bred have not been so aggressively bred as dogs. Even those humans who were extremely isolated are not so different from other humans as one breed of dog from another. Dumb people can have smart kids and vice versa.
What we're talking about is variation between individuals, and you decided to make it about var
Rule #1 of support (Score:3)
We have known this for a long time (Score:3)
We must accommodate (Score:4, Insightful)
I've been around long enough to know that when we try to idiot - proof anything, a better idiot comes along.
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Current Tech industry marketing would have you believe that Artificial Intelligence will bridge the gap and beyond. Those smart computer people built the AI and made it super smart, you can count on it. Like most people are disabled and need assistive devices. Why risk going slow and/or screwing it up when AI can screw it up in a hurry but look professional doing it?
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Current Tech industry marketing would have you believe that Artificial Intelligence will bridge the gap and beyond. Those smart computer people built the AI and made it super smart, you can count on it. Like most people are disabled and need assistive devices. Why risk going slow and/or screwing it up when AI can screw it up in a hurry but look professional doing it?
Understand you are being sarcastic, but AI has a long way to go before it's useable for much. I've been experimenting and it hallucinates around half the time.
AI can only be as good as the internet, which is an open sewer at present, as far as knowledge goes, a little knowledge, and much sewage.
And it is starting to reference itself.
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I agree to all of that, in particular:
And it is starting to reference itself.
That goes wrong even before full model collapse. I do not think LLMs will become generally useful though. For specialist things, yes. For general things, somewhat better search and better crap seems to be it and that seems to not be enough to justify the effiort needed. Maybe that will change at some time, but even then it will not have a big impact. And, if you use AI to help with really simple things (all it can somewhat do), it makes it harder for you to learn advanc
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Agreed, there may be places LLMs are useful but not quite there in most cases. AI that does not look and feel like parlor tricks does not feel close.
But Current Tech industry marketing would have you believe otherwise. Telling you it is advanced intelligence, telling you it can pass hard tests, telling you it thinks, etc. If the computer itself feels advanced and intimidating, and then they tell you it has advanced artificial intelligence, and pretty much everything you've been told about computers is true,
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Seems to me that LLMs are the modern Snake Oil. There may be an active ingredient in there, maybe, but that ingredient can't do everything for everyone.
It's a bubble. Looking for money.
But the problem is, once the thing is reduced a bit more to practice, the money will just not be needed. The grand plans of re-starting 1970's era nuclear plants - TMI and one in Michigan, and the immense sums that will take, we will see the money evaporate overnight. If you need your very own 1970's nut reactor to supply your AI power, that's a real non-starter.
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You know, that may be the real thing behind the current AI hype: People thinking that with the help of AI they will finally not suck at performing simple tasks. I do not think things will work out that way...
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It is interesting, a little slight of hand and/or misdirection can really fool people. A lot of magic tricks are simple, and finding the real secret can be a let down when you find out the trick is silly and all performance. Pulling back the curtain on a simple coin vanish is easy for anyone to understand.
The magic of LLMs is an entirely different beast involving a number of steps and concepts, which ends with something of a blackbox that looks like a mess inside if you crack it open. Much harder to explain
idiocracy (Score:1)
https://youtu.be/LXzJR7K0wK0?s... [youtu.be]
I guess now I know how we get to that scenes interface.
The Next Step In The Evolution Of UI (Score:3)
We've moved from skeuomorphism and lickable glossy 3D buttons, to maximized white space flat beige edge-less buttons and so forth. Now, we urgently need to simplify! We need to remove the complexities of text-to-background contrast in order to simplify the interface. No more dark text on light backgrounds.
We need to go with ultra-pale gray text on pure white backgrounds. Or maybe white on white would be even simpler? Either way, we need to do it as soon as possible.
There's already a solution to this (Score:1)
Of course the problem is that most users don't know how to do this setup. I have volunteered my time to do this for many developmentally delayed adults and a couple of libraries (for the computers patrons would use). Maybe there is nee
What a waste (Score:2)
Massive gap between study and TFA, which has an entire army down here talking about the wrong thing.
Study didn't measure "computer tasks" it measured complex mental-juggling tasks, which happened to be on a computer. Imagine the skill to flip between a spreadsheet, a bank record, a calculator, and an email report describing the observations. The cognition is more common with computers but could be found planning a battlefield operation, or even just the multitasking in a chef's kitchen. Running any business
Learning the video game (Score:2)
It's all a video game. People need to first realize that they are dealing with pure abstractions. The blurry pixels represent a gun, more blurry pixels represent a monster, then you need to figure out what each one can do. Same goes with a spreadsheet or word processing document. Learning that kind of thinking is the first key. "Thinking above the abstraction barrier". I think for many people, simply accepting the abstractions is the difficult part. If they would "let go" and do that, I think the rest of i