It doesn't really matter what they want. Chat interfaces are doing this from the opposite direction, pulling the data down and explaining it to you, it's not a big leap for LLMs to turn their markdown responses into a slightly richer experience you can browse natively.

1. The costs are not that high

2. They are going down constantly

3. The ease of using LLM's and the personalisation will result in more interactions which means companies don't mind subsidising

This is like saying Amazon e-commerce can't work because logistics are expensive and its hard to pay for a delivery person to come to your doorstep.

I've come to the thought that we built interfaces honed to the way we visualize and work. We simplified many things down to just clicks. A really good UI captures intent and use very well. It doesn't require constant written language input when one mouse click is enough. Also it appeals to the aesthetic experience too in some ways to enhance the brand.

Design might be subjective but that's a good thing to act as a differentiator for companies.

Too many people assume pretty or nice looking is what design is. It's a very empty statement that disguises how important design works to make our lives easy.

And so many UIs stink, so auto-generating them might, on average, not be worse.

> a good interface conveys so much more semantic information then just it's underlying API

Yes, a good UI contains institutional memory on rendering that particular information in a bigger context than the pure data. I’m not sure how to convey that best.

But the business's incentives are in the exact opposite direction. That opposite direction is the whole point of branding. They want their service to have a vibe, a personality, something you irrationally value beyond its raw value as a service.

Performance may be worth a lot today but I feel it will be less and less. I mean "we" don't like the "performance" of Windows (copilot everywhere, a setup process taking ages with dozens of offers you don't want), we don't like MacOS' performance (weird corners ;), inconsistent icons, icons disappearing behinds notches, no tiling)

I like Hackernews because it's so minimal, I just changed the bar to be gray instead of orange, otherwise it's perfect for my needs. Imagine some performer making this a beautifully crafted site, I'd go for any of the alternatives we see coming by every now and then.

Movies are perhaps different, although for me they are often about the lessons, did they change my view on things? That can often be condensed a lot more (for me that usually means drop a lot of the emotional finery, ie, I like TNG and Voyager more than Discovery because there is less crying and close-ups of crying people's eyes, ok, Discovery also has a lot less moral discussions).

Maybe I'm not normal, but to me my own UIs sound good, more efficient, more (useful-) information dense, so I need to spend less time navigating. It's why I use Nix and Gnome and (to a lesser degree) FireFox. It clicks more for me, but I can think of ways to improve them (yes I will soon try Niri). It's why people like chatting with their agents that are hooked into everything (Home Assistant to email to joblisting sites). Where's your beautiful UI in that workflow? Just give me a good API. Personal assistant/agents may be toys for nerds at the moment, but they're going to be big imho.

One argument against mine is perhaps that I also get used to tools and setups at some point, even though I don't consider them optimal at first, they become optimal. Perhaps because there is a deeper vision behind them.

All in all, perhaps we're both right. But people here seem to be very much on the company side (not surprising), but I don't care about your company, I care about information. That's why I have ad blockers, throw articles and long lists into LLMs and increase the contrast on your "beautiful" gray on gray text.

I think HN reflexively shoots down any idea or prediction with a bias to the incumbent.

Generally, a technological advancement will render some previous ways of working useless or outdated. People value convenience way more than a curated experience but I'm not disagreeing that brand differentiation would still exist.

A company that offers a meaningfully better experience in the long term will outcompete a company that focuses too much on aesthetics.

If they get generative UI right, where the UI provider can also give their own flavour and have some differentiation but also allow enough personalisation to afford the user better experience, it will happen.

Some bets don't work (like RSS) but some bets have worked - like the Amazon e-commerce model. A person in 1985 could have shut Amazon's idea down the same way you have.

I partly share this opinion because most branding and UIs, products that are primarily marketed as a "lifestyle", etc., are obnoxious. Yes, appearance is a factor of anything we interact with, but when using technology my primary thought is if it solves a practical problem. Not if it's broadcasting an image, or even if it's enjoyable to use. The latter is important, but often companies prioritize it over functionality, which is backwards to me.

So starting with a mostly functional product, and giving me the choice of how to style it, is appealing to me. This is why I still use RSS, custom style sheets, the CLI and simple GUI wrappers, etc.

There is an audience for this type of product, but it's of the magnitude of a rounding error, so naturally most companies don't, and likely shouldn't, focus on this segment.

I don't think website design will go away, but I do expect that people will soon be ordering products and booking holidays through AI chats instead of doing it themselves, which will require the kind of manifests he's talking about, but will skip the UI layer completely.