I think it's the difference between working with ChatGPT versus playing with ChatGPT. The article only describes the “work” use-case: you're trying to use it to get stuff done, so your constraints are fixed going in. But I think the feature targets the “play” use-case of people who just want to idly explore what it can do and how it responds to various inputs. There are no pre-existing constraints.

That said, I still agree with the author that it's useless. The autocompletion suggestions are simplistic, banal, and offer no real variety, so their potential for exploration is rapidly exhausted.

It's a feature supposed to aid in "discovery", rather than a feature helping you to finish writing as quickly as possible.

Probably, at one point, they did some user testing or similar and figured out that most people don't even know what to ask these chatbots. So they add some "quickstarts" for people to "get inspired" by.

It's not meant for people who know what they want, but meant for people who don't know what they could do.

I use Copilot for code, and I find my self turning it off when I'm writing down in comments step-by-step what I need to do. I use it both as a checklist, but also to mentally understand what I need to do.

Maybe it's my brain that's weird, but when I have a train of thought, and then read the auto-completion of my sentence, I forget what I was thinking and suddenly I can't think of anything other than the (usually incorrect) suggestion.

Bad UX in ChatGPT:

- unable to convert a conversation to PDF and e.g. print it

- it is not always clear how to stop the generation of text, especially when scrolling; the stop button is in the wrong place

- there is no way to delete the discussion below a certain point

- there is no way to store preferences (such as: don't put comments in code)

- there is no way to point at a word and tell ChatGPT that it made a mistake there

> and when I talk, I do not know exactly what I will say before I say it

Using voice with Gemini on my phone I've found it to be nearly useless:

- it decides I've stopped speaking when there is a small pause whilst I think of the rest my sentence

- I use too many "ums" and "ers", or even "wait, no I meant..." and so it ends up a useless transcription

- because I know of these "problems" I end up making even more mistakes in a perverse anxiety feedback loop of trying to get it correct first time and failing miserably

I can most confidently say that it is in fact actually option 2 that is the case. Absolutely a vast number of people are using ChatGPT exactly like what they were using Google for.

Yes, the “chat” part of ChatGPT enables a kind of deep and long contextual exploration, but even at the very first response it is already better then what my experience with Google typically is, so I definitely keep creating new chats for whatever I was going to create a new tab to search Google for. I have even mostly stopped talking with the LLM in full sentences - just the keywords just like you would with a search engine.

Please help me understand why you think that is a bad thing.

Whenever I've tested ChatGPT I've never seen this autocomplete. Does it only conditionally appear if someone is logged into their service? I also only visit under Linux.

"You ... autocomplete me."

Could be a good subtitle for the blog post?

Its probably not great UX/UI but as an advanced user I never even looked at it. I am typing in a query and the recommendations are only there for a brief moment.

I've spoken to several people who've said things like 'id never thought of using chatgpt for that'. I dont think the autocomplete is at all an attempt to guess what you're trying to ask, but to broaden your considerations of what you could potentially ask it (to convert more of your every day googling/questioning over to chatgpt).

I use it often to discuss a few topics that I'm interested in (sports, hobbies, a bit of coding). I've never used the autocompletion feature even once, and I mostly don't even notice it (similar to how our brain learns to ignore context ads).

ChatGPT has autocomplete? I honestly haven't noticed, and I use it all the time.

Maybe they should just turn it on when using web search. Of course that feature isn't that useful even in google. Some of the auto complete suggestions are horrifying there.

I had this same thought the other day. It's indeed bad IMO.

To me the suggestions are mindless normie junk but their customer base is very broad.

I block it with a chrome extension that lets you apply custom styles to a page (also mv3 compatible).

Folks, please see the forest for the trees - this is potential space for future ad inventory and perhaps query structuring to increase competition for future auctions.

> ChatGPT never guesses correctly what I want to write. Literally not once.

It doesn’t appear to be trying to. This is the success criteria of a discovery feature.

maybe they are encouraging users to ask the same questions, in order to increase cache hits and reduce load on their systems

The core problem with pure text as an interface tends to be discoverability. Where to go from where I am is often unclear.

Yep. I generally love Chat-GPT UX a lot, but this one thing is super-annoying.

Agree. I don't find autocomplete in ChatGPT useful.

I'm good with Claude.

I hate it. The Googleification of ChatGPT, and I don't mean the good years. The suggestions are so annoyingly banal. I haven't found an off switch yet either.

yeah it's annoying, I usually just try and type my question as fast a possible so it doesn't show up. can't let that dumb robot interrupt me.

its infuriatingly bad

Of course it is bad.

It got put there because we are in the middle of a hype cycle where everything must use an LLM, and the 'tech leads' pushing it have the ear of the decision makers. Any criticism is parried with a 'Oh, this is fixed in the next version of (whatever LLM). They are adding a step that allows them to reason about their own output!'.

It's not that everyone believes it will actually improve the product, but it is what the customer wants to see right now. They've read about this revolution, and if their supplier isn't doing something with LLMs right now, they will get left behind. Doing something with an LLM will allow them to hook it into the innovation budget too.

So the zealots have free rein for now.