AI buttons are different from, say Photoshop menu commands in that they can just be a description of the desired outcome rather than a sequence of steps (incidentally why I think a lot of agents’ complexity disappears). For example Photoshop used to require a complex sequence of tasks (drawing around elements with a lasso etc.) to remove clouds from an image. With AI you can just say ‘remove clouds’ and then create a remove clouds button. An AI interface is a ‘semantic interface’.
So removing the interface bureaucracy is not about simplicity but about increasing expressiveness and capability. What does it look like if we travel down the road of intent-maxing. There’s a philosophy from the dawn of computing, DWIM a.k.a. Do What I Mean.
DWIM, as described on Wikipedia:
DWIM (do what I mean) computer systems attempt to anticipate what users intend to do, correcting trivial errors automatically rather than blindly executing users’ explicit but potentially incorrect input.
To really take advantage of what AI can do, developers need to start thinking about software differently — not as the means to but as the ends. Don’t deliver tools that allow users to achieve outcomes. Just deliver the outcomes.