The fundamental idea of this paper is for ChatGPT-like apps to lose natural language for less energy consumption and more determinism in their answers based on controlled natural languages like ACE; for the user to be able to modify this trade-off-ratio at will based on LLMs (which is not possible when starting from a ChatGPT-like app); and to capture this new paradigm in a new type of browser that has natural language as its primary interface, here called a semantic web-first browser.

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[–] 6 points 1 year ago (6 children)

interesting idea. there are already text-based browsers like qutebrowser but they require mastering a command language. creating a natural language interface based on a constrained language is bound to come with the same sort of problem apple had with hypercard: easy to read, diabolic to write. i wonder how they solve for that.

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  • [–] [S] 3 points 1 year ago* (5 children)

    there are already text-based browsers like qutebrowser

    hypercard

    Awesome! Thanks for the references, didn't know there were already some applications in this direction

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    there is a rich history of programming languages which are supposed to read like natural language. it gave us beauties like COBOL, SQL, and HyperCard. in other words, it's not good.

    as for text browsers, nyxt is probably the one that's closest, or some browser mode in emacs.

    ultimately what you want with navigation is precision and minimal typing, so a natural language interface is slow, and an ACE interface would be even slower.

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 1 year ago* (3 children)

    I don't know. Basically, if you already know what you want, maybe you only want to type down a couple of statements (maybe even from a template or a tutorial that you found online), modify some stuff and then hit enter. And maybe this modifying of language could be the "browsing" part of the browser.

    If you look at it like this it would also be immediate and precise. You would only need to add very good code completion tools, e.g. when you click on a noun, you see all the attributes it has in your ontology. Much like in a IDE. There you also "browse" the space of all potential programs with the interface of language with code completion for keywords and defined concepts, which act like links in traditional browsers.

    In contrast, the semantic web is like a open, global code base, where everybody can contribute to. And traditional browser could not successfully implement a language interface because the code base had no defined semantic, this would be possible for the semantic web. And using LLMs, it could be propagated into other web paradigms.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    i'm no longer sure if you're envisioning a web browser or a website builder. your terminology is all over the place.

    and no, the semantic web is in no way an an open, global codebase. it's just a way of structuring html. i know berners-lee wanted the web to be more like what you are describing but the web we have today is not that. you'd need a new protocol.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 1 year ago* (1 child)

    i’m no longer sure if you’re envisioning a web browser or a website builder. your terminology is all over the place.

    I's blurring the line in-between. It's trying to set the interaction with the web on a lower level that is closer to the data. It's like you are live-coding the website you want to use for a specific use-case. But then just call the high-level API-endpoints right away. Basically making the dev-tools and the dev-console of browsers the main way to interact with the web (which assumes a web that is build in a similar fashion).

    and no, the semantic web is in no way an an open, global codebase. it’s just a way of structuring html. i know berners-lee wanted the web to be more like what you are describing but the web we have today is not that. you’d need a new protocol.

    Yeah, that's true :(

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    you should probably also check out beaker browser then, it's also trying to blur the line.

    personally i don't know if there is an actual benefit. most people seem content not producing things in fields they're not interested in. we'll never be able to get everyone on board with making websites no matter how simple the interface, just like we'll never be able to get everyone on board with gardening or carpentry. if you want to do it, you will learn. if you don't the learning curve is not the problem.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    This reads like someone played madlibs with an early draft sci fi show script.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    Seems weird, but there's another application of these models that for me doesn't - to convert, say, usual webpages into webpages with proper semantic markup or something like that. For readability and scraping and what not.

    Possibly even to make "self-adjusting" gateways representing, say, a social network webpage as an XMPP service. Or to use PGP for private messages in them. Something like that.

    Anyway. Until someone does something like that, and that takes enormous amounts of work and discipline, that's just blabber.

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    [–] 4 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    this paper isn't really about llms at all, they're just using the natural language interface of chatgpt as an example for how to interact with a web browser. they suggest restricting to ACE in order for the language parsing to be made simpler.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 1 year ago* (5 children)

    It does use LLMs with the precision controller - which determines the degree to which ontologies are applied to not-semantic-web-data. This is done with LLMs as translation tools if the precision controller is adjusted with a low precision degree (ergo more fuzziness, ergo more LLMs).

    But yeah, it's basically meant as a contra-approach to ChatGPT-like apps, giving users back control. And because rule-based systems have always failed in the past, LLMs are used if the user wants to make the app more fuzzy and access more data this way.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    yeah but that's sort of external to the core of the paper. since they would be invoked by the browser to figure out inconsistencies in parsing, they're not really part of the described interface.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    "

    Basically with an app like ChatGPT, you have before you a black box that you can send commands to and that gives you unpredictable answers and consumes huge amounts of energy.

    Instead, the semantc web browser with the precision controller starts with a complete white box, where you can control the ontology, have full control of the language, the outcome and consumes much less energy; but you can move on the ratio towards a ChatGPT-like black box with the precision controller.

    With the default level, the ACE-syntax is enforced very strictly and semantic web data is expected to have the same syntax as defined. With a lower precision level, an LLM is stuck inbetween, syntax is not enforced as strictly and the ontology is enforced even if the data does not match it, also propagating to other web pradigms like MCP/AI-web and traditional web-services with REST-APIs.

    The precision controller basically let's the user move between a very strict semantic web browser and the lose cannon of a ChatGPT+MCP-app. And I think this moving of ratio is only possible if you start developing a strict semantic web browser, which has a precision controller integrated.

    Another merit is that the energy consumption can be adjusted at will. If money/energy is low, for example in a state's administration, the semantic web browser can still be used, while ChatGPT-like apps become unfeasible. "

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    the main issue here is still one of use case. this is a text-interface for the semantic web, but the semantic web is built to be easily parsed so you wouldn't need a specific interface. llms, meanwhile, are data transformers, which you don't want loose on strict content because the integrity can no longer be guaranteed. so what are you left with?

    also, if you think this can be used on government code you might need to adjust your expectations.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    I find this interesting, and ACE is a neat concept, but it's so hard to write. I feel like having an entire encyclopedia written in ACE would be kinda cool as you could search through it using natural language without needing to use an AI.

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