The UI era is ending. 🪦 For 70 years we designed computer interfaces. Mainframe, CLI, GUI, Touch. But with AI, the interface is disappearing. What will come next? My talk from Mastra's conf this week:

Watched the whole talk and appreciate the insights 👏 I still think its an oversimplification. humans need predictability and trust to act with confidence but pure text or language input doesnt really give that. We actually trust each other with language because it comes with tone voice facial expressions body language and shared context. those signals are mostly missing in plain text and current AI. Thats why even if AI can perfectly do a bank transfer in the app most users still wont feel safe doing it. So in my opinion UI will evolve a lot and take very different forms. will appreciate your input on this

@mastra The human bank teller at your local branch can safely do a transfer for you, even if they don't look or say the exact same thing every time. Humans trust humans, and AI is making software more human.

A human teller isn't perfectly predictable either, but we trust them because they're conscious, have real accountability, empathy, and non-verbal cues. We can't form that same bond with AI yet. That's why I believe UI (visual, predictable, and delightful) will still matter. AI will reshape workflows, but won't replace it.

and congrats @abhiaiyer @calcsam @smthomas3 on their launches this week! more in my interview with Abhi:

UI will never die. It will evolve of course. Seeing with our eyes is the fastest communication method for humans from the very beginning of times. Other communication and operation methods will soon be popularized but only relevant to AI AGENTS. The question here is: Who the hell is operating?

@mastra I’d love to challenge this over a coffee!

@mastra

Great talk Michael! I completely agree. On that last question (about discoverability being an issue), I think this is why a general-purpose agent is so useful. Because you always just talk to the one agent that is your agent, you say what you want and it just figures it out. It handles the discoverability by itself. I think humans will get used to explaining their ultimate job to be done and expecting the agent to figure it out and asking clarifying questions as needed.

@mastra Is it just me or did you say UI is ending without ackshoooly showing anything that you predict on screen? (i may actually be blind)

@mastra Language will be the primary interface for the AI era. The next software paradigm is agentic and autonomous. Nobody knows exactly what this will look like. That's why it's exciting to build! :)

@mastra Half right, would say: UI isn't dying. It's bifurcating Every product now has two surfaces: The human surface (visual, verifiable, steerable) The agent surface (structured, semantic, API-first, MCP-exposed)

@mastra Probably a new era of UI is coming

they actually built this and it was a startup called oblong. @kwindla was ceo! originally based on a thesis at the @medialab so the had a unit and i made a couple things for it while doing undergrad research. super cool ideas and fun to prototype but incredibly unpractical for normal tasks

oh yeah, I remember oblong and their work. I guess people are more visually oriented when it comes to consuming and representing ideas and human hands are really impressive by design.. so once you figure out a really compelling medium like holograms, people would definitely want to use them more because of "hands". I still think spatial computing has a lot of potential which can unlock a new direction for UI, combined with voice.

@mastra @kwindla @medialab Our hands are really good for fine motor control! more accurate, more expressive, fewer calories Using a trackpad doesn't look good in a movie though 🙃 Eyes have higher input bandwidth than ears, so I imagine our devices will stay visual. Perhaps even more so, eg. Vision Pro

@mastra @kwindla @medialab Yeah I’m referring to interfaces that are more natural, immersive and intuitive. If spatial computing becomes a thing, the UI will be very embedded that it looks as if there’s no UI. Apple’s Liquid Glass is a good step in that direction for now.

@mastra Great talk. But "new UIs operate on text" because it's the only level they can operate well, not because it's the best one. People don't just use voice – they see images with their eyes, they sense objects by touching. Generation is great, but you wouldn't always want that

@RMB @mastra this is a good ass talk

@RMB @mastra ty!

@mastra UI era will never end till humans remain visual beings. Voice has a role but it cannot replace visual UI fully ever. In real life also we touch and see things. We do not keep talking and listening like a blind person whole day.

@mastra

@mastra Ignore. UI is not disappearing. Unfortunately, neither is stupid hype.

@mastra Love this. One of the best articulations I've seen of this shift. Especially the agentic AND autonomous piece: text-based prompting on its own is just a new level of abstraction, but combine that with autonomy/proactivity and you have something completely novel.

@mastra 💯

@mastra I wrote about this recently. Whatever comes next, will be by definition a paradigm shift:

@mastra I respectfully disagree. The UI as we know it is changing, not ending. Clicking buttons is still faster than typing or speaking. What changes is how those buttons are displayed, where, and when. What changes is how contextual and intentional UI is becoming. Just my two cents.

Yes, yes, yes. Static UI code will fade away. AI needs a standard way to present visual components, and I think that will look more like microapps. Instead of having thousands of apps in the App Store solving the same problem, AI will assemble and present the right interface as a kind of flavor for each user.

@mastra We were so lucky to have you! Inspiring talk

@mastra thank you! 🙏

@mastra more interfaces humans have been working with agents for thousands of years and using dashboards and other UIs to do it these are just human agents. now they’re ai

@mastra I strongly disagree with this statement. It comes literally week after the internet hates the chat interfaces in popular tools. Isn't that thread an obvious argument that people mostly make visual decisions? The UI era at the beginning of a huge challenge, not ending.

@mastra As long as people see with their eyes UI will not die. We will see tailored made UI per person. Not 1 interface for 100% of the people.

@mastra

A very limited view of what UI is. UI will always be needed for the next decades. Even if tech, AI agents and holograms are omnipresent, people will always want to click somewhere, type somewhere, choose somewhere. Not everything will be automated, CLI-based or Siri-like. (Even if those will likely grow insanely.)

@mastra

@mastra You bet that the primary interaction medium won’t be UI. You might be wrong for a while.

@mastra @PowerBITips Disposable UIs you called it two months ago on The Web Talk Show podcast!

@mastra Tell me you don’t know what UI is without telling me you don’t know what UI is LMFAO Touch is still GUI you interact directly with your finger instead of physicsl input like mouse or keyboard. If you missed this super basic stuff I wonder how idiot like you allowed to talk in con

@mastra Finally got around to watching this. Love the trip down memory lane + the emphasis on language being the new input.

@mastra 🙏 ty!

29 mins of pure gold. more i think of it, Agents has opportunity to massively improve our "Quality of life" What are the actions we don't take - for the things we like - because there is burden of action. -Watch a upcoming theatre show you like - but dont know about. -Take kid to robotics sessions in nearest library that is scduduled for thursday your agent will know it your agent will schedule it your agent will move around meetings to schedule it. Only thing i am missing in presentation- UX- AX Voice - didn't even mentioned once i think. I am hardly typing these days, and voice solutions are getting better very very fast.

@mastra Great stuff @grinich - wrote about this last May ( My perspective has evolved a bit since then but think the core is still directionally correct.

@mastra Excellent talk! I'm also aligned with this vision

@mastra As a UX, CX, UI & FED leader for 20+ years who uses AI daily and builds tools with it... I don't agree. The AI industry wants you to believe this is the direction things are going, the truth is, non generated UI holds much more brand value than dev centered vids like this suggest

@mastra My users hat chat interfaces, they ask for going back to deterministic forms. They hate dynamic AI plots, as they are looking different every time, they ask for fix templates. They hat speech interfaces, as they are not precise enough

@mastra 🎯

@mastra nah. interface isn't disappearing - it's becoming language. bad prompt design = broken UX. same design problem, different surface.

@mastra i said this in the talk:

@mastra fair lol. link to the full talk anywhere?

@mastra Great talk, love the

@mastra When do we get the extended 1 hour talk about agent permissions? 🙂

@mastra 👀😏

@mastra Saved for future reference. Your talk compiled many feelings I was having about the future of software. Great job!

@mastra Thanks for sharing lot of information. Thanks millions get some great insights