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Computer Use is 45x more expensive than structured APIs

reflex.dev

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Re: Computer Use is 45x more expensive than structured APIs

#41

The best use cases I've seen for computer/browser use is for legacy SaaS/Software. For example, hotels use archaic Property Management Systems (PMS) and they're required by corporate to use it and pay for it. These companies can barely keep the product alive, they definitely aren't incentivized to maintain an API. In such a case browser use agent seems to be the best (only) way.

Wouldn't using a coding agent to build a screenscraper be better?

Re: Computer Use is 45x more expensive than structured APIs

#42
post #23

In an agentic world, the OS needs to be completely rethought. For example, every single app functionality should be exposable via an API while remaining human friendly. I think OpenAI designing their own phone is the next logical step. I hope they succeed which should bring major competition to Apple and Android.

This will not happen. None of the existing apps people use daily on their phones have any incentive to support this. Social media wants the people to doomscroll, shopping apps and booking sites want to use their own dark patterns to make people believe they get a special discount if they buy _now_ and everything else just wants users to see the ads. Why on earth would they offer convenient hooks for AI chatbots?

It's even more fascinatingly dumb to have this discussion like 2 or so years after every major platform decided to kill any notion of 3rd party clients they used to support.

Yes, in an ideal world, that'd be great for both humans and LLMs, but we are about as far from that ideal world as we could be. You can't even do some of the "advanced actions" as a human with human-level reflexes without encountering a captcha, but sure, all of a sudden, everyone will just decide to make their bread and butter that is data easier to explore via an LLM.

Re: Computer Use is 45x more expensive than structured APIs

#43
post #32

In an agentic world, the OS needs to be completely rethought. For example, every single app functionality should be exposable via an API while remaining human friendly. I think OpenAI designing their own phone is the next logical step. I hope they succeed which should bring major competition to Apple and Android.

I still have to understand what my AI agents could do that I don't want to do myself. Buy stuff? No thanks, I want to see what I buy. I think that they are 99% a solution in search of a problem.

Same. Well the biggest thing I don't want to do that they could help with is work. But in the cases where it can do that for me, there's no world where that benefit goes to me rather than my employer.

Re: Computer Use is 45x more expensive than structured APIs

#44
I'm building something that fixes this exact problem[1].

The landing page doesn't advertise it yet, but essentially, I give agents a small set of tools to explore apps' surfaces, and then an API over common macOS functions, especially those related to accessibility.

The agent explores the app, then writes a repeatable workflow for it. Then it can run that workflow through CLI: `invoke chrome pinTab`

Why accessibility? Well, turns out that it's just a good DOM in general. It's structure for apps. Not all apps implement it perfectly, but enough do to make it wildly useful.

[1] https://getinvoke.com - note that the landing page is targeted towards creatives right now and doesn't talk about this use case yet

Re: Computer Use is 45x more expensive than structured APIs

#45
post #23

In an agentic world, the OS needs to be completely rethought. For example, every single app functionality should be exposable via an API while remaining human friendly. I think OpenAI designing their own phone is the next logical step. I hope they succeed which should bring major competition to Apple and Android.

This will not happen. None of the existing apps people use daily on their phones have any incentive to support this. Social media wants the people to doomscroll, shopping apps and booking sites want to use their own dark patterns to make people believe they get a special discount if they buy _now_ and everything else just wants users to see the ads. Why on earth would they offer convenient hooks for AI chatbots?

because the social media sites that do will outcompete once people get personal AI coaches that tell them to use technology that is better for them.

Re: Computer Use is 45x more expensive than structured APIs

#47

In an agentic world, the OS needs to be completely rethought. For example, every single app functionality should be exposable via an API while remaining human friendly. I think OpenAI designing their own phone is the next logical step. I hope they succeed which should bring major competition to Apple and Android.

Ah yes. The trains everywhere approach to self driving cars.

Re: Computer Use is 45x more expensive than structured APIs

#48

In an agentic world, the OS needs to be completely rethought. For example, every single app functionality should be exposable via an API while remaining human friendly. I think OpenAI designing their own phone is the next logical step. I hope they succeed which should bring major competition to Apple and Android.

We used to have this. It was called OLE Automation.

Re: Computer Use is 45x more expensive than structured APIs

#49
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This will not happen. None of the existing apps people use daily on their phones have any incentive to support this. Social media wants the people to doomscroll, shopping apps and booking sites want to use their own dark patterns to make people believe they get a special discount if they buy _now_ and everything else just wants users to see the ads. Why on earth would they offer convenient hooks for AI chatbots?

because the social media sites that do will outcompete once people get personal AI coaches that tell them to use technology that is better for them.

How is an AI posting on your social media better for you?

Re: Computer Use is 45x more expensive than structured APIs

#50
post #16

Isn't it possible to somehow wire this into the window manager? Wayland or whatever. Have it speak the native window lang rather than crunch the pixels? At least for the majority. I can see the appeal in pixel route given universality but wow that seems ugly on efficiency

Wayland only has pixels. It was designed to get rid of all the X11 cruft.
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