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Scamlexity: When agentic AI browsers get scammed

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181–190 of 198 posts

Re: Scamlexity: When agentic AI browsers get scammed

#181

I don't understand why we would ever want an agent to buy stuff for us. I understand, for example, search with intent to buy "I want to decorate a room. Find me a drawer, a table and four chairs that can fit in this space in matching colours for less than X dollars" But I want to do the final step to buy. In fact, I want to do the final SELECTION of stuff. How is agent buying groceries superior to have a grocery list…

When Amazon came out with the "dash" button and then the "Alexa" speakers, I figured they must have expected they'd get some unintended purchases, and that they'd make more profit from those than they'd lose in the people going through the refund process. (That, or they'd learn whether it was profitable, and eat it as an R&D cost if it turned out to be unprofitable.) I think this might be similar. In short, it's not…

> When Amazon came out with the "dash" button and then the "Alexa" speakers

Both of those things failed, tho.

Re: Scamlexity: When agentic AI browsers get scammed

#182

I don't understand why we would ever want an agent to buy stuff for us. I understand, for example, search with intent to buy "I want to decorate a room. Find me a drawer, a table and four chairs that can fit in this space in matching colours for less than X dollars" But I want to do the final step to buy. In fact, I want to do the final SELECTION of stuff. How is agent buying groceries superior to have a grocery list…

Yeah, it's a very odd proposition. Even if it were guaranteed not to screw it up (and of course in reality LLMs are experts in screwing stuff up), this still doesn't seem like an appealing idea.

I could see some charm to something to go through intentionally annoying and confusing checkout processes, booking a Ryanair flight, say. I'm fairly sure that an LLM would end up falling for their car hire/insurance/whatever upsells, tho. There's a reason that that checkout process is annoying.

Re: Scamlexity: When agentic AI browsers get scammed

#183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By solved I mean practically solved. Meaning solved to the maximum extent that it can be solved.

Even with the amendment, it's false. If you look at the "The Global State of Scams - 2021" report by ScamAdvisor, page 9 has a country table. Singapore saw 2.5 for 1000 people of what SA would classify as "scams", on the level of Austria, Belgium. Switzerland, Taiwan, Poland and many others face much fewer scams per capita. Looking at amount lost per capita, Singapore is pretty high, with many European folk losing mu…

Those are reported scams. Again you need scams originating from Singapore. Please stop bsing.

Re: Scamlexity: When agentic AI browsers get scammed

#184
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect part of this is rich people coming up with use cases. If you're rich enough money means nothing but product selection feels like a burden so you have an assistant who does purchasing on your behalf. You want your house stocked with high quality items without having to think of it. For the rest of us, the idea of a robot spending money on our behalf is kinda terrifying.

I think that's right. It's like the endless examples around finding restaurants and making reservations, seemingly as common a problem in AI demos as stain removal is in daytime TV ads. But it's a problem that even Toast, which makes restaurant software, says most people just don't regularly have ( https://pos.toasttab.com/blog/data/restaurant-wait-times-and... ). Most people either never make restaurant reservations…

> Most people either never make restaurant reservations, or do so infrequently for special occasions, in which case they probably already know where they want to go and how to book it.

And even if they don't know, they likely either live in a small place, in which case there's not going to be a huge amount of choice, or a big place, in which case there will be actual guides written by people whose actual job it is to review restaurants. It really seems like a solution in desperate need of a problem.

Re: Scamlexity: When agentic AI browsers get scammed

#185
post #30

I don't understand why we would ever want an agent to buy stuff for us. I understand, for example, search with intent to buy "I want to decorate a room. Find me a drawer, a table and four chairs that can fit in this space in matching colours for less than X dollars" But I want to do the final step to buy. In fact, I want to do the final SELECTION of stuff. How is agent buying groceries superior to have a grocery list…

I think the main driving force is it’s a way to monetize an LLM. If the LLM is doing the buying then a “buyer fee” can be tacked on to the purchase and paid to the LLM provider. That is probably an easier sell than an ongoing monthly subscription. Also, sellers can offer a payment to the LLM provider to favor their products over competitors.

That's kinda backwards, tho. You don't, or at least shouldn't, say "we have this thing, and we need to make people use it, so let's make up use cases even if they make no sense and will fail". (People do this all the time, of course; it's more or less the sunk-cost fallacy.)

Re: Scamlexity: When agentic AI browsers get scammed

#186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>To be human, for one. Humans can be evil. Realistically to be human is to straddle both sides of good and evil. It is highly unrealistic and delusional to think humanity represents a paragon of goodness. No. Often evil must be done for the greater good. This is not just a movie trope, it's also reality. >Extreme example: all you need to do to end all scams (and other, human-caused ills in the world) to just kill all…

>Humans can be evil. My mistake. I meant to write humane there. I don't mean to discredit your experience regarding scam victims, as the effects, just as you described, can be horrible. But there was no need to bring other horribleness into it, and compare, and minimize that other horribleness. That comparison and minimization is the offensive part. But then again, letting the offensiveness part go, this doesn't make…

No need to bring horribleness? You are the one who brought up pedophilia.

My whole point was to bring pedophilia to the same level of severity as scams to essentially show you there’s no logical need to bring that up as a disgusting example. You heightened the level of horribleness, then pretended to be offended when I was trying to lower it.

As you say there’s no need to bring horribleness into this but you decided to do it then pretend to be offended when I compared the two.

You talk as if you’re authority. You’re saying shit like “You should do this” “Or you can’t do that” as if you’re automatically correct and dishing out orders. That’s your tone and it’s not appreciated. You “should” let your own logic stand and don’t make statements as if they are absolute truth without evidence.

The fact of the matter is to you, Singapore is inhumane. But an entire city of people disagrees with you and they have the results to show for it. So march right over to them and give them the orders you gave me. And they’ll give you the opposite order right back. That’s just your opinion. So who the fuck cares? You think telling me that I shouldn’t use severe punishment and stating it in an authoritative way is going to change my opinion? Fuck no.

Tell me why your way is objectively better. And then I’ll tell you why a place like Singapore is better.

First, Have you even considered the positive aspects of what Singapore does? The lack of accessibility of drugs alone has saved the lives of countless thousands of people who otherwise would’ve given in to temptation and ruined their own lives by becoming addicts. The cost? Roughly 15 hanged people.

Thousands of people is a loaded number I made up but it’s a reasonable ballpark counterfactual of the amount of lives saved that we can use to illustrate the deeper logic here which is this:

Your morality results in you killing more people. By being more humane you have actually done a greater evil.

That’s how the real world works. So stop tramping around and delivering orders. Tell me objectively why it’s better.

I’m betting you can’t. But go ahead, prove me wrong.

Re: Scamlexity: When agentic AI browsers get scammed

#187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I should preface it with, practically eliminated scams. Meaning eliminated to an extent that is maximally practically possible.

Even that is false. There are many more countries with fewer scams per capita, and with fewer amount lost at scams per capita. Meaning, Singapore falls behind other countries in elimination of scams. See page 9 here for details: https://cdn.newswire.com/files/x/71/6f/93551958ddf942fb585b0...

Again stop showing me false bs statistics. Those are scams that are reported in Singapore.

You need scams originating from Singapore. Those numbers are lower.

Re: Scamlexity: When agentic AI browsers get scammed

#188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Imagine what the LLM is going to hallucinate with your credit card attached. As long as we have free returns, nobody cares.

The second someone has to deal with returning an item that an LLM hallucinated they needed is the second they cancel this service. The hassle of returning something vastly outweighs any perceived convenience of not having to buy toilet paper or whatever the next time you're at the grocery store. Hell, you can buy toilet paper in 10 seconds on your phone while sitting on the toilet from Amazon, and that's been possibl…

That's not how it works. People often buy random crap because they know they can return it once it arrives if they don't like it.

> Hell, you can buy toilet paper in 10 seconds on your phone while sitting on the toilet from Amazon

"We don't need telephone, we have message boys"

Re: Scamlexity: When agentic AI browsers get scammed

#189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even with the amendment, it's false. If you look at the "The Global State of Scams - 2021" report by ScamAdvisor, page 9 has a country table. Singapore saw 2.5 for 1000 people of what SA would classify as "scams", on the level of Austria, Belgium. Switzerland, Taiwan, Poland and many others face much fewer scams per capita. Looking at amount lost per capita, Singapore is pretty high, with many European folk losing mu…

Those are reported scams. Again you need scams originating from Singapore. Please stop bsing.

You know what? This time, you bring up statistics. You claim that Singapore effectively eliminated scams, so, show it then. Or have your point be moot.

Re: Scamlexity: When agentic AI browsers get scammed

#190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Humans can be evil. My mistake. I meant to write humane there. I don't mean to discredit your experience regarding scam victims, as the effects, just as you described, can be horrible. But there was no need to bring other horribleness into it, and compare, and minimize that other horribleness. That comparison and minimization is the offensive part. But then again, letting the offensiveness part go, this doesn't make…

No need to bring horribleness? You are the one who brought up pedophilia. My whole point was to bring pedophilia to the same level of severity as scams to essentially show you there’s no logical need to bring that up as a disgusting example. You heightened the level of horribleness, then pretended to be offended when I was trying to lower it. As you say there’s no need to bring horribleness into this but you decided…

Nah. I won't deal with this many personal attacks. Discussion over.
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