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Operator research preview

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Re: Operator research preview

#191

Post by sky2224 »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #169
gordon_freeman wrote: post #155

What is fascinating about this announcement is if you look into future after considerable improvements in product and the model, we will be just chatting with ChatGPT to book dinner tables, flights, buy groceries and do all sort of mundane and hugely boring things we do on the web, just by talking to the agents. I'd definitely love that.

I don't. Chat interface sucks; for most of these things, a more direct interface could be much more ergonomic, and easier to operate and integrate. The only reason we don't have those interfaces is because neither restaurants, nor airlines, nor online stores, nor any other businesses actually want us to have them. To a business, the user interface isn't there to help the user achieve their goals - it's a platform for…

I think the chat interface is bad, but for certain things it could honestly streamline a lot of mundane things as the poster you're replying two stated.

For example, McDonald's has heavily shifted away from cashiers taking orders and instead is using the kiosks to have customers order. The downside of this is 1) it's incredibly unsanitary and 2) customers are so goddamn slow at tapping on that god awful screen. An AI agent could actually take orders with surprisingly good accuracy.

Now, whether we want that in the world is a whole different debate.

Re: Operator research preview

#192

Post by TeMPOraL »

gordon_freeman wrote: post #173
TeMPOraL wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't. Chat interface sucks; for most of these things, a more direct interface could be much more ergonomic, and easier to operate and integrate. The only reason we don't have those interfaces is because neither restaurants, nor airlines, nor online stores, nor any other businesses actually want us to have them. To a business, the user interface isn't there to help the user achieve their goals - it's a platform for…

I also do not like Chat interface. What I meant by above comment was actually talking and having natural conversations with Operator agent while driving car or just going for a walk or whenever and wherever something comes to my mind which requires me to go to browser and fill out forms etc. That would get us closer to using chatGPT as a universal AI agent to get those things done. (This is what Siri was supposed to…

> This is what Siri was supposed to be one day when Steve Jobs introduced it on that stage but unfortunately that day never arrived.

The irony is, the reason neither Siri nor Alexa nor Google Assistant/Now/${whatever they call it these days} nor Cortana achieved this isn't the voice side of the equation. That one sucks too, when you realize that 20 years ago Microsoft Speech API could do better, fully locally, on cheap consumer hardware, but the real problem is the integration approach. Doing interop by agreements between vendors only ever led to commercial entities exposing minimal, trivial functionality of their services, which were activated by voice commands in the form of "{Brand Wake word}, {verb} {Brand 1} to {verb} {Brand 2}" etc.

This is not an ergonomic user interface, it's merely making people constantly read ads themselves. "Okay Google, play some Taylor Swift on Spotify" is literally three brand ads in eight words you just spoke out loud.

No, all the magical voice experience you describe is enabled[0] by having multimodal LLMs that can be sicced on any website and beat it into submission, whether the website vendor likes it or not. Hopefully they won't screw it up (again[1]) trying to commercialize it by offering third parties control over what LLMs can do. If, in this new reality, I have to utter the word "Spotify" to have my phone start playing music, this is going to be a double regression relative to MS Speech API in the mid 2000s.

--

[0] - Actually, it was possible ever since OpenAI added function calling, which was like over a good year ago - if you exposed stuff you care about as functions on your own. As it is, currently the smartphone voice assistant that's closest to Star Trek experience is actually free and easy to set up - it's Home Assistant with its mobile app (for the phone assistant side) and server-side integrations (mostly, but not limited to, IoT hardware).

[1] - Like OpenAI did with "GPTs". They've tried to package a system prompt and function call configuration into a digital product and build a marketplace around it. This delayed their release of the functionality to the official ChatGPT app/website for about half a year, leading to an absurd situation where, for those 6+ months, anyone with API access could use a much better implementation of "GPTs" via third-party frontends like TypingMind.

Re: Operator research preview

#193

Post by krapp »

sky2224 wrote: post #191
TeMPOraL wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't. Chat interface sucks; for most of these things, a more direct interface could be much more ergonomic, and easier to operate and integrate. The only reason we don't have those interfaces is because neither restaurants, nor airlines, nor online stores, nor any other businesses actually want us to have them. To a business, the user interface isn't there to help the user achieve their goals - it's a platform for…

I think the chat interface is bad, but for certain things it could honestly streamline a lot of mundane things as the poster you're replying two stated. For example, McDonald's has heavily shifted away from cashiers taking orders and instead is using the kiosks to have customers order. The downside of this is 1) it's incredibly unsanitary and 2) customers are so goddamn slow at tapping on that god awful screen. An AI…

McDonald's already tried having AI take orders and stopped when the AI did things like randomly add $250 of McNuggets or mistake ketchup for butter.

Note - because this is something which needs to be pointed out in any discussion of AI now - even though human beings also make mistakes this is still markedly less accurate than the average human employee.

Re: Operator research preview

#194

Post by MagMueller »

karmasimida wrote: post #146
fsndz wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is mainly to reclaim mindshare from DeepSeek that has done incredible launches recently. R1 was particularly a strong demonstration of what cracked team of former quants can do. The demo of Operator was nice but I still feel like R1 is the big moment in the AI space so far. https://open.substack.com/pub/transitions/p/openai-launches-...

R1 is a fundamental blow to their value proposition right now, the uniqueness is gone, and forever open sourced. Unless o3 is the game changer of game changer, I am not seeing they are getting the narrative back soon.

You can use browser-use as open-source alternative for Operator

Re: Operator research preview

#195

Post by MagMueller »

EcommerceFlow wrote: post #75

Cool to see the work Adept Ai mention a few years back come to life. Given how much work is going into "safety", I wonder if this is a field in which less safe open source could overtake the premium models.

You can just try with browser-use. Its open-source and connects to your real browser. So you can just decide for your own safety system.

Re: Operator research preview

#196

Post by gowld »

aerostable_slug wrote: post #172
insane_dreamer wrote: post #119

> and even creating memes. important work. glad to hear they're investing $500B in this space instead of stuff like, I don't know, making the planet livable for our grandkids

"Operator, I need to purchase 78,000 widgets for my company. Please find the best deal among suppliers who ship using carriers and ports who meet or exceed US EPA guidelines. Please ensure at least 50% of the product is sourced from post-consumer waste, and order your responses by price per unit."

"Low-cost slave-labor factory located. Enjoy your widgets!"

Re: Operator research preview

#197

Post by willmarch »

ActorNightly wrote: post #144
OoTheNigerian wrote: post #41

I'm surprised folks on Hackernews are always critical of V1s. In 18 month, apps will have APIs for "agentic browsing" ™OoTheNigerian ;) And you will not need to give anything control over your browser. I you will merely connect your app to OpenAI or any other client.

When 4o came out with its chain of thought, people thought this is it. And today, nobody really cares. Its just another LLM. Same thing with this. The other day I was writing some code to compute some geometric angles, and I was getting 2 different results for what I though was the same angle, but in fact I didn't realize that these angles should not be equivalent. No LLM was able to tell me the issue, they just said…

4o models don't have chain of thought, are you thinking of o1 perhaps?

Re: Operator research preview

#198

Post by ItsMattyG »

krapp wrote: post #193
sky2224 wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the chat interface is bad, but for certain things it could honestly streamline a lot of mundane things as the poster you're replying two stated. For example, McDonald's has heavily shifted away from cashiers taking orders and instead is using the kiosks to have customers order. The downside of this is 1) it's incredibly unsanitary and 2) customers are so goddamn slow at tapping on that god awful screen. An AI…

McDonald's already tried having AI take orders and stopped when the AI did things like randomly add $250 of McNuggets or mistake ketchup for butter. Note - because this is something which needs to be pointed out in any discussion of AI now - even though human beings also make mistakes this is still markedly less accurate than the average human employee.

For now

Re: Operator research preview

#199

Post by aerostable_slug »

gowld wrote: post #196
aerostable_slug wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Operator, I need to purchase 78,000 widgets for my company. Please find the best deal among suppliers who ship using carriers and ports who meet or exceed US EPA guidelines. Please ensure at least 50% of the product is sourced from post-consumer waste, and order your responses by price per unit."

"Low-cost slave-labor factory located. Enjoy your widgets!"

Then add criteria for worker welfare, factory safety standards, relative corruption level of the host nation, and/or whatever else turns your propeller.

The point is that this kind of tool is potentially a real labor-saver for those who are trying to act responsibly within their sphere of influence.

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