I don't want AI agents controlling my laptop • Hacker News Board

Re: I don't want AI agents controlling my laptop

#41

Post by LudwigNagasena » Wed, Sep 10, 2025, 1:15 PM UTC

DauntingPear7 wrote: post #36

LudwigNagasena wrote: post #10

I want AI agents controlling my laptop. And not only AI. There are lots of cool software programs I want on my laptop besides AI too. The problem is not AI, the problem is the awful security model that is the foundation of all modern operating systems.

What would be a better security foundation?

Mandatory access controls, fine-grained capabilities, temporary capability grants, risk scoring, progressive disclosure, high-level intents that encapsulate permissions, and most importantly, an audit system.

We have the hindsight of developing highly distributed low-trust systems. We can do better than `curl -fsSL https://remote_install_script/ | sudo sh`.

Re: I don't want AI agents controlling my laptop

#42

Post by throwaway6977 » Wed, Sep 10, 2025, 1:24 PM UTC

manofmanysmiles wrote: post #30

What I've been doing is running an agent inside a locked down k8s environment. Agents are spun up by operator, and have access to a single namespace. It's not perfect, as container escape is not entirely unlikely. I am working in a future version where all agents run inside firecracker VMs, log all actions logged externally. With Kubernetes it's like having a bunch of virtual employees making git commits, firing up n…

I just spent a lot of yesterday tweaking a docker image with xfce and vs code so I can just let codex go full access mode without too much worry in a throwaway sandbox. The agent runs similarly-namespace-constrained and without sudo. I think it's a relatively safe middleground- do you really think container escape is still a big deal here?

Finally getting this setup also allowed me to very quickly troubleshoot what was breaking my build in the codex cloud hosted container which obviously has even less risk attached.

Now I'm juggling and strategizing branches like coding is an RTS game... and it feels like a super power. It's almost like unlocking an undiscovered tech tree.

Re: I don't want AI agents controlling my laptop

#43

Post by perryizgr8 » Wed, Sep 10, 2025, 2:30 PM UTC

I want ai agents controlling my laptop, my desktop and my phone. I'm tired of doing everything manually. These personal devices should be brimming with intelligence, anticipating my every move, offering to complete my tasks, touching up photos and videos automatically, having a perfect memory and awareness of my online and offline life. I think the real barrier right now is cost. But i can't wait to get to that future.

Example: sometimes i start working on a thing on my laptop in the living room, realise I would rather finish it on the desktop. My laptop has a camera, the desktop has a webcam, my phone has multiple cameras. An ai agent should be monitoring all these and more sensors and my laptop screen and be able to deduce that I want to continue on the desktop. By the time I reach the desktop it should be awake, and in the same state I left off on the laptop.