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Operator research preview

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Re: Operator research preview

#421

Post by dang »

edouard-harris wrote: post #366
dang wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So far HN users seem to be doing a pretty job of flagging them. Of course, the big question is what to do if/when they're smart enough to fool everybody.

By definition, in that limit they'll be genuinely adding to the discourse so presumably they should stay. Edit: More correctly, they'll be making contributions to the discourse that closely mimic the human distribution, so from a pure content perspective they won't be making the discourse any worse in the very short term.

I made a similar point a while ago (maybe last year) and there were some pretty good objections to it. Unfortunately I couldn't find that post when I looked for it last night!

Re: Operator research preview

#422

Post by tasoeur »

brap wrote: post #31

I don't know why, but the approach where "agents" accomplish things by using a mouse and keyboard and looking at pixels always seemed off to me. I understand that in theory it's more flexible, but I always imagined some sort of standard, where apps and services can expose a set of pre-approved actions on the user's behalf. And the user can add/revoke privileges from agents at any point. Kind of like OAuth scopes. Ima…

Actually I suspect that’s where companies like Apple are going. If you look at the latest iteration of app intents, Apple is trying to define a predefined set of actions that developers can implement in their app. In turn, Apple intelligence/siri pretty much can leverage said intent when the user prompt a given task. It’s still fairly early but I could see how this would indeed converge towards that sort of paradigm.

Re: Operator research preview

#423

Post by tasoeur »

ks2048 wrote: post #215

How are online advertising companies (including Google) going to react if more and more internet browsing is done by AI agents?

I can see a couple ways:

- double down on influencing the agent’s choices/decision by presenting highest-bidder options (for stores, restaurants etc).

- find a way to figure out the unique user ID behind an agent (which can be trivially done once the agent logs in to say google or facebook etc)

- partnership with AI agent companies to offer their service for free / cheaper in exchange of a complete lack of privacy. For instance the agent could agree to all the cookie policies in the world and let the ad tracker know who you are.

Re: Operator research preview

#424

Post by dougb5 »

noch wrote: post #401
dougb5 wrote: post #88

> We’re collaborating with companies like DoorDash, Instacart, OpenTable, Priceline, StubHub, Thumbtack, Uber, and others to ensure Operator addresses real-world needs while respecting established norms. Are these tasks really complex enough for people that they are itching to relegate the remaining scrap of required labor to a machine? I always feel like I'm missing something when companies hold up restaurant reserv…

> Are these tasks really complex enough for people that they are itching to relegate the remaining scrap of required labor to a machine? I think I sympathize with your feeling but I don't agree with the premise of the question. Do you have or have you ever had a human personal assistant or secretary? An effective human personal assistant can feel like a gift from God. Suddenly a lot of the things that prevent you fro…

I've never had a human personal assistant. I don't have a sufficiently "busy life", at least in the conventional sense. I appreciate that personal assistants can be useful for other people.

And I'm not knocking the idea of agents. I can certainly imagine other tasks ("research wedding planners", "organize my tax info", "find the best local doctor", "scrape all the bike accident info in all the towns in my county") where they could be a benefit.

It's the focus on these itty bitty consumer tasks I don't get. Even if I did have a personal assistant, I still can't imagine I'd ask them to make a reservation for me on OpenTable, or find tickets for me on Stubhub. I mean, these apps already kind of function like assistants, don't they?, even without any AI fanciness. All I do is tell them what I want and press a few buttons, and there's a precise interface for doing so that is tailored to the task in each case; the UX has been hyper-optimized over time by market forces to be fast and convenient to me so that they can take my money. Using them is hardly any slower than asking another person to do the task for me.

Re: Operator research preview

#428

Post by rad_gruchalski »

siliconwrath wrote: post #316
segasaturn wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never used a McDonalds kiosk for the reason you gave. Actually, I think no matter how much you streamlined it with cutting edge AI assistants it would still be faster and more natural to just say "A big mac and a diet coke please" to the cashier. I don't see any end-user benefit to these assistants, the only ones who benefit are the bean counters and executives who will use them to do more layoffs and keep the m…

With a true GPT ordering experience, you would just say “a Big Mac and a diet coke please” to a speaker just like you would in a drive thru and it would ring you up. It would replace the cashier

The guy taking orders does other things rather than just taking an order. Wake me up when chatgimp can prepare my fries and bring the bag with ready food to my car.

Re: Operator research preview

#429

Post by rad_gruchalski »

Animats wrote: post #86

Suggested prompt: "Create a meme coin for a currently popular meme. Promote it on X and Instagram. Hold onto half the issued coins. When the market cap exceeds US $10 million, start dumping the coins. Send the proceeds to an account in the Bahamas."

“I have successfully bought bitcoin and sent it all to the @bahamas account registeredin Bahama, Sierra Leone. Let me know what else can I do for you today.”

Re: Operator research preview

#430

Post by rad_gruchalski »

captn3m0 wrote: post #393
ks2048 wrote: post #215

How are online advertising companies (including Google) going to react if more and more internet browsing is done by AI agents?

Advertisers would very much not like to serve ads to bots, and this will result in: 1. Better bot detection 2. Agents voluntarily providing bot-detection signals (navigator.Bot?) 3. Websites blocking bots entirely.

But behind that bot there’s a human who will consume that info. Find a way to make them see your product.
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