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Codex for almost everything

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Re: Codex for almost everything

#481

Post by ultratalk »

gmueckl wrote: post #191
MassiveQuasar wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

right clicking start menu and clicking shutdown is too hard? amazing

Yes! Even closing the windows of programs that users no longer need is hard. It's easy to develop a disconnect with the level that average users operate at when understanding computers deeply is part of the job. I've definitely developed it myself to some extent, but I have occasional moments where my perspective is getting grounded again.

I don't think that's representative of most non-CS professionals. Most people in the fields I know (mostly professors, medical doctors, and businesspeople) can use google chrome, word, powerpoint, and a little of excel decently. There are the occasional few who confuse spreadsheets and databases, but no one who thinks shutting down computers or closing windows is hard. Heck, my ageing dad managed to troubleshoot his printer without any help, and he has no formal computer experience whatsoever.

HN has a long history of patronising the "average user" in the guise of paternal figures who don't realise that what they are doing is belittling the vast majority of tech users. I'm guilty of it myself. But they're capable of a lot more than we think they are.

Ultimately, it comes down to the willingness people have to learn new things. If they're curious enough to think about how things work, they'll be fine.

Re: Codex for almost everything

#482

Post by sikewj »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #467
jbstack wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You want it, but then you closed by explaining exactly why you shouldn't want it. Plus, the new baseline isn't neutral (as in, everyone is the same again). If humans can now do 10x the work as before, the employer doesn't need the same number of humans to carry out its work. So the new baseline is actually "let's keep 1 employee and fire the other 9", unless the business can find a way to suddenly expand 10x so that…

> So the new baseline is actually "let's keep 1 employee and fire the other 9", unless the business can find a way to suddenly expand 10x so that it needs 10x as much work done. If they have any surplus of money (or loans) they'll try, so those 9 employees may end up becoming team leads or middle management, trying to start new initiatives to get the 10x expansion (and 100x improvement). The market isn't anywhere nea…

lol that has nothing to do with market efficiency.

I’ve seen a number of your posts where you talk about topics you clearly are not all that well versed in, with such confidence when you’re plain wrong.

Re: Codex for almost everything

#483

Post by LukaD »

More like codex for nothing. I canceled my 20$ plan and won't let myself be bullied into buying more expensive plans to have the same limits I used to have a week ago on the 20$ plan. I would not be surprised if this illegal where I live.

Re: Codex for almost everything

#484

Post by TeMPOraL »

cjbarber wrote: post #64
postalcoder wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with the sentiment but I think for normie agents to take off in the way that you expect, you're going to have to grant them with full access. But, by granting agents full access, you immediately turn the computer into an extremely adversarial device insofar as txt files become credible threat vectors. For all the benefits that agents offer, they can be asymmetrically harmful. This is not a solved issue. That…

> For all the benefits that agents offer, they can be asymmetrically harmful. This is not a solved issue. Strongly agreed. I saw a few people running these things with looser permissions than I do. e.g. one non-technical friend using claude cli, no sandbox, so I set them up with a sandbox etc. And the people who were using Cowork already were mostly blind approving all requests without reading what it was asking. The…

> I saw a few people running these things with looser permissions than I do. e.g. one non-technical friend using claude cli, no sandbox, so I set them up with a sandbox etc.

People have different levels of safety-consciousness, but also different tolerances and threat models.

For example, I would hesitate running a Mythos-level model in YOLO mode with full control over my computer, but right now, for personal stuff, even figuring out WTF are sandboxes in Claude Code / Gemini CLI, much less setting them up, is too much hassle. What's the worst it can do without me noticing? Format the drive and upload some private data into pastebin? Much as I hate cloud and the proliferation of 2FA in every service, that alone means it can't actually do more to me than waste few hours of my life, as I reimage my desktop and restore OneDrive (in case of destructive changes that got synced up). These models are not yet good enough to empty my bank account in few minutes I'm not looking; everything else they can do quickly is reversible or inconsequential.

Now, I do look at things closely when working with agentic AI tools. But my threat model is limited to worrying about those few hours of my life. `rm -rf / --no-preserve-root` is an annoyance, not a danger.

(I accept that different contexts give different threat modeling. I would be more worried if I were doing businessy business stuff with all kinds of secret sauces, or was processing PII of my employer's customers, or lived in a country where it's easy to have all your money stolen if your CC number or SSN gets posted online.)

Re: Codex for almost everything

#485

Post by frez1 »

cjbarber wrote: post #14

My current expectation is that the Cowork/Codex set of "professional agents" for non-technical users will be one of the most important and fastest growing product categories of all time, so far. i.e. agents for knowledge workers who are not software engineers A few thoughts and questions: 1. I expect that this set of products will be extremely disruptive to many software businesses. It's like when a new VP joins a co…

I agree, and I think this extends to programming too. A lot of of software practices are built on the expectation humans are writing, reviewing and shipping code with that quickly becoming the case, processes, practices and even programming languages themselves will evolve to what agents need, rather than humans.

a version of Conway's law aimed specifically at agentic communication rather than human.

Re: Codex for almost everything

#486

Post by soco »

shevy-java wrote: post #472
safety1st wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their solution will be to push mandatory and nonconsensual updates to your devices which limit your device and your freedom in the name of security. Like Google is doing to Android in September. You will no longer be able to install "unverified" software on anything. To address prompt injection attacks they're probably working on an approach where your data all has to be in the cloud and subject to security scans. Th…

> I'm so glad I switched to Linux more than a decade ago. At least on the PC there will still be an open source ecosystem for a long time to come, it may have less features but I'm willing to accept that. Wait until age verification is mandatory everywhere. :) I can already see that happening, e. g. to access financial transactions or government apps, one needs to verify the id, and that will not work without age ver…

There's always the zero knowledge proof tech alternative, but I don't have the feeling we are moving in that direction - it's not the most profitable business is it.

Re: Codex for almost everything

#487

Post by TeMPOraL »

baq wrote: post #112
William_BB wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> well it actually implemented a normalization pipeline and a tax computing engine which then did the taxes, but close enough You can't seriously believe laymen will try to implement their own tax calculators.

of course not. what I believe is that laymen will put all their tax docs into codex and tell it to 'do their taxes' and the tool will decide to implement the calculator, do the taxes and present only the final numbers. the layman won't even know there was a calculator implemented.

> the layman won't even know there was a calculator implemented.

That's on company making the agentic harness. Hiding details of what computer does from the user is the original sin of this industry, and subsequent generations of developers and software companies keeps doubling down on it.

(Case in point - I just downloaded the Codex app for Windows, and in the options I see it has two UI modes of operating, one of which is meant for "non coding" and apparently this means hiding the details of what the agent is doing. This is precisely where the layman is betrayed by the tool.)

Re: Codex for almost everything

#488

Post by awestroke »

firloop wrote: post #212
woeirua wrote: post #194

Just reading the comments here it's amazing how many people seemingly don't know that Claude Desktop and Cowork basically already does all of this. Codex isn't pioneering these features, it's mostly just catching up.

I don't think Claude has this part yet: > With background computer use, Codex can now use all of the apps on your computer by seeing, clicking, and typing with its own cursor. Multiple agents can work on your Mac in parallel, without interfering with your own work in other apps.

Yes it does:

https://code.claude.com/docs/en/desktop#let-claude-use-your-...

Re: Codex for almost everything

#489

Post by roel_v »

suddenlybananas wrote: post #465
roel_v wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"LLMS are good at "find me a two week vacation two months from now"?" Of course they are. I gave one a similar prompt a few weeks ago, albeit quite a bit more verbose (actually I just dictated it, train of thought, with couple of 'eh actually, forget what I just said about x, do y instead") and although I wasn't brave enough to give it my credit card and finalize the bookings, it would have paid for the bookings I ha…

>although I wasn't brave enough to give it my credit card and finalize the bookings So it's not trustworthy enough for you, someone clearly interested in the hype of LLMs.

It's a matter of getting used to things. We're only a few weeks further, I maybe would have given it now. It'd need some way to keep it private I guess, maybe I could have used a one off CC number. Those are just technicalities at this point. It got me to the point where I just had to enter my details and click a few confirm buttons. Those are solved problems. I'm not sure why the denialists here are saying those things are 'impossible'. I mean I've seen them happen, what do you want me to say? Claiming this is 'just hype' is ostrich behavior. I've been playing with an abliterated Gemma 4 yesterday on my local machine. Yes it would take longer and require a bunch of harness fiddling, but even if OpenAI and Anthropic would collapse tomorrow, I'm confident I could still do the exact same thing the day after with with what I have right now on my hard disk. I'm not sure what you want me to tell you mate. Yes there's rough edges to work out or just in general workflows to improve but the ideas are way beyond 'proof of concept'. There's people like myself using these things for purposes that 6 months ago were science fiction. I don't care if you believe me or not, I'm just some dude on the internet, but level of delusion on how 'inferior' these models (with proper harnessing) are is mind boggling for someone like me who sees it happen literally 20 centimeters to the side on my screen from where I see people claim that those things are impossible.

Re: Codex for almost everything

#490

Post by petesergeant »

multjoy wrote: post #431
avaer wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> for normie agents to take off in the way that you expect, you're going to have to grant them with full access At this point it's a foregone conclusion this is what users will choose. It'll be like (lack of) privacy on the internet caused by the ad industrial complex, but much worse and much more invasive. The threats are real, but it's just a product opportunity to these companies. OpenAI and friends will sell the…

>Anyone trying to stay safe will be on the gradient to a Stallmanesque monastic computing existence. As a proud neo-luddite, I'm watching the AI hype with grim amusement and I'll tell you hwhat, it doesn't look like a good time. Even putting to one side the planetary scale economic crash that is incoming, all the hypers seem to be on some sort of treadmill that is out of their control and it simply doesn't look like…

Do you think that avoidance is going to protect you from the fall-out?
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