Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Codex for almost everything

openai.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

571–580 of 600 posts

Re: Codex for almost everything

#571

Post by teiferer »

intended wrote: post #89
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…

There was a recent Stanford study which showed that AI enthusiasts and experts and the normies had very different sentiment when it came to AI. I think most people are going to say they dont want it. I mean, why would anyone want a tool that can screw up their bank account? What benefit does it gain them? Theres lots of cases of great highly useful LLM tools, but the moment they scale up you get slammed by the risks…

> I think most people are going to say they dont want it. I mean, why would anyone want a tool that can screw up their bank account? What benefit does it gain them?

I'm not so sure. Matter of marketing and social pressure, big time.

Consider this: "Always-on pervasive google/fb/... login? I think most people are going to say they dont want it. I mean, why would anyone want a tool that would track their every move on the internet?" That could easily have been a statement 20 years ago. And look where we are.

Re: Codex for almost everything

#572

Post by teiferer »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #444
ryandrake wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, in general we are going to find that ultimately most employee end users don't want it. Assuming it actually makes you more productive. I mean, who the hell wants to be 10X more productive without a commensurate 10X compensation increase? You're just giving away that value to your employer. On the other hand, entrepreneurs and managers are going to want it for their employees (and force it on them) for the ab…

I want. If I get 10X more productive, I can unilaterally increase my compensation 10X by doing my stuff in 1 unit of time instead of 10 it took, and splitting the remaining 9 units of time into, say, 4 units of time doing more work, securing my position and setting myself up for promotion, and 5 units of time doing whatever the fuck I want . Not all compensation shows up in a bank account - working less, or under les…

Your first paragraph is so short sighted that its message didn't even make it beyond the next one. It's a race to the bottom and your "doing whatever the fuck I want" will obviously never materialize.

The typical work week today is 40 hours. Just like it was 80 years ago. The typical worker is dramatically more productive than 80 years ago yet "doing whatever the fuck I want" time has not increased. Why would it? Employers don't need to pay such that 20 hour work weeks give you the same income. Because everybody around you is ok with working 40 hours.

This won't be different with AI, no matter if the overall effect is 1.1x or 10x or 100x productivity. Because it's not a technological problem but a sociological one.

Re: Codex for almost everything

#573

Post by teiferer »

ryandrake wrote: post #101
intended wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a recent Stanford study which showed that AI enthusiasts and experts and the normies had very different sentiment when it came to AI. I think most people are going to say they dont want it. I mean, why would anyone want a tool that can screw up their bank account? What benefit does it gain them? Theres lots of cases of great highly useful LLM tools, but the moment they scale up you get slammed by the risks…

I agree, in general we are going to find that ultimately most employee end users don't want it. Assuming it actually makes you more productive. I mean, who the hell wants to be 10X more productive without a commensurate 10X compensation increase? You're just giving away that value to your employer. On the other hand, entrepreneurs and managers are going to want it for their employees (and force it on them) for the ab…

> I mean, who the hell wants to be 10X more productive without a commensurate 10X compensation increase?

The person who realizes that everybody around them is bow at 10X and if they don't follow suit then they will soon be out of a job.

Re: Codex for almost everything

#574

Post by teiferer »

planb wrote: post #77
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…

How many of these threat vectors are just theoretical? Don’t use skills from random sources (just like don’t execute files from unknown sources). Don’t paste from untrusted sites (don’t click links on untrusted sites). Maybe there are fake documentation sites that the agent will search and have a prompt injected - but I haven’t heard of a single case where that happened. For now, the benefits outweigh the risk so muc…

The problem is that any data now becomes effectively an executable.

> I think I have an almost complete knowledge of all the attack vectors.

That's exactly the kind of hybris where the maximum danger lies.

Re: Codex for almost everything

#575

Post by teiferer »

Anvoker wrote: post #480
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…

What about setting environments for normies that mitigate this problem? I don't know that you can do it on Windows, but Linux offers various tools for isolation where you can give full rights to an LLM and still be safe from certain classes of disaster. Maybe this kind of isolation neuters the benefit you're thinking of, but I do believe some sort of solution could be reached.

"Isolation" and "full rights" are mutually exclusive, contradictory properties.

Re: Codex for almost everything

#576

Post by hashmal »

throw_m239339 wrote: post #400

All of you are ironically completely oblivious to the fact that you're training your own replacement by using these tools, you're even paying for it. Eventually, the companies you work for will just "hire" Anthropic or OpenAI agents in your place and you'll be out of job, no matter your seniority. Mark my words.

software development has always been about replacing jobs. if we now do it to ourselves and not just other people, maybe there's finally some kind of fairness in the game.

Re: Codex for almost everything

#577

Post by jasongi »

postalcoder wrote: post #58
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 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…

I cannot reconcile that growth for non-technical users is going to explode, when most utility from agents is via the ability to execute arbitrary code, generally in yolo mode, with the fact that almost all corporate IT departments do not give users the ability to install anything on their machine, let alone arbitrary code. Even developers at many companies are subject to this despite the productivity impacts.

The culture of corporate IT would need to change to allow it, and I just don't see it happening.

Re: Codex for almost everything

#578

Post by deaux »

ogig wrote: post #187
jampekka wrote: post #143

Lots of scepticism here, but I think this may really take off. After 25 years of heavy CLI use, lately I've found myself using codex (in terminal) for terminal tasks I've previously done using CLI commands. If someone manages to make a robust GUI version of this for normies, people will lap it up. People don't want to juggle applications, we want computers to do what we want/need them to do.

I agree. As a long time linux user, coding assistants as interface to the OS has been a delight to discover. The cryptic totality of commands, parameters, config files, logs has been simplified into natural language: "Claude, I want to test monokai color scheme on my sway environment" and possibly hours of tweaking done in seconds. My setup has never been so customized, because there is no friction now. I love it and…

> My setup has never been so customized, because there is no friction now. I love it and I predict this will increase, even if slightly, the real user base of linux desktops.

You don't need to predict anything, because it already has. I've seen multiple real cases of this. People who normally would 1. try Linux 2. get stuck 3. revert back to Windows, yet now 1. try Linux 2. Claude solves their issue when they encounter it 3. They keep using Linux.

Re: Codex for almost everything

#580

Post by krzyk »

storus wrote: post #331
krzyk wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are people running OpenClaw, so yeah, crazy as it sounds, some do that. I'm reluctant to run any model without at least a docker.

I run them all on an old Pentium J (Atom) NUC with 8GB RAM, so I don't even care. Some Chinese N100 mini PC for $100 is all one needs.

Using local models or external?

If external, aren't they pricey? How much tokens they generate?

If local, what runs on such hardware that gives reasonable results?

Post reply on HN