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Scamlexity: When agentic AI browsers get scammed

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Re: Scamlexity: When agentic AI browsers get scammed

#61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Enjoy it while you can. Messing with which products get purchased by these agents is such a no-brainer revenue stream for AI companies.

Then I will use a different service. I think this will be harder to monopolize than search.

Not really. Any competitors that start to get traction can just get bought out by the big players for enough money that they'd be stupid to refuse.

And who's going to stop that? This government?

Re: Scamlexity: When agentic AI browsers get scammed

#62

I don't understand why we would ever want an agent to buy stuff for us. I understand, for example, search with intent to buy "I want to decorate a room. Find me a drawer, a table and four chairs that can fit in this space in matching colours for less than X dollars" But I want to do the final step to buy. In fact, I want to do the final SELECTION of stuff. How is agent buying groceries superior to have a grocery list…

Agent, I need some vitamin D, can you find me the best deal for some rated in the top 5? Agent deployed. Ok we found a bottle with a 30 day supply of Nature’s Own from a well respected merchant. It can be here in 2 days and it is $12. Should I buy? Yes. Or you could add some other parameters and tell it to buy now if under $15. Agent, I need a regular order for my groceries, but I also need to make a pumpkin pie so c…

Does anyone actually buy this way? For anything that isn’t groceries, I check, particularly now that Amazon has roughly the same trust as temu.

Vitamin d? I’m going to check the brand, that it’s actually a good quality type. It’s a 4.9 but do reviews look bought ? How many people complain of the pills smelling? Is Amazon the actual seller?

As for the groceries, my chain of choice already has a fill order with last purchases button, I don’t see any big convenience that justifies a hallucination prone ai having the ability to make purchases on my behalf.

Re: Scamlexity: When agentic AI browsers get scammed

#63
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect part of this is rich people coming up with use cases. If you're rich enough money means nothing but product selection feels like a burden so you have an assistant who does purchasing on your behalf. You want your house stocked with high quality items without having to think of it. For the rest of us, the idea of a robot spending money on our behalf is kinda terrifying.

Also, consider what enshittification in this area will look like: First year, all the choices are good, second year, it starts picking worse price/value items, then it goes downhill until you finally do it yourself again. Nope thanks

Correct: as soon as you start using an AI to buy things for you, influence over the choices that AI makes becomes an incredibly tantalizing fruit to be auctioned off. And you don't control that AI, a for-profit entity does. It doesn't matter whether it's working well and acting in your best interest now, it's abundantly clear that it won't be very long before it's conspiring against you. You are the product.

Re: Scamlexity: When agentic AI browsers get scammed

#64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I've found the safety research conducted by the likes of Anthropic and OAI to be so confusing. Like when they said that models are likely to blackmail developers in order to avoid being 'turned off' [1]. What an utterly and obviously contrived and inevitable derivation of narratives from humans (science fiction and others) in the corpus. Nothing surprising or interesting. However, their hypothesis is pres…

So you don't think that we'll need to turn off AIs? Regardless of where their impulse to avoid such comes from, the fact that they'll attempt to avoid that is important. I think you haven't thought about this enough. Attempting to reduce the issue to cyber security basics betrays a lack of depth in either understanding or imagination.

I don't think we'll need to turn off AIs because I don't think anything we're doing today is actually at any real risk of leading to an AI that's conscious and has its own opinions and agendas.

What we've got is a very interesting text predictor.

...But also, what, exactly, is your imagination telling you that a hypothetical AGI without any connection to the outside world can do if it gets mad at us? If it doesn't have any code to access network ports; if no one's given it any physical levers; if it's running in a sandbox...have you bought into the Hollywood idea that a AGI can rewrite its own code perfectly on the fly to be able to do anything?

Re: Scamlexity: When agentic AI browsers get scammed

#66

I don't understand why we would ever want an agent to buy stuff for us. I understand, for example, search with intent to buy "I want to decorate a room. Find me a drawer, a table and four chairs that can fit in this space in matching colours for less than X dollars" But I want to do the final step to buy. In fact, I want to do the final SELECTION of stuff. How is agent buying groceries superior to have a grocery list…

Agent, I need some vitamin D, can you find me the best deal for some rated in the top 5? Agent deployed. Ok we found a bottle with a 30 day supply of Nature’s Own from a well respected merchant. It can be here in 2 days and it is $12. Should I buy? Yes. Or you could add some other parameters and tell it to buy now if under $15. Agent, I need a regular order for my groceries, but I also need to make a pumpkin pie so c…

> Agent, I need some vitamin D, can you find me the best deal for some rated in the top 5?

Ok we found a bottle with a 30 day supply of , a Well-Known Highly Rated and Respected Awesome Producer Who Everyone Loves and Is Very Trustworthy™, from , a Well Respected And Totally Trustworthy And Very Good-Looking Merchant™.

Re: Scamlexity: When agentic AI browsers get scammed

#68

I don't understand why we would ever want an agent to buy stuff for us. I understand, for example, search with intent to buy "I want to decorate a room. Find me a drawer, a table and four chairs that can fit in this space in matching colours for less than X dollars" But I want to do the final step to buy. In fact, I want to do the final SELECTION of stuff. How is agent buying groceries superior to have a grocery list…

If you were a lawyer, you’d think something slightly different when you heard the word agent than you would if you were a computer guy. The delta is the fact that under the law of agency, an agent has the power to bind the principal to a contract. If the lawyers didn’t have this definition in their head there would be no drive to make the software agent a purchaser, because it’s a stupid idea.

I am a lawyer. I understood your first paragraph but didn’t understand the second. It reads like a drive-by shitpost, utterly lacking substance.

Re: Scamlexity: When agentic AI browsers get scammed

#69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agent, I need some vitamin D, can you find me the best deal for some rated in the top 5? Agent deployed. Ok we found a bottle with a 30 day supply of Nature’s Own from a well respected merchant. It can be here in 2 days and it is $12. Should I buy? Yes. Or you could add some other parameters and tell it to buy now if under $15. Agent, I need a regular order for my groceries, but I also need to make a pumpkin pie so c…

>Agent, I need some vitamin D, can you find me the best deal for some rated in the top 5? "I have picked the best reviewed vitamin D on Amazon." (and, it's a knockoff in the mixed inventory, and now you're getting lead-laced nothing)

Supposing I accept that's a likely outcome, it's exactly the same thing that would have happened if a typical human shopper searched for Vitamin D and picked the top result, right?

The cynicism on these topics is getting exhausting.

Re: Scamlexity: When agentic AI browsers get scammed

#70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agent, I need some vitamin D, can you find me the best deal for some rated in the top 5? Agent deployed. Ok we found a bottle with a 30 day supply of Nature’s Own from a well respected merchant. It can be here in 2 days and it is $12. Should I buy? Yes. Or you could add some other parameters and tell it to buy now if under $15. Agent, I need a regular order for my groceries, but I also need to make a pumpkin pie so c…

Yeah, agree most daily purchases are humdrum and shouldn’t command all of my attention. Incidentally, my last project is about buying by unit price. Shameless plug, but for vitmain D the best price per serving here ( https://popgot.com/vitamin-d3 )

Those "refine your results" buttons is clever UX. I like the Choose your own adventure feel to it. Nicely done.
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