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Operator research preview

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Re: Operator research preview

#71

Post by jsheard »

madeofpalk wrote: post #50
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…

> But probably more difficult to get app developers on board. That's it. The problem is getting Postmates to agree to give away control of their UI. Giving away their ability to upsell you and push whatever makes them more money. Its never going to happen. Netflix still isn't integrated with Apple TV properly because they don't want to give away that access. I'm not convinced this is the path forward for computers ei…

> I'm not convinced this is the path forward for computers either though.

With this approach they'll have to contend with the agent running into all the anti-bot measures that sites have implemented to deal with abuse. CAPTCHAs, flagging or blocking datacenter IP addresses, etc.

Maybe deals could be struck to allow agents to be whitelisted, but that assumes the agents won't also be used for abuse. If you could get ChatGPT to spam Reddit[1] then Reddit probably wouldn't cooperate.

[1] https://gizmodo.com/oh-no-this-startup-is-using-ai-agents-to...

Re: Operator research preview

#72

Post by Analemma_ »

madeofpalk wrote: post #50
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…

> But probably more difficult to get app developers on board. That's it. The problem is getting Postmates to agree to give away control of their UI. Giving away their ability to upsell you and push whatever makes them more money. Its never going to happen. Netflix still isn't integrated with Apple TV properly because they don't want to give away that access. I'm not convinced this is the path forward for computers ei…

And it's why you can't have a single messaging app that acts as a unified inbox for all the various services out there. XMPP could've been that but it died, and Microsoft tried to have it on Windows Phone but the messaging apps told them to get fucked.

Open API interoperability is the dream but it's clear it will never happen unless it's forced by law.

Re: Operator research preview

#73

Post by achierius »

moralestapia wrote: post #11

Waiting for the "OpenAI has no moat" crowd to chime in while they keep releasing new features and dominating market share. (And yeah, they just got half a trillion ). Edit: Downvote all you want, reality won't change. Oh, what happened with "Scarlett Johansson will take down OpenAI because she invented speaking like a woman", literally nothing. What about "AI will never replace Hollywood actors". What about that time…

What reality is this?

- OpenAI hasn't gotten any money yet, not even $100b - OpenAI is releasing this feature after Anthropic - AI has yet to replace any significant fraction Hollywood actors

I'm not disagreeing that these things might happen, but you have to be cognizant of the fact that you're talking projections of the future -- not assessments of the here-and-now.

Re: Operator research preview

#74

Post by lbeurerkellner »

The security implications of this are very unclear it seems. Even the supervisor model can be fooled, and what if the agent just makes an honest mistake. It will be very interesting to see whether people are willing to let this actually go into their real accounts with real payment information attached. I am assuming that it may happen eventually, but the trust for it will need to be built over time.

Re: Operator research preview

#76

Post by refulgentis »

hammock wrote: post #65
refulgentis wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not quite. This is operating a computer, Duplex is a (very small) set of pre canned WAVs that can handle negotiating a time during a phone call

That is not what Duplex is

Tell me more :) Narrowly, also # of guests for restaurant reservations, and getting hours they're open

Re: Operator research preview

#77

Post by jasonthorsness »

I wonder if there will be an "operator.txt" or something akin to a "robots.txt" where the owner of a web site can place special instructions - I recently worked on a Custom GPT for "operating" a management API, and found myself needing to give a bunch of hints and examples in the prompt for things that would probably have been obvious to a human but GPT-4o got wrong.

Re: Operator research preview

#78

Post by raincole »

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…

> 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

I sincerely hope it's not the future we're heading to (but it might be inevitable, sadly).

If it becomes a popular trend, developers will start making "AI-first" apps that you have to use AI to interact with to get the full functionality. See also: mobile first.

Re: Operator research preview

#79

Post by brap »

alach11 wrote: post #70
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…

> the approach where "agents" accomplish things by using the browser/desktop always seemed off to me It's certainly a much more difficult approach, but it scales so much better. There's such a long-tail of small websites and apps that people will want to integrate with. There's no way OpenAI is going to negotiate a partnership/integration with , let alone internal software at medium to large size corporations. If Ope…

This is true, but what would make sense to me was if "Operator" was just another app on this platform, kind of like Safari is just another app on your iPhone that let's you use services that don't have iOS apps.

When iPhones first came out I had to use Safari all the time. Now almost everything has an app. The long tail is getting shorter.

You can even have several Operator-y apps to choose from! And they can work across different LLMs!

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