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Operator research preview

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Re: Operator research preview

#81

Post by skydhash »

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…

> I always imagined some sort of standard, where apps and services can expose a set of pre-approved actions on the user's behalf

OS specific, but Apple has the Scripting Support API [0] and Shortcut API for their app. Works great.

[0]: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/foundation/scripti...

Re: Operator research preview

#82

Post by timabdulla »

famouswaffles wrote: post #40
minimaxir wrote: post #8

Overall, Operator seems the same as Claude's Computer Use demo from a few months ago, including architecture requiring user to launch a VM, and a tendency to be incorrect: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41914989 Notably, Claude's Computer Use implementation made few waves in the AI Agent industry since that announcement despite the hype.

Big jumps in benchmarks from Claude's Computer Use though. 87% vs 56% on Webvoyager 58.1% vs 36.2% on WebArena 38.1% vs 22% on OsWorld These are next gen improvements so the fact that Claude didn't make any waves doesn't really mean anything (Of course no guarantee this will either)

OpenAI is merely matching SOTA in browser tasks as compared to existing browser-use agents. It is a big improvement over Claude Computer Use, but it is more of the same in the specific domain of browser tasks when comparing against browser-use agents (which can use the DOM, browser-specific APIs, and so on.)

The truth is that while 87% on WebVoyager is impressive, most of the tasks are quite simple. I've played with some browse-use agents that are SOTA and they can still get very easily confused with more complex tasks or unfamiliar interfaces.

You can see some of the examples in OpenAI's blog post. They need to quite carefully write the prompts in some instances to get the thing to work. The truth is that needing to iterate to get the prompt just right really negates a lot of the value of delegating a one-off task to an agent.

Re: Operator research preview

#83

Post by bilbo0s »

hammock wrote: post #59
tedsanders wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume here it means complying with requests that could harm other people. It's pretty common for businesses to tell their employees not to assist customers doing bad things, so not surprised to see AIs trained to not to assist customers doing bad things. Examples: - "operator, please sign up for 100 fake Reddit accounts and have them regularly make posts praising product X." - "operator, please order the component…

Isn't that reddit/home depot/instagram's problem? Not a job for the guy you hired to do a thing

If it makes you feel any better, law enforcement makes sure reddit, Home Depot, and instagram are "aligned" as well.

Don't worry though, it's all on the up and up. No backdoors or google-like search facilities our anything like that. It's not at all automated in that sort of unseemly fashion. They always go to court. Where they talk to a judge, that they totally don't go golfing with, and ask them for a warrant for the data they found on the instagram/home depot/reddit systems.

Oh wait, no, I mean, a warrant to try to find data on the instagram/home depot/reddit systems.

/s

Re: Operator research preview

#84

Post by swatcoder »

tedsanders wrote: post #33
easterncalculus wrote: post #22

From the slide deck on the livestream: "[Operator safety risks and mitigations] Harmful tasks: User is misaligned" Looking forward to seeing some more of the examples for when openai considers their users as "misaligned", whatever that actually even means anymore.

I assume here it means complying with requests that could harm other people. It's pretty common for businesses to tell their employees not to assist customers doing bad things, so not surprised to see AIs trained to not to assist customers doing bad things. Examples: - "operator, please sign up for 100 fake Reddit accounts and have them regularly make posts praising product X." - "operator, please order the component…

It's pretty troubling and illiberal to use the same word for a software tool being constrained by its manufacturer's moral framework and for a human user being constrained to that manufacturer's moral framework.

While you can see how the word is formally valid and analogous in both cases, the connotation is that the user is being judged by the moral standards of a commercial vendor, which is about as Cyberpunk Dystopian as you can get.

Re: Operator research preview

#86

Post by Animats »

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."

Re: Operator research preview

#87

Post by samvher »

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…

A bit like humanoid robotics - not the most efficient, cheapest, easiest etc, but highly compatible with existing environments designed for humans and hence can be integrated very generically

Re: Operator research preview

#88

Post by dougb5 »

> 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 reservations (etc.) as use-cases for agents. The marginal gain vs. just going to the site/app feels tiny. (Granted, it could be an important accessibility win for some users.)

Re: Operator research preview

#89

Post by maxwells-daemon »

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…

Maybe there's a middle ground: a site that wants to work as well as possible for agents could present a stripped-down standardized page depending on the user agent string, while the agent tries to work well even for pages that haven't implemented that interface?

(or, perhaps, agents could use web accessibility tools if they're set up, incentivizing developers to make better use of them)

Re: Operator research preview

#90

Post by darioush »

minimaxir wrote: post #46
OoTheNigerian wrote: post #41

I'm surprised folks on Hackernews are always critical of V1s. In 18 month, apps will have APIs for "agentic browsing" ™OoTheNigerian ;) And you will not need to give anything control over your browser. I you will merely connect your app to OpenAI or any other client.

OpenAI is a $50B company that should be releasing serious products, the "scrappy hacker releasing a beta product that doesn't do much" as a defense doesn't apply.

Yeah I also wonder how come web scraping was so vilified in all ToS's but I guess if you spend a lot of energy on GPUs and pay OpenAI then it's legit.
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