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Notes on Anthropic's Computer Use Ability

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Re: Notes on Anthropic's Computer Use Ability

#91

Post by jazzyjackson »

pier25 wrote: post #88
nilstycho wrote: post #29

It seems like a cheaper intermediate capability would be to give Claude the ability to SSH to your computer or to a cloud container. That would unlock a lot of possibilities, without incurring the cost of the vision model or the difficulty of cursor manipulation. Does this already exist? If not, would the benefits be lower than I think, or would the costs be higher than I think?

I would never allow an AI to SSH into a server. Just the other day someone used Claude to write a script to configure a server. It left a port open and the server was hacked hours later and used to attack other servers. Hetzner almost banned the hosting account. https://x.com/rameerez/status/1848707234068382001

I had GPT4o walk me through configuring my RAID array, simple two drive duplication affair, and some command broke the configuration in new and mysterious ways - I can no longer get the drives to appear at all. So that will be the last time I copy paste anything from an AI into a shell.

Re: Notes on Anthropic's Computer Use Ability

#92

Post by rty32 »

tracerbulletx wrote: post #71
bonoboTP wrote: post #68

This kind of stuff is an existential threat to ad-based business models and upselling. If users no longer browse the web themselves, you can't show them ads. It's a monumental, Earth-shattering problem for behemoth like Google but also normal websites. Lots of websites (such as booking.com) rely on shady practices to mislead users and upsell them etc. If you have a dispassionate, smart computer agent doing the transa…

Ads will move to the layer of the new interface when that happens. Also a computer can't watch a youtube video for you or look at funny cat pictures. You can still put ads next to things people want to look at.

Care to elaborate on the idea? I suppose you mean that ads will come to this "computer use" tool itself. Now, will users keep it in the foreground, when they already expect the tool to do (almost) everything for them?

Re: Notes on Anthropic's Computer Use Ability

#93

Post by voytec »

bonoboTP wrote: post #68

This kind of stuff is an existential threat to ad-based business models and upselling. If users no longer browse the web themselves, you can't show them ads. It's a monumental, Earth-shattering problem for behemoth like Google but also normal websites. Lots of websites (such as booking.com) rely on shady practices to mislead users and upsell them etc. If you have a dispassionate, smart computer agent doing the transa…

> This kind of stuff is an existential threat to ad-based business models and upselling.

Sounds great. But corporations will find a way to fuck over their users for inverstors' gains in no time.

Re: Notes on Anthropic's Computer Use Ability

#94

Post by rty32 »

alpha_squared wrote: post #85
danielbln wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is plenty of legacy software out there that has no and will never have a nice API to integrate with. Those are the situations where the terrible solutions are either let a human do it or automate the human tool chain from a high level. This is the LLM spin on it. Is it an efficient or even good solution? Hell no, but if there is no other solution to automation (assuming that's the goal) then does that matter?

This is a severely under-appreciated perspective. A lot of software, especially in industries that are slow to change, is just not programming-friendly. There are no APIs and no access to underlying databases, just user-focused point-and-click.

My take is that those industries are also going to be very slow to adopt any AI tools, especially these, and for good reasons. We are looking at integrating LLM into our products, but we have customers that told us they can't use any of those, straightforward.

Re: Notes on Anthropic's Computer Use Ability

#95

Post by steveBK123 »

rty32 wrote: post #92
tracerbulletx wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ads will move to the layer of the new interface when that happens. Also a computer can't watch a youtube video for you or look at funny cat pictures. You can still put ads next to things people want to look at.

Care to elaborate on the idea? I suppose you mean that ads will come to this "computer use" tool itself. Now, will users keep it in the foreground, when they already expect the tool to do (almost) everything for them?

I think the point is - don't be so naive. Companies are investing near trillions into developing models, training models, compute, datacenter, nuclear reactors, etc.

Is the endgame some free/cheap tool that abstracts away the entire ad based web economy to the benefit of end users?

Imagine something closer to a super duper smart useful Siri/Alexa that feeds you product recommendations, paid placement, and other ads interspersed with your actual request response.

Hey Siri what temperature is it? It's 45 and going to be chilly today, a North Face jacket might be handy today.. can I recommend you a few models? What's your size?

Re: Notes on Anthropic's Computer Use Ability

#96

Post by steveBK123 »

Facemelters wrote: post #86
bonoboTP wrote: post #68

This kind of stuff is an existential threat to ad-based business models and upselling. If users no longer browse the web themselves, you can't show them ads. It's a monumental, Earth-shattering problem for behemoth like Google but also normal websites. Lots of websites (such as booking.com) rely on shady practices to mislead users and upsell them etc. If you have a dispassionate, smart computer agent doing the transa…

the ads will target the latent biases of the agentic AI, just like they do with humans

and/or the ad dollars will move into the decision layer and the AI will make different decisions / recommendations to your request, depending on who is bidding the most..

Imagine the most dystopian outcomes and you'll probably be closer than "well I don't have to see ads anymore!"

Re: Notes on Anthropic's Computer Use Ability

#97

Post by im3w1l »

bamboozled wrote: post #30
im3w1l wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you heard of Centaur chess? A human and a machine would team up to find the best chess moves against another similar team. It's not a thing anymore. Computers have advanced so much that humans can't really contribute in any meaningful sense.

Is the point of your comment to make people feel depressed ? Either we're going to use these tools to augment our abilities or basically just become wiped out, at least our jobs will be, and there is no plan to provide support for anyone. Maybe the tech will make the transition to a post employment world so swift we don't even feel any negative economic effects at all, but let's see.

There is no such bigger point. I'm just trying to look at the situation realistically.

Re: Notes on Anthropic's Computer Use Ability

#98

Post by nilstycho »

pier25 wrote: post #88
nilstycho wrote: post #29

It seems like a cheaper intermediate capability would be to give Claude the ability to SSH to your computer or to a cloud container. That would unlock a lot of possibilities, without incurring the cost of the vision model or the difficulty of cursor manipulation. Does this already exist? If not, would the benefits be lower than I think, or would the costs be higher than I think?

I would never allow an AI to SSH into a server. Just the other day someone used Claude to write a script to configure a server. It left a port open and the server was hacked hours later and used to attack other servers. Hetzner almost banned the hosting account. https://x.com/rameerez/status/1848707234068382001

IIUC, Claude's "Computer Use" is roughly a remote desktop, which is a superset of a remote shell. I don't think I'm proposing anything with a greater risk than already exists.

Re: Notes on Anthropic's Computer Use Ability

#99

Post by bonoboTP »

steveBK123 wrote: post #95
rty32 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Care to elaborate on the idea? I suppose you mean that ads will come to this "computer use" tool itself. Now, will users keep it in the foreground, when they already expect the tool to do (almost) everything for them?

I think the point is - don't be so naive. Companies are investing near trillions into developing models, training models, compute, datacenter, nuclear reactors, etc. Is the endgame some free/cheap tool that abstracts away the entire ad based web economy to the benefit of end users? Imagine something closer to a super duper smart useful Siri/Alexa that feeds you product recommendations, paid placement, and other ads i…

Or it's just simply going to make purchases and flight bookings based on paid boosts from online stores and airlines. They will simply say that it's making a holistic assessment, not simply based on the final price but the overall reputability etc. It's to avoid fraud and to streamline experience based on personalized machine learning algorithm result yadda yadda.

I mean, what really are ads and dark tactics (like those observed on accommodation booking websites)? They are ways to influence purchasing decisions.

If the decision is offloaded to AI, then logically ways to sway the AI decision will be developed. Such as backroom deals, hidden prompts and rules governing the assessment of the AI in making choices.

Re: Notes on Anthropic's Computer Use Ability

#100

Post by thenaturalist »

bonoboTP wrote: post #68

This kind of stuff is an existential threat to ad-based business models and upselling. If users no longer browse the web themselves, you can't show them ads. It's a monumental, Earth-shattering problem for behemoth like Google but also normal websites. Lots of websites (such as booking.com) rely on shady practices to mislead users and upsell them etc. If you have a dispassionate, smart computer agent doing the transa…

> smart computer agent doing the transaction

None of these agents are smart.

And if purchases become agentic, fine print or other shady tricks hidden in business terms will be how businesses draw consumers in.

Also, none of this will be existential, earth-shattering or enourmous until compute power per watt comes to a degree where all of this is economical at scale.

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