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I think that’s a fair point although I think this is a very different animal. When it comes to money, or really any kind of action that has consequences, you w

I think that’s a fair point although I think this is a very different animal. When it comes to money, or really any kind of action that has consequences, you want the assurance of a deterministic outcome. That is simply not possible with this technology. Maybe it will be but I’ve seen nothing to indicate that so far.

Nathanba 2y ago
People even let the cars drive on their own and they take their hands off the wheel. Letting an AI do a purchase is far less risky. People are fine with things like this as long as it appears to work reliably enough.
- localghost3000 2y ago
  Again. Different animal. That’s highly regulated and in limited markets. You also need to pay close attention so you can grab the wheel when it gets things wrong. And it does. A lot. The underlying tech is not the same either.
  - Nathanba 2y ago
    Yes, it's even easier in this market with no regulations and less risk so browser and software automation via AI will happen far faster.
    - localghost3000 2y ago
      I'm having a hard time figuring out if you're saying that like it's a good thing. The tech will definitely get rolled out. It will cause real harm and cost real money because of that lack of regulation you speak of. I am certainly not going to trust it with anything of consequence.
hipadev23 2y ago
Credit card companies will simply add another bullet point to their zero liability protection offerings: "You are not liable for unintended purchases made by Agentic AI systems". OpenAI will subsidize banks to offer that safety-net for users of Operator. If Chase says you're 100% not on the hook for purchase mistakes made by OpenAI's Operator -- are you going to take the risk (as you pointed out, it's financial, it matters to people) with Perplexity Pro or Siri?
mercer 2y ago
It doesn't have to be deterministic. Anyone who wants assurances would simply get a full plan of actions to take, and could edit the individual tasks before confirming their execution. Just like with a real assistant, one could set very clear boundaries as to how much the assistant could spend, on what, etc., or even specify that more money can be spent in, say, a particular period and with a few extra passes (using different models?) just to make sure. It does really feel like the same animal, because to the degree that I remember the discussions, a lot of it was about a perception of some kind of dichotomy (control or not, being able to 'touch' the product or not, etc.) that really doesn't need to exist.
- localghost3000 2y ago
  > It doesn't have to be deterministic There are cases where this could be true. I could see, say, asking it to do some research for you or something. Or maybe grab some restaurant recommendations. Really anything that brings you options that you can then make a decision on. If I do end up using this tech, thats how I would feel comfortable using it. When it comes to things like making purchases and such on your behalf, thats where I disagree. Even with boundaries it's just not deterministic enough for most peoples risk appetite IMO. And when I say "most people" I am not talking about HN folks. And just to be clear, I do use this technology. I just am very aware that its not this magic bullet that the AI bros want us to believe it is. I used it this morning in fact to help me write up some code I felt too lazy to deal with. It very quickly and efficiently wrote what I asked. I was pleasantly surprised and _almost_ missed the very bad bug that it dropped right into the middle of it all. I'm not giving my credit card to that lol.
  - mercer 2y ago
    I do agree with that. What I'm seeing (and building for myself) really boils down to 'for anything I am remotely uncomfortable trusting the AIs with, I trust them enough to conveniently present me the action or actions they want to take, and I trust myself enough to build a UI that doesn't make it too easy for me to lazily or accidentally click yes on a hallucinated 5000 dollar expense. The fact that such an AI, with sufficient development, even given what we have now, could present everything on a silver platter up to the execution of the /exact/ commands, and this alone is incredibly useful and can save a lot of time/expense/effort. The crucial bit is that with, say, a human personal assistant, even if they say they will do exactly what you tell them to do, it's still ultimately inexact. But with an AI, it's trivial to 'decorate' a structured 'command object' (as json, xml, whatever) and from that moment let the deterministic system take over. If anything, we sometimes want an actual human to /not/ deterministically execute /exactly/ what we tell them to, because perhaps they might know we were angry, drunk, or they just heard something on the news that should invalidate our request. Either way, my point is that this distinction between 'doing research' and 'doing a thing' is not so dichotomous. In practice, I suspect all but the most autonomously-minded people, and especially non-IT folk, given enough sense of control over the confirmation of potentially 'fuzzy' actions, are happy with an AI doing a ton of stuff for them.

Nathanba 2y ago

People even let the cars drive on their own and they take their hands off the wheel. Letting an AI do a purchase is far less risky. People are fine with things like this as long as it appears to work reliably enough.

localghost3000 2y ago
Again. Different animal. That’s highly regulated and in limited markets. You also need to pay close attention so you can grab the wheel when it gets things wrong. And it does. A lot. The underlying tech is not the same either.
- Nathanba 2y ago
  Yes, it's even easier in this market with no regulations and less risk so browser and software automation via AI will happen far faster.
  - localghost3000 2y ago
    I'm having a hard time figuring out if you're saying that like it's a good thing. The tech will definitely get rolled out. It will cause real harm and cost real money because of that lack of regulation you speak of. I am certainly not going to trust it with anything of consequence.

hipadev23 2y ago

Credit card companies will simply add another bullet point to their zero liability protection offerings: "You are not liable for unintended purchases made by Agentic AI systems". OpenAI will subsidize banks to offer that safety-net for users of Operator. If Chase says you're 100% not on the hook for purchase mistakes made by OpenAI's Operator -- are you going to take the risk (as you pointed out, it's financial, it matters to people) with Perplexity Pro or Siri?

mercer 2y ago

It doesn't have to be deterministic. Anyone who wants assurances would simply get a full plan of actions to take, and could edit the individual tasks before confirming their execution. Just like with a real assistant, one could set very clear boundaries as to how much the assistant could spend, on what, etc., or even specify that more money can be spent in, say, a particular period and with a few extra passes (using different models?) just to make sure. It does really feel like the same animal, because to the degree that I remember the discussions, a lot of it was about a perception of some kind of dichotomy (control or not, being able to 'touch' the product or not, etc.) that really doesn't need to exist.

localghost3000 2y ago
> It doesn't have to be deterministic There are cases where this could be true. I could see, say, asking it to do some research for you or something. Or maybe grab some restaurant recommendations. Really anything that brings you options that you can then make a decision on. If I do end up using this tech, thats how I would feel comfortable using it. When it comes to things like making purchases and such on your behalf, thats where I disagree. Even with boundaries it's just not deterministic enough for most peoples risk appetite IMO. And when I say "most people" I am not talking about HN folks. And just to be clear, I do use this technology. I just am very aware that its not this magic bullet that the AI bros want us to believe it is. I used it this morning in fact to help me write up some code I felt too lazy to deal with. It very quickly and efficiently wrote what I asked. I was pleasantly surprised and _almost_ missed the very bad bug that it dropped right into the middle of it all. I'm not giving my credit card to that lol.
- mercer 2y ago
  I do agree with that. What I'm seeing (and building for myself) really boils down to 'for anything I am remotely uncomfortable trusting the AIs with, I trust them enough to conveniently present me the action or actions they want to take, and I trust myself enough to build a UI that doesn't make it too easy for me to lazily or accidentally click yes on a hallucinated 5000 dollar expense. The fact that such an AI, with sufficient development, even given what we have now, could present everything on a silver platter up to the execution of the /exact/ commands, and this alone is incredibly useful and can save a lot of time/expense/effort. The crucial bit is that with, say, a human personal assistant, even if they say they will do exactly what you tell them to do, it's still ultimately inexact. But with an AI, it's trivial to 'decorate' a structured 'command object' (as json, xml, whatever) and from that moment let the deterministic system take over. If anything, we sometimes want an actual human to /not/ deterministically execute /exactly/ what we tell them to, because perhaps they might know we were angry, drunk, or they just heard something on the news that should invalidate our request. Either way, my point is that this distinction between 'doing research' and 'doing a thing' is not so dichotomous. In practice, I suspect all but the most autonomously-minded people, and especially non-IT folk, given enough sense of control over the confirmation of potentially 'fuzzy' actions, are happy with an AI doing a ton of stuff for them.