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The main sort of parallelism we exploit is across distinct websites. For example "find me the cheapest rental" spawning tasks to look at many different websites

The main sort of parallelism we exploit is across distinct websites. For example "find me the cheapest rental" spawning tasks to look at many different websites. There is another level of parallelism that could be exploited within a web site/app. And yes we would have to make our planner rate limit aware for that. Absolutely agree there are ethical considerations with web browsing AI in general. (And the whole general ongoing shift from using websites to using chatgpt/perplexity)

diggan 1y ago
> Absolutely agree there are ethical considerations with web browsing AI in general. I'm personally not sure there are, but I'm curious to hear what those are for you :)
- calebhwin 1y ago
  Maybe more of a legal than ethical consideration but web browsing AI makes scraping trivial. You could use that for surveillance, profiling (get a full picture of a user's whole online life before they even hit Sign Up), cutting egress cost in certain cases. Right now CAPTCHA is actually holding up pretty well against web browsing AI for sites that really want to protect their IP but it will be interesting to see if that devolves into yet another instance of an AI vs AI "arms race".
  - sieabahlpark 1y ago
    [dead]
rollcat 1y ago
> There is another level of parallelism that could be exploited within a web site/app. And yes we would have to make our planner rate limit aware for that. People are already deploying tools like Anubis[1] or go-away[2] to cope with the insane load that bots put on their server infrastructure. This is an arms race. In the end, the users lose. [1]: https://anubis.techaro.lol https://anubis.techaro.lol [2]: https://git.gammaspectra.live/git/go-away https://git.gammaspectra.live/git/go-away
- calebhwin 1y ago
  IMO it depends on how this tech is deployed. One way I see this being extremely useful is for developers to quickly build AI automation for their own sites. E.g. if I'm the developer of a workforce management app (e.g. https://WhenIWork.com https://WhenIWork.com) I could deploy BLAST to quickly provide automation for users of my app.
  - rollcat 1y ago
    That's my point. You can use a knife to slice bread or to stab your neighbor. We're seeing an unprecedented amount of stabbings. People are getting away with murder, there's no accountability. Refining the stilettos doesn't help the problem.
    - spiderfarmer 1y ago
      I just block every AI bot that doesn’t give me traffic or other benefits. I know I can’t block them all, but it won’t be for a lack of trying.
- lostmsu 1y ago
  > In the end, the users lose. I think it would take more substantiation to claim this. Maybe 10 out of 1000 websites will get closed, but the users will be able to use AI tools to use the remaining 990. Not sure about you, but sounds like a win for users to me.
  - taskforcegemini 1y ago
    >Maybe 10 out of 1000 websites will get closed this may be true for the time being (or not), but will sure change if/when more [websites] become aware of what is going on. The result will be 10 out of 1000 websites will remain open, and not the ones you actually want. The more pressure there is on the sites/servers, the more these will have to act to stay online to begin with.
    - 1y ago

diggan 1y ago

> Absolutely agree there are ethical considerations with web browsing AI in general. I'm personally not sure there are, but I'm curious to hear what those are for you :)

calebhwin 1y ago
Maybe more of a legal than ethical consideration but web browsing AI makes scraping trivial. You could use that for surveillance, profiling (get a full picture of a user's whole online life before they even hit Sign Up), cutting egress cost in certain cases. Right now CAPTCHA is actually holding up pretty well against web browsing AI for sites that really want to protect their IP but it will be interesting to see if that devolves into yet another instance of an AI vs AI "arms race".
- sieabahlpark 1y ago
  [dead]

rollcat 1y ago

> There is another level of parallelism that could be exploited within a web site/app. And yes we would have to make our planner rate limit aware for that. People are already deploying tools like Anubis[1] or go-away[2] to cope with the insane load that bots put on their server infrastructure. This is an arms race. In the end, the users lose. [1]: https://anubis.techaro.lol https://anubis.techaro.lol [2]: https://git.gammaspectra.live/git/go-away https://git.gammaspectra.live/git/go-away

calebhwin 1y ago
IMO it depends on how this tech is deployed. One way I see this being extremely useful is for developers to quickly build AI automation for their own sites. E.g. if I'm the developer of a workforce management app (e.g. https://WhenIWork.com https://WhenIWork.com) I could deploy BLAST to quickly provide automation for users of my app.
- rollcat 1y ago
  That's my point. You can use a knife to slice bread or to stab your neighbor. We're seeing an unprecedented amount of stabbings. People are getting away with murder, there's no accountability. Refining the stilettos doesn't help the problem.
  - spiderfarmer 1y ago
    I just block every AI bot that doesn’t give me traffic or other benefits. I know I can’t block them all, but it won’t be for a lack of trying.
lostmsu 1y ago
> In the end, the users lose. I think it would take more substantiation to claim this. Maybe 10 out of 1000 websites will get closed, but the users will be able to use AI tools to use the remaining 990. Not sure about you, but sounds like a win for users to me.
- taskforcegemini 1y ago
  >Maybe 10 out of 1000 websites will get closed this may be true for the time being (or not), but will sure change if/when more [websites] become aware of what is going on. The result will be 10 out of 1000 websites will remain open, and not the ones you actually want. The more pressure there is on the sites/servers, the more these will have to act to stay online to begin with.
  - 1y ago