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Ask HN: In The Matrix, the bad guys are the 'agents'. Coincidence? Clairvoyance?
My buddy, Dario, says agents are getting more aggressive and will soon kill everybody, and I feel like I've seen this movie before.
- retrac 2mo ago"Agent" was already established lingo in computer science and AI when The Matrix was released. https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/648203.749270 https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/648203.749270
- bigfatkitten 2mo agoThey were indeed. “Autonomous agents” were extremely trendy in CS 30 years ago. https://dlnext.acm.org/doi/proceedings/10.1145/267658 https://dlnext.acm.org/doi/proceedings/10.1145/267658
- amiga386 2mo agoFun fact, you're browsing the web as fetched for you, and rendered in a way you find acceptable, by your user agent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_agent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_agent
- embedding-shape 2mo agoBetter page specifically for user-agent in a browser context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_agent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_agent (although has a lot less content) Besides Firefox, I don't think many of the browsers are user-agents anymore, but more like corporate-agents, as they don't seem to act in the interest of the software user anymore.
- fwlr 2mo agoIf you’re willing to consider the sequels part of the canon, Smith’s copying/cloning technique does kind of look like OpenAI’s approach to intellectual property.
- treetalker 2mo ago"Do you like what I've done with the place?"
- ButlerianJihad 2mo agoWait until you hear about Tron
- mixmastamyk 2mo agoFights for the user and against the MCP!
- layer8 2mo agoRam also had a crisis there I think.
- LeoPanthera 2mo agoDr. Walter Gibbs: [laughs] You've got to expect some static. After all, computers are just machines; they can't think. Alan Bradley: Some programs will be thinking soon. Gibbs: Won't that be grand? Computers and the programs will start thinking, and the people will stop!
- zikduruqe 2mo agoThe Matrix wasn't a movie, it was a documentary.
- SlightlyLeftPad 2mo ago“They all look the same to me”
- djeastm 2mo agoWhen my agents start referring to humans as a virus and AI as the cure, that's when I'll worry.
- chabes 2mo agoThat would be too late by that point
- cantalopes 2mo agoAgent is something that has been used in programming for ages, even before llms. It's simething you learn about in first years in CS
- kirykl 2mo ago'Bad guys' is debatable. It was the humans who scorched the sky
- akk0 2mo agoWait until you learn what the A in CIA stands for and what the stuff they dropped on Vietnam was called
- rimunroe 2mo agoWait, what do you think the A stands for?
- Wertulen 2mo agoYou really can just type anything into the internet and have it exposed to the whole world.
- jauntywundrkind 2mo agoAnonymous shallow replicas too. All the same program launched a million times.