Ask HN: Do you think browser/device agents will take off?
There have been recent launches like Anthropic Computer Use, OpenAI Operator, and Perplexity’s Android Agent and others, and I wonder if you think they are actually useful or just a gimmick.
As a security engineer, this is pretty obvious - blindly handing over login credentials to AI agents? What could possibly go wrong? Feels like a ticking time bomb until courts start hashing out liability.
As a technologist, it really makes you rethink UI design. Do we even need traditional interfaces anymore? If LLMs handle backward compatibility so seamlessly, we might just skip straight to conversational AI as the default interface.
As an investor, there’s going to be a gold rush. Early movers won’t need perfect accuracy—just "good enough" to capture market share. Classic first-mover advantage.
And as a manager, this screams inefficiency. Expect something like Six Sigma 2.0 to emerge. AI driven quality control to fix AI driven errors. Irony is strong with this one.
For everything else, I have no trust whatsoever in these companies to hand my buggy and malware and mold plagued PC over to their agents.