Comment by Zigurd | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Zigurd | Hacker News Reader

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When I have demoed the use of agents, I usually do it with an agent combining multiple applications' results. Something like: "We're having a family gathering at grandma's. Which of us can stop in at the drugstore to pick up her prescriptions on the way without adding a lot to our travel time?"

Agents are great at moderately complex combinations of data and apps. If I had to do this every day or every week even, it might be worth creating a script suited for a task like that using some automation system. Agents are great at providing a disposable saw when it doesn't make sense to stop and sharpen the saw.

I'm not a doorDash user, but they've been doing it long enough to have an app that's probably highly polished. There's not going to be a lot of upside to speaking or typing an English language command to get what you want. Trying to do that is a waste of a well designed app and the agent's token budget.

I would be extremely cross if I heard that someone gave my location information to some company that runs this stuff. That level of privacy violation should lead to disinheritance.

Well, let me tell you that you should be extremely cross. Unless nobody knows your address or you’ve signed up for any services, these companies already have your information.

What do you use for a contact list?

The example you listed can be solved with a map lookup, a paper map even.

Maybe I am confused but what does the AI do in your example? Isn't that just an instance of Google Maps itself being useful? What does the agent even spend its time doing?

I should've provided more detail. The demo is really about a new app that uses AppFunctions to enable Google's agent to use data about a family group, and coordinate their actions mostly around taking care of an elderly family member.

The purpose of the demo is to show that you it's better to enable agents to access relevant data and actions in a controlled way than it is to do app specific integrations with, for example, a map and navigation app in order to plan group gatherings. Instead it's better to enable agents to access relevant data in a controlled way, and to leave coordination across apps to the agent.

In fewer words: if working with another app could be valuable, leave it up to the agent instead of doing the integration at the app level.

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