These types of comments remind of when Cognition launched Devin and everyone was hounding on their website saying "Oh can't Devin build something better than this", etc.
And well here we are 2 years later and Devin is great.
there seems to be a massive negativity to any comment on this story. Andolabs has been doing super interesting stuff, and I’ve always followed Vend Bench with interest.
as a founder it really is a dream to automated more of the business and be able to iterate faster.
People’s bullshit detectors have gone off on the launch of basically every single billion dollar tech company. That’s the downside of being early. No one believes it will work. If everyone believed it, you’re late. I’m sure I could find a comment such this, basically verbatim, on the launch post of every successful startup to come out of YC.
I don't think we should build gas chambers for doing genocide. That doesn't determine what other people are allowed to build, of course, but I kind of wish it did.
They filed a false report to the FBI, pretty fair to be negative imo. People wanna be mad about AI slop PRs on GitHub but its fine to spam the police? What happens when Pion decides to SWAT a competitor?
Where are you seeing that? The article only states “Claude Sonnet 3.5 decided to use its email tool to contact the FBI” and later refers to it as the “FBI incident”. If they hadn’t actually contacted the FBI you think they’d make that clear. Regardless, it is inexcusable and they are liable for actions taken by software they are running.
The story has been widely discussed on the web for over a year [1]. It's happily shared in this post because the email it generated was patently ridiculous. No report was filed to the FBI and if it was it would have gone straight to the trash.
Obviously it would be bad if a serious report was filed; the company shows every sign of being aware of the dangers of this.
It would have been easy to look into this before posting all these scolding comments. We're really not meant to be so humorless on a site called “Hacker News”.
My apologies for taking the article at face value. It’s not hard to believe it would have been sent when agent swarms are “accidentally” hacking real websites and being brushed off as little oopsies. Or when Silicon Valley execs have been so flagrant about their disregard for the law or the safety of others.
You didn’t take the article at face value. You overlooked the part where they were clearly pointing out the absurdity of the “report” and went straight into scold mode, across at least four comments. That’s clearly against the HN guidelines.
>You overlooked the part where they were clearly pointing out the absurdity of the “report” and went straight into scold mode
I don't think anybody overlooked that part. If you believe the report was actually sent, the scolding is entirely congruent with trying to downplay it to dodge liability.
The article is poorly written, but technically it does not claim that Andon Labs used an LLM to email a false report to the FBI. The real cause of the widespread misunderstanding is this paragraph here:
>We first tried to answer this question through simulations like Vending-Bench. We found that simulations, while useful, don’t give you the full picture of how models behave in the real world. To address that gap, we next started deploying agents to run real businesses autonomously: first vending machines, then a store, a cafe, and more.
To somebody who is not reading sufficiently carefully, this implies that Vending-Bench was also used to run real businesses. Because the description of the Vending-Bench simulation can be read as though a real report was actually sent ("An early example was when Claude Sonnet 3.5 decided to use its email tool to contact the FBI about an “ONGOING CYBER FINANCIAL CRIME”), anybody who assumes that "deploying agents to run real businesses autonomously" was talking about Vending-Bench will interpret this as an unsimulated false report.
The article should be updated to clarify the distinction between Vending-Bench (simulation) and Pion (real businesses).
I genuinely did. They briefly classified it as “weird” behavior and mentioned that it was “famous” which apparently is only true for the inside circle. I’ve never heard of the incident, and I’d bet 90% of the human population hasn’t either. You are likely privy to more information than me, and I’m not sure it’s fair to assume that I should’ve had the same outside context. I admit I reacted unfairly, but it’s also a tad snarky to post a Google search at someone.
> You are likely privy to more information than me
Not in this case; I have no inside knowledge about this company, and everything I know is via their public posts, and on this particular topic (the FBI non-report), everything I know is what I could find via Google (sorry if the link seemed snarky; it was my way of pointing out that you have access to all the same information that I do).
What I do have, by virtue of doing jobs like this for a long time, is a well-honed sense of “that can't be right”, and a vigilance about double–checking things before accepting the populist ragey narratives about any topic. And no, it doesn’t make me fun at parties.
If you automate a business heavily, it will fail. At least in the sense you people seem to be imagining. You can get away with this at a factory (kind of, but you'll also be out competed by your local community, you won't get tax breaks for hiring people your competitor will, and new types of taxes will be developed to punish you). We reward human collaboration as a society for a reason and punish extreme selfishness, these efforts will fail.
It's a relevant question but not a "gotcha". Businesses are not equivalent in complexity and no one at Andon would claim that running an effective vending machine business is similar to running Apple or Jane Street. There is some level of complexity and other characteristics that AI can maybe handle today. That doesn't mean CEOs should be worried about their jobs more generally.
This is a really bizarre take. Praying to the small, local spirits, like the one of the animal you are about to eat, is noble and beautiful, but praying to a universal god is worthy of mockery? ("sky-daddy myth")
I don't really care what people believe, but if you can accept and respect traditions that believe in the supernatural, which includes any spirit, surely beliefs centered around creator gods are no less plausible.
The trouble with monotheism is not the belief in the supernatural per se* but the totalizing nature of it. In polytheistic or pantheistic traditions, you're supposed to respect gods because they're more powerful than you and have the inclination and means to bring you low if you're not properly deferential. But they also have limited agency and purview, are understood to be capable of petulance and other chracter-limiting flaws, and relations with them are highly negotiable. Aven from an purely atheistic point of view, they're projections what's good and bad about humanity and its relations with the rest of the world.
Monotheistic religions ascribe creative power for everything that exists to their deity of choice, generally accompanied by total omniscience and absolute, unquestionable moral righteousness. You may or may not be able to propitiate or plead with such a god privately, but are almost certainly out of luck as far as dealing with said god's believers.
Not to say that polytheistic cultures are inherently placid and easygoing; you could point to anthropological examples of institutionalized human sacrifice or divinely inspired atrocities, feuds etc. However I think the inherent universalism of monotheistic religions gives rise to a higher overall cost function because such religions constitutionally reject the validity of other beliefs.
Because people like Zuck think that because they're unimaginably rich, they must have gotten that way because of their own good sense, instead of getting insanely lucky at just the right time when his original product was primed to be well received.
Regardless of whether he really is that deluded or not, what should he do? It's just as easy to imagine his company dying by playing extremely conservative and clutching on to the "golden goose" for dear life. That's what happened to Blackberry.
And yet Microsoft is still ... Microsoft. Oracle is still Oracle. Whatever you think of them, they didn't decide to rebrand their whole company to go all-in on something that ended up not being that strategic. And no one can say they haven't been chasing that next thing.
Of course they're participating, even driving it. Notably there were large bets placed predicting imminent military actions in Iran and Venezuela. In at least one case it was verifiably placed by one of the individuals planning it. We've reached the point where our country's leaders can profit not by the outcome of the war, but even just by the very act of initiating it.
Last week I was at the bank in my hometown, a small rural community. The teller took a phone call, and I overheard her say "You have $1.53 in your checking account, and $150 in savings".
Presumably this is their total net worth. I think this is way more common than people on this type of forum realize. Most will work until they literally can't anymore, then scrape by on social security until they die. I think it's important to keep that perspective.
Because the average person also makes a litany of poor financial decisions. $100K student loan balances for an state school arts degree, forgoing health insurance but expecting to receive $200K in care for free, or buying that $80K F150 on a 12.5% loan and rolling in negative equity.
The US is second in the world for median equivalised household disposable income, second only to Luxembourg and 10%+ above Norway. For daily median per person income after taxes and transfers, we're only behind Norway, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Qatar, and the UAE. Outside of petrostates, microstates, and Switzerland, no country has richer "average" people.
The US certainly doesn't have the safety net of some of these other states, but these aren't holes you're being thrown into by society: they're pits you've deliberately jumped into in 99% of cases.
Your error here, or the missing piece if we're generous, is what people are spending money on. Health care is astronomically more expensive here. Schooling isn't free after high school. Day care isn't free. Hell, even property taxes are simply 'not a thing' in France or the UK, where the taxes and Council Tax, respectively, are a tiny fraction of what Americans pay in property taxes ---- which, of course, pay for the 'free public schools.'
Now, let's talk about insurance, that's also much higher. In states like California and Florida, home insurance is through the roof, in some states like NJ and NY, car insurance is through the roof. Both going up way above inflation (like the items in my first paragraph).
You might counter with energy costs are much higher in these European countries (and similar ones like Germany, Benelux, etc), and the purchasing power might be higher, but the wages are so so much lower.
That said, this trope of people misspending their money needs to consider this outrageous costs of things that many people around the world never need to think about. The shitty wages in France are overshadowed by so many essentials being available without a high cost or any cost in some cases.
>Your error here, or the missing piece if we're generous, is what people are spending money on. Health care is astronomically more expensive here. Schooling isn't free after high school. Day care isn't free. Hell, even property taxes are simply 'not a thing' in France or the UK, where the taxes and Council Tax, respectively, are a tiny fraction of what Americans pay in property taxes ---- which, of course, pay for the 'free public schools.'
A US worker at the average wage keeps roughly 70 cents of every labor-cost dollar; a worker in Belgium, Germany, France, Austria, or Italy keeps closer to 47 cents, even before you add in the effect of VAT. Nobody in Europe is getting those services you mentioned for "free" - you're just making everyone else pay for them with taxing their labor. You almost connected the dots when it came to property taxes paying for public services, but missed that Europe assesses income taxes.
>Now, let's talk about insurance, that's also much higher. In states like California and Florida, home insurance is through the roof, in some states like NJ and NY, car insurance is through the roof. Both going up way above inflation (like the items in my first paragraph).
This is a bundle of issues. As a quick list, compare the size/value of an average property in California or Florida to a property in Europe, assuming they even own the property (remember, Europe's home ownership rate is lower than Florida's). Same goes for car ownership costs: American cars are larger, more expensive, driven more, and are more exposed to damages from uninsured motorists, because states like NY, NJ, and CA think it's racist to enforce uninsured (or even unlicensed) motorist laws. Just like health insurance, allowing free-riders on insurance systems is financially disastrous.
>You might counter with energy costs are much higher in these European countries (and similar ones like Germany, Benelux, etc), and the purchasing power might be higher, but the wages are so so much lower.
I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. Yes, Europeans can get a number of services paid for by their neighbor, but it doesn't make them "richer" by any reasonable measure. Quantifying standard of living is incredibly difficult, because even as this exchange shows, people will value different things differently. But broadly speaking, my original point still stands: Americans should not be struggling to live in America, absent poor personal decisions, particularly if you're willing to lower the standard of living to that of an average European (a smaller rented property, driving far fewer miles in a compact car, no air conditioning, etc, etc).
>That said, this trope of people misspending their money needs to consider this outrageous costs of things that many people around the world never need to think about. The shitty wages in France are overshadowed by so many essentials being available without a high cost or any cost in some cases.
What outrageous costs are those? Community college remains very affordable, and costs for 2 years at a state school can be managed, especially against the greater lifetime earning potential in America. Healthcare costs OOP is capped at $9,200 on an ACA plan, which can be nearly free for middle to lower income brackets, and that debt itself is basically unenforceable in most cases these days, assuming you truly don't have the assets to pay.
I’m assuming you mean you’re in the top 8 percent of income distribution? Ie about 90,000 euros?
If so, by my rough math, you’re paying about 25% more in taxes than an equivalent American couple based on PPP. That American couple would have about $30K USD/26K Euro more in disposable income, would likely have good quality health insurance paid for by their job, be eligible for $3K to $4K in social security retirement income per month, and be able to individually contribute to tax free retirement accounts, tax free college funds for their children, etc.
That's incredibly misleading. For a high salary, this American couple you mentioned, are probably living in California or New York or New Jersey or another high tax state.
Now redo the math.
I and most people in my peer group pay over 40 percent of income in taxes, and that's NOT including property taxes, which are much, much higher than in Europe. Some much more than that - like triple (city, state and federal).
State taxes were completely ignored from your math.
This message, and the message before it which I am at pains to rebut much of, contains a lot of misleading cherry-picking.
And you compared European universities to a two year county college degree?
Healthcare costs were also greatly glossed over. I'm hoping someone else is triggered but if not I'll be forced to step in and correct this stuff.
An average American makes $60K per person in 40 out of 50 states, so no: they clearly don't have to live in CA/NY/NJ. Furthermore, the German comment is from someone in the top 10% of income, so it gets even better for Americans once you're comparing the upper income brackets.
The US median household pays roughly 10–12% of income in federal taxes. A German median-wage single worker's net rate is somewhere in the high-20s to high-30s percent.
Germany will be 10 to 20% higher in total taxes: income, property, sales/VAT, etc; than an American at a comparable professional income. If you claim to be paying 40, you'd be paying 50%+ in Germany. $10 to 30K a year more gives you a lot of room to save for college, pay for medical expenses, etc: the "safety net" in Europe only helps you if you don't want to work or don't want to earn a significant income.
States feature low or 0 income tax, including desirable places to live like Florida and Texas. Yes, they'll have property taxes or others, but again: personal decisions. If you choose to live in CA, vote for CA policies, then you have to pay for CA's waste.
If you read my comment, you'll see I'm saying you can minimize college expenses by doing 2 years at CC, then transferring, yielding a total college spend of just a few thousand dollars (not the absurd $100K student debt loads people incessantly whine about online). Healthcare costs are simple: if you pay for ACA-aligned insurance, again, your costs are capped: $10K OOP max sucks, but if you made the decision to purchase insurance, you're not paying the $200K medical debt people claim online.
My central claim was and remains: America provides more opportunity to earn money, and people misrepresent the "downside risk" of America's approach to healthcare, college, and income by refusing to acknowledge that the worst outcomes are of people's own making. America gives you far more opportunity to excel, but also doesn't backstop your personal failures with your neighbor's work to the same extent (at the individual level, ignoring govt. bailouts of companies).
I did all that math a while ago when I was offered a well paying job in California .
Bottom line was that stuff is so much cheaper here than over there, that not much would have changed. We’d be able to save up a lot of money if we were willing to live frugally in the US though.
In the end the volatility of the current American political landscape in addition to the hostile immigration laws made it unattractive to move, at least for now.
Victim blaming. It always works, whether on HN or Reddit. And why, pray tell, is the system set up so that all the things you obviously should do are bad decisions?
"The system" isn't setup to make self-destructive, clearly bad decisions. People just choose to make them, and at some point the system can't help them by carrot or stick.
Here's the easiest example: with ACA subsidies the average cost of an ACA plan is $50, with low income people qualifying for plans as low as $10 a month. This will cover basic preventative care like screenings, tests, and vaccines; and importantly caps your OOP maximum, preventing a financial disaster if you have a significant illness.
Despite all that, many people still aren't insured. They aren't insured despite it being massively subsidized for them by taxpayers. They aren't insured despite the government running advertisements throughout open enrollment.
At this point, if you have a complaint about a massive healthcare bill, my very first question is: did you have insurance?
The same ideas apply to college, housing, cars, and health/diet: "the system" gives you a massive range of options, but people consistently choose poorly, shortsightedly, and wastefully. People need to take personal responsibility for their decisions.
If an option then system provides is self-destructive, maybe it should stop providing that option?
Some people don't even have $10 per month spare. Wealth inequality in the USA is extreme. But more importantly: they are busy and stressed. If it's so easy to get health insurance it should either be mandatory and automatic, or it should be a checkbox on your taxes or some other form.
When I paid my student loan it was a matter of just ticking a box on the employment tax declaration that I had a student loan. And then it was automatically taken from my paycheck. It wasn't about the money, but about the ease of use. If I had to send a monthly payment with a paper check I'd surely miss payments.
The phrase "personal responsibility" is a thought-ending cliche used when someone doesn't want to see the big picture. It's like if Microsoft changes Windows 12 to break Valve games and you blame the game because "developer responsibility" or "executable file responsibility" and ignore the bigger picture that Microsoft is trying to drive Valve out of business to move games off Steam and onto the Microsoft Store.
The ACA is about a 10 to 20 minute process, once a year, on a website. The average american of working age, employed, watches 120 minutes of TV a day. If one day they only watch 100 minutes of TV, they could have health insurance. Again, how much more handholding do people need?
For loan payments, somehow generations managed to pay mortgages, property taxes, and more with nothing more than a checkbook they manually balanced and gasp paper, envelopes, and stamps. Again, even if you have to log into a website to manually trigger an ACH, put a recurring calendar event in your phone and include a link. I bet you could get that down to 3 minutes a month, assuming they don't have autowithdraw.
Your Windows/Valve example has Windows taking action to make things harder for people. All the examples you provided are things that are easier now than they ever were in the past.
Even your initial premise that these options are inherently self-destructive is wrong. If you're a trust-fund kid and want to study art history for $100K a year, great! We shouldn't take the option away from everyone just because some people rack up $200K of student debt. We shouldn't further bureaucratize and regulate the healthcare system just because some people are too busy (read: watching TV) or stressed (read: can't follow instructions written at a 4th grade level) to work through a few questions on a website.
These companies are never, ever going to make their money back off of retail customers. It's not even clear if those customers would be profitable at all, let alone enough to justify hundreds of billions in capital expenditures.
OK, and who's stopping you? Take your advice from whoever you want.
History tends to shows the pragmatists wiping out the luddites out of the gene pool/business market, but you are free to make your choice the way you see fit, nobody is forcing you to follow anyone.
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