It won't do that well. What you have to do is ask it to help you leverage your existing development skills in an unfamiliar domain. I used it to help me write a python program to authenticate, pull and filter data from a GCP firestore database and create an XLSX with summary and detail sheets.

I've never used Python before in my life. It took me about 4 hours. Of course I've been doing that sort of thing in Java for many years. Turned out I wrote that faster in Python than I could in Java. Configuring the connection to that database in Python was so simple compared to Java.

The stuff it wrote was sometimes incomplete or wrong in subtle ways, but I could see the bits that didn't make sense which helped me focus on those things and ask better questions to help me figure it out. I think the last hour was just me tweaking stuff by myself because I didn't need help with it by that point.

OpenAI launched ChatGPT Agent on Thursday, its latest effort in the industry-wide pursuit to turn AI into a profitable enterprise—not just one that eats investors' billions. In its announcement blog, OpenAI says its Agent "can now do work for you using its own computer," but CEO Sam Altman warns that the rollout presents unpredictable risks.

[...]

OpenAI research lead Lisa Fulford told Wired that she used Agent to order "a lot of cupcakes," which took the tool about an hour, because she was very specific about the cupcakes.

I'm still wondering. Like did it call up a bakery and place an order? Or go online? I know it didn't actually make the cupcakes itself.

But I'm not sure that spending an hour trying to wrangle ChatGPT into getting your cupcakes is any faster or easier than placing the order yourself.

The article also noticeably omits what happened after. Were the cupcakes made, and did they match what she wanted?

Man, remember all the custom cupcake bakers who were clamoring for an AI to take their craft?

Me neither. Billionaires are a scourge upon society.

Okay but that’s not what easier means.

Easier would be to call the bakery or spending 10 minutes browsing their website, asking to cast, and checking out.

I don’t want to spend an hour on tasks that would normally take 10 minutes. My executive dysfunctions already make me good at doing that.

This might be a revolutionary idea, but what if they helped me do that take an hour in 10 minutes?

I’m just putting that idea out there totally for free in case any AI companies want to jump on that opportunity.

I needed about 30 minutes to do a python application from scratch that took linear JSON data files, merged them and presented them as a tree in a GUI.

Before that I had barely done anything in python, basically could do a basic function declaration with a simple operation and nothing else. I even didn't have a lot of experience with UI at all.

But like you I had experience with java and such, and those skills transfer. All it took was searching basic syntax/related code examples and required library imports. And I mean basic, search engine search, not AI answers.

All I'm saying is, I really don't think AI is providing anything a lot more efficient than doing a good old crawl through API docs and stack overflow. So the fact it's using tremendous amounts of resources to maybe achieve a 10% efficiency boost is bothering me a lot.

So much for the internet. We somehow managed to turn one of humanity’s greatest achievements into a hateful echo chamber we use for warfare first and then into a blackbox where inefficient AI agents communicate with each other in the most inefficient way so the planet can cook us alive even faster. God forbid just calling up a bakery to order some cupcakes.

If that was a 10% boost for you and you could've done it in 33 minutes without AI or experience, then my imposter syndrome has been right all along!

I'd bet that would've taken me a few days and maybe buying a reference book and starting with hello world.

OpenAI launched ChatGPT Agent on Thursday, its latest effort in the industry-wide pursuit to turn AI into a profitable enterprise—not just one that eats investors' billions. In its announcement blog, OpenAI says its Agent "can now do work for you using its own computer," but CEO Sam Altman warns that the rollout presents unpredictable risks.

[...]

OpenAI research lead Lisa Fulford told Wired that she used Agent to order "a lot of cupcakes," which took the tool about an hour, because she was very specific about the cupcakes.

Okay but that’s not what easier means.

Easier would be to call the bakery or spending 10 minutes browsing their website, asking to cast, and checking out.

I don’t want to spend an hour on tasks that would normally take 10 minutes. My executive dysfunctions already make me good at doing that.

This might be a revolutionary idea, but what if they helped me do that take an hour in 10 minutes?

I’m just putting that idea out there totally for free in case any AI companies want to jump on that opportunity.

It really is a nightmare brewing. And they will hide behind excuses and keep it all opaque unless they are strongly regulated.

It’s a starting point

I spent maybe 90 minutes trying to get ChatGPT to write me a fucking AppleScript or bash to copy all calendar events from a source calendar to a destination. That shit does not work.

unfortunately any ai service is going to make things worse.
right now we can discover and choose. with search and browsing dead, ai provider will shove the product giving them the highest cut aka most garbage or snake oil products.

even today targeted advertising for poor people is filled with betting, lottery & poker game. similarly elder people are primarily shown ads of miracle cure for chronic illness and scammy religious crap.

edit: switch to kagi. its paid but well worth it.
searchXNG is also a good alternative if you have got time for hosting it urself.

It won't do that well. What you have to do is ask it to help you leverage your existing development skills in an unfamiliar domain. I used it to help me write a python program to authenticate, pull and filter data from a GCP firestore database and create an XLSX with summary and detail sheets.

I've never used Python before in my life. It took me about 4 hours. Of course I've been doing that sort of thing in Java for many years. Turned out I wrote that faster in Python than I could in Java. Configuring the connection to that database in Python was so simple compared to Java.

The stuff it wrote was sometimes incomplete or wrong in subtle ways, but I could see the bits that didn't make sense which helped me focus on those things and ask better questions to help me figure it out. I think the last hour was just me tweaking stuff by myself because I didn't need help with it by that point.

I needed about 30 minutes to do a python application from scratch that took linear JSON data files, merged them and presented them as a tree in a GUI.

Before that I had barely done anything in python, basically could do a basic function declaration with a simple operation and nothing else. I even didn't have a lot of experience with UI at all.

But like you I had experience with java and such, and those skills transfer. All it took was searching basic syntax/related code examples and required library imports. And I mean basic, search engine search, not AI answers.

All I'm saying is, I really don't think AI is providing anything a lot more efficient than doing a good old crawl through API docs and stack overflow. So the fact it's using tremendous amounts of resources to maybe achieve a 10% efficiency boost is bothering me a lot.

Anyone who already knows another programming language but has never used python in their life can write a simple python app quickly, regardless

There’s also the fact that

1. It’s only really good at this if you want it to generate Python, PowerShell, bash, or C++ code. Try any other language and it quickly assumes you’re using outdated and often incompatible libraries or doesn’t really understand how the language functions.
2. at the end of it all, neither you nor the AI has learned anything new; you’ll have to put in the exact same amount of work the next time. If you do it yourself, then over time that 10% advantage goes away.

Now, these things could both change over time, but humans are much more efficient to train than current state of the art probability sieves we call GenAI.

I use agents a lot and have written several MCP servers now, the tasks I automate aren't things like order cupcakes, it's mainly the glue between complex things.

I still can't get Claude to nicely open a JIRA ticket for me, but I can get it to read through a sequence of connected documents and filter that into.

I don't think agents are ready for the main event and these are some poor examples of their power.

I'm not saying they won't improve, but using the right tool for the right job is critical. An hour to order cupcakes is silly even for an llm.

OpenAI launched ChatGPT Agent on Thursday, its latest effort in the industry-wide pursuit to turn AI into a profitable enterprise—not just one that eats investors' billions. In its announcement blog, OpenAI says its Agent "can now do work for you using its own computer," but CEO Sam Altman warns that the rollout presents unpredictable risks.

[...]

OpenAI research lead Lisa Fulford told Wired that she used Agent to order "a lot of cupcakes," which took the tool about an hour, because she was very specific about the cupcakes.