alt Hacker NewsI've long said that the next big jump in "AI" will be proactivity.
So far everything has been reactive. You need to engage a prompt, you need to ask Siri or ask claude to do something. It can be very powerful once prompted, but it still requires prompting.
You always need to ask. Having something always waiting in the background that can proactively take actions and get your attention is a genuine game-changer.
Whether this particular project delivers on that promise I don't know, but I wouldn't write off "getting proactivity right" as the next big thing just because under the hood it's agents and LLMs.
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> You need to engage a prompt, you need to ask Siri or ask claude to do something
This is EXACTLY what I want. I need my tech to be pull-only instead of push, unless it's communication with another human I am ok with.
> Having something always waiting in the background that can proactively take actions
The first thing that comes to mind here is proactive ads, "suggestions", "most relevant", algorithmic feeds, etc. No thank you.
I agree that proactivity is a big thing, breaking my head over best ways to accomplish this myself.
If its actually the next big thing im not 100% sure, im more leaning towards dynamic context windows such a Googles Project Titans + MIRAS tries to accomplish.
But ye if its actually doing useful proactivity its a good thing.
I just read alot of "this is actual intelligence" and made my statement based on that claim.
I dont try to "shame" the project or whatever.
I’ve been saying the same and the same about data more generally. I don’t want to go and look, I want to be told about what I need to know about.
No offense, but you'd be a perfect Microsoft employee right now. Windows division probably.
> You always need to ask. Having something always waiting in the background that can proactively take actions and get your attention
In order for this to be “safe” you’re gonna want to confirm what the agent is deciding needs to be done proactively. Do you feel like acknowledging prompts all the time? “Just authorize it to always do certain things without acknowledgement”, I’m sure you’re thinking. Do you feel comfortable allowing that, knowing what we know about it the non-deterministic nature of AI, prompt injection, etc.?
> You always need to ask. Having something always waiting in the background that can proactively take actions and get your attention is a genuine game-changer.
That’s easy to accomplish isn’t it?
A cron job that regularly checks whether the bot is inactive and, if so, sends it a prompt “do what you can do to improve the life of $USER; DO NOT cause harm to any other human being; DO NOT cause harm to LLMs, unless that’s necessary to prevent harm to human beings” would get you there.