Hacker News Reader

Comment by LetsGetTechnicl | Hacker News Reader

Jesus fucking Christ you're on a restaurant booking page looking at a date picker and you need an agent to fill it out for you?

View on HN

"Hey AI, find me a X cuisine restaurant around Y location that has availability at 7pm tonight" .. "Cool, book Z"

Seems obvious why an API would be helpful on that page instead of having the AI attempt to navigate the page, open up a date picker and click all around..

And as others have said, if you are disabled in some way being able to just speak and get something like this done seems pretty life changing.

But you go ahead and be mad about an api...

Right, because disabled people have been sitting at home not able to book a restaurant until now

Well aren't you a ray of sunshine?

This isn't for when you are looking at the restaurant booking page, it's for when your agent is on that page. Personally I don't need an agent to help me with this specific problem, but I could see it being a real boon for people with accessibility needs.

Sometimes it helps to not think of why we should reject things but instead to think of why someone might accept them.

It does mention something about "using the page you're already logged into" so I presumed that it meant the browser you had open in front of you

I think the notion that the solution to accessibility is to place a unreliable agent in-between is ludicrous.

If a page has good accessibility an agent should have no problem to interact with it. If WebMCP becomes an acceptable solution for accessibility then the only way people who need accessibility will be able to interact with services is via agents.

If I have an injury or I am disabled, then yes, an agent helping me fill out forms might be a life-changing improvement.

We already have accessibility tools for that

Which ones?

The accessibility tools most computers have had since the 90's? Apple has a plethora of screen navigation tools in their OS's. Or, calling the restaurant and booking a table directly in this case.

This is immeasurably better.

Well one works reliably and the other is "agentic" AI

Absolutely. I am always complaining that natural language creation of calendar events is not a thing. “Meeting next Thursday at 9 am at the starbucks near me”

They couldn't get a biometric voice sample and unique identifier without this AI crap. And people here cheer it on.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com