[chaos_emergent]

This morning, while putting in daily contacts, I realized I was down to my last few pairs. Still standing at the bathroom sink, I used the ChatGPT app on my phone to voice-command the Codex app on my computer to book an optometrist appointment for Saturday. It visited the website, figured out the API, and booked it.

No, this isn’t the same as planning a multi-day vacation. But it is plainly useful today, and it feels very close to handling more complex tasks like that.

Maybe the difference is the model and the harness. At this point, I’m starting to think some people are either gaslighting themselves about how useful these systems are, or overgeneralizing from one narrow setup. Gemini, for example, seems especially weak at agentic behavior.

The wholesale dismissal just feels strange coming from the HN community I’m used to.

[stevage]

This is the kind of example that people use to demonstrate "usefulness" that falls so flat to me. I could make that phone call in a minute and have no doubts about whether my agent had stuffed up somehow.

It's just not compelling to say that an AI can do an easy task quickly. This is still worth zero dollars to me.

[gedy]

It is neat, but come on you could've booked from website on the phone too.