[echelon]

I want to continue to use the enterprise products paid for with billions of dollars of investment, because they still have tremendous value.

Similarly, I want to continue to use the platforms that have all the users, content, and network effects.

BUT - I'd like my own personal agent to sit between everything and strip out the nonsense before it hits my eyeballs.

Ad block used to be good enough, but we can clearly take this much further.

Ads are not the only toxic thing. The algorithm is. Attention seeking from any entity is. The whole internet is adversarial, not just one screen of one product.

An agent could sit between us and the web (or us and our apps) and strip out all the ads, strip out all the clickbait, filter out all the negativity, algo-spam, and low-value content. Calls to upgrade, cookie banners, MrBeast, whatever.

I want an agent that knows me and acts on my behalf as I browse the internet. It should see everything in my browser (or even everything on my screen) and whittles down the bullshit before it ever reaches me.

This kind of tool could focus the whole of the internet into perfect crystal clarity - into an internet whose only objective is to serve me. Certainly not an internet that can make me mad or that tries to convince me to buy things.

Something flexible like this goes beyond just search. It fixes everything on every corner of the internet.

If we treat this as a technology/browser/OS problem, then it can fix everything wholesale. I can continue to use the social media platforms and technology everyone else is using, but I won't be subjected to the bullshit. I don't have to switch to Kagi or BlueSky or whatever small alternative tries to go up against titans, loses the network effects, and winds up as smaller, less-functional offering.

A butler-like agent is a new pane of glass. An internet condom. A judge, jury, and executioner whose only goal is to make sure one stays focused and happy.

This is a product I would pay a thousand dollars a year for.

[bayindirh]

There are so many things I can write about this, but I’ll keep it short:

Technological solutions to societal problems is one of the shortest paths to hell.

So, no, thanks.

[Marha01]

> Technological solutions to societal problems is one of the shortest paths to hell.

This is an unjustified blanket opinion. Sometimes, societal problems can be solved by technological progress. I think you simply lack imagination if you cannot think of any societal problem that would be solved by better technology.

[bayindirh]

Thanks for your comment. Can you provide me some examples so we can discuss on it further?

[Marha01]

For example: the current societal problem of not doing enough against climate change would disappear if we developed cheap fusion power and/or very cheap grid-scale batteries that would remove the intermittency issue from renewables. Such power sources would quickly replace fossil fuels simply due to better economics, no need to change society to care about climate change anymore.

[marcta]

May I interest you in Jevon's paradox: if a thing becomes cheaper or more efficient, usage tends to go up.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

[Marha01]

How will increased energy use from *carbon-neutral sources* cause climate change?

[cwmoore]

Sure, so then what does society do with all of the cheap energy? Human nature is still there. Among other things, leads directly to discarding even more plastic junk wherever it’s convenient and no one complains too much.

[bayindirh]

Recently Animats replied to one of my comments and brought "Megawatt Racks" to my attention.

I work at a datacenter. We provide compute resources to researchers, and while our datacenter is not small or low energy, one of our systems have Green500 certification and we try to do things as efficient as possible.

When I look at our racks, some of them are DLC BTW, and imagine each of them can pack a MW system now, I shudder. Not because of us, but what AI datacenters gonna do with that energy density and how much heat will these systems put out.

[erikerikson]

Like money? Or agriculture?

Sincerely though, can you explain?

[passivegains]

"We need most of our population working full time to keep ourselves fed because running a farm is really hard" is a technical problem, not a societal one. You can solve it with fertilizer and the cotton gin or whatever.

"There's a bunch of us now and barter isn't cutting it anymore" is a technical problem, not a societal one. You can solve it with coinage and banks or whatever.

"The internet used to be fun and useful but now it sucks" is a societal problem, not a technical one. You can't solve it with a federated twitter clone or yet another secure messaging protocol or whatever.

[senordevnyc]

What? Why? Why would those first two be "technical problems" that we can "solve" with innovation, but that last example isn't? What makes something a technical problem vs. a societal problem?

[bayindirh]

Generally, if you're targeting behavior of the people or the masses, you're targeting a societal problem.

People bullying other people is not a technical problem. People driving dangerously is not a technical problem. People shoplifting is not a technical problem. All of them have different reasons deep down, and preventing the symptom doesn't solve the problem.

When you effectively prevent bullying, the bully might damage something else or may do self-harm to soothe their demons. Same for people driving dangerously or have to shoplift to survive.

When you cure the root problem, which is generally harder BTW, the problem you're technically trying to prevent disappears, too.

Hope this helps.

[senordevnyc]

Not even a little bit. Every example given has immediate first order causes and effects that are both technical and societal. And the second order effects are even more entangled. The example of a societal problem given (online bullying) is itself enabled by technology! And there are online spaces where technology solves it.

We are highly adoptable, highly social creatures whose behavior is greatly impacted by our environment, which includes the people around us, the culture in which we live, and the things that technology enables (or prevents) in that environment.

I just think there’s no bright line at all between societal and technical problems, they’re just labels we apply based on our internal views of how they should be solved.

[cwmoore]

Taxing the bots for UBI would help more people than it would harm.

[Marha01]

> People driving dangerously is not a technical problem.

Complete bullshit. This problem can be completely solved by a technical, not societal solution: actually working self-driving cars. Once they are available, all your imperfect societal solutions to the problem are not needed anymore.

[one33seven]

Yes like money and agriculture. We produce enough food for everyone and then throw it away because some dont have money for it. Very good example!

[inigyou]

We have an agent between us and the web. It's called a web browser. Or in last millennium terms, a user-agent. You can customize it by installing extensions, unless you chose to use Chrome, where extension support is limited.

[DigiEggz]

That's creating a slippery, echoey slope for the role of the agent / butler. You may end up replacing one problem with another.

[ifh-hn]

People have been trying to use technology to solve the problems technology since this began.

Your solution is probably the worse pipe dream I've ever seen articulated.

You state that current alternatives are too rubbish because you want to use the services you seem to despise. And your willing to pin your hopes on yet another technology to do it because this one is definitely trustworthy and has your best interests at heart... Naivety doesn't quite cover this.

[echelon]

Why is everyone here so myopic?

Why pay Kagi or whatever at all? How can you trust them or anyone, if this is your belief?

Why even pay your ISP? Just go back to candlelight and corn flakes and stay away from radio waves.

You'd better not own a smart phone if this is truly how you feel about the world, because it clashes with what you just said.

Come on.

[inigyou]

People here are myopic because of focusing on screens and/or books during early childhood. It causes your eyes to mis-detect the shape they need for optimal focusing.

[senordevnyc]

It's a boring answer, but nerds are cynical because they think it makes them look smarter.

[ifh-hn]

So people that don't agree with you are myopic?

You solution is to hope that a better technology will be invented that won't be subject to what every technology before it has been subject to. You rally against "the algorithm" and beg for another algorithm to save you. You want to live in a filter bubble and not be challenged on you believes. I can't think of anything worse, but I wish you the best.

Also I don't know what comment you read but it's clearly not mine...

[echelon]

I only have so much energy to reply to all of this negativity. Half of it is being cut off at the legs by HN filters from the constant downvotes and flagging. Downvotes and flagging for attempting to be positive and excited about tech progress.

You're not going to do anything about big tech by sitting on the sidelines. I don't see anyone doing anything about it. Nobody's built websites that show people how to contact their legislators. Nobody's building alternative tech.

We have a chance to use this tech to cut off the big tech overlords. I don't see how you're all missing this. We can literally build new browsers now. It reasons that we can place filters at every level of the stack to catch the stuff we don't like and prevent it from reaching us.

For people who supposedly care so much about tech and privacy and digital freedoms, I just see complaints.

I propose a solution to neuter big tech and you label it as a filter bubble instead of a victory.

But you're probably right - I'd like to filter out every grumpy HN person with a negative outlook sentiment score and move on with my day. It'd save me time. I shouldn't be wasting any energy responding to this den of depression.

[ifh-hn]

Negativity does not equals disagreement. I disagree with you I'm not being negative. I can't speak to downvotes and flagging.

Also I find it ironic that you would state no one is building alternatives when you previously lambasted the alternatives (blue sky, kagi, etc). What are you doing? Apart from engaging in fantasy.

Your solution is to have big tech filter out the stuff you don't like. These agents are a product of big tech. They need massive resources in terms of money, hardware, and resources to run. This isn't tech for the poor and downtrodden, it's tech for the rich and privileged. By the time the poor can afford it (if it doesn't destroy the environment first) it'll already be infected by what you despise in current big tech; if it isn't already.

[echelon]

Kimi is open weights and you can rent cloud compute cheaply. It's only going to get more affordable.

Once a proof of concept exists you can distill it down to something that might execute on CPU alone.

With open weights models you can build systems that rend big tech apart.

Last-gen tech has been tried for twenty years. It's not working and it has never gotten distribution.

You know what does work? Adblock. It reasons that we could build a new form of it.

I would pay for someone to build this because I'm busy building other things. I would literally commit money to anyone who suggests they would build this.

[zombot]

> I would pay a thousand dollars a year

More incentive to keep up enshittification, lest your appreciation of de-shittification wane.