I got Claude to self reference and update its own instructions to solve making a typed proxy API of any website. After a week, scores of iterations, it can reverse engineer any website. The first few days I had to be deeply involved with each iteration loop. Domain knowledge is helpful. Each time I saw a problem I would ask Claude to update its instructions so it doesn't happen again. Then less and less. Eventually it got to the point it was updating and improving the metrics every iteration unsupervised.
Edit: This is going to have huge ramifications for the tech security industry as these systems will be able to break security systems as easily it solved the proof. The sooner the good guys, if there are any left, understand this the better it will be for everybody.
> Super interesting but what does this mean for us mere mortals?
I would go for a 2 or 3 hour walk with my phone using the remote control feature looking every 5 - 10 minutes to make sure it doesn't need human help. I went to the coffeeshop and drank very good coffee listening to music. Then at night I sat and had a beer thinking about T.S. Eliot's 'The Wasteland', the effect of industrialization in England at that time and his views of how ennui affected the aristocracy.
> I went to the coffeeshop and drank very good coffee listening to music. Then at night I sat and had a beer thinking about T.S. Eliot's 'The Wasteland', the effect of industrialization in England at that time and his views of how ennui affected the aristocracy.
Well, for those among us that are not aristocracy already, except for the vanishingly small number of people required to oversee such processes, we’re probably the closest we’re going to get to it. If they don’t need people to do the tech labor, we’ve got way more people than we need, so that’s a huge oversupply of tech skills, which means tech skills are rapidly becoming worthless. Glad to see how fast we’re moving in our very own race to the bottom!
Lol,a race to the bottom where too many tech savvy people are left unemployed while a few "privileged" get a decreasing buying power to maintain security of the digital tools that keep the whole digital dependent civilizations afloat?
Sounds like a great starting plot for an interesting story.
I kind of feel like software engineers working on improving AI are traitors working against other SE’s trying to make a living.
However…
I have to acknowledge my craft of SE has been putting people out of work for decades. I myself came up with business process improvement that directly let the company release about 20 people. I did this twice.
So… fair play.
In the grand scheme it's good to invent things that replace human labor. It frees up people to do more interesting things. The goal should be to put everyone out of a job.
> The goal should be to put everyone out of a job.
Yeah, but why does it need to take the fun jobs first, like painting, writing poems, coding, making music, ...
I want the AI to cook, do the dishes, take out the trash, etc.
>It frees up people to do more interesting things
Like beg on the corners and starve in the street? Trying to figure out how the basics of capitalism where labor is exchanged for money is not going to work well when the only jobs left are side gigs. Something will have to change and a lot of People will fight said change.
We will come up with new jobs, like we have for all of human history. I think even in an abundance utopia people will still work - we need purpose to sustain our existence.
The work will become even more fulfilling however.
I’ve thought about this myself. Couple of points:
1) It’s not my job to fix all the problems of Capitalism. It’s painful to try to fight the system without collective action. My family and I have to eat too.
2) We have had a solution all along for the particular problem of AI putting devs out of work. It’s called professional licensure, and you can see it in action in engineering and medical fields. Professional Software Engineers would assume a certain amount of liability and responsibility for the software they develop. That’s regardless of whether they develop it with LLM tools or something else.
For example, you let your tools write slop that you ship without even looking? And it goes on to wreak havoc? That’s professional malpractice. Bad engineer.
If we do this then Software Engineers become the responsible humans in the loop of so-called “AI” systems.
It’s not your job to fix capitalism. But it is your job to evaluate if your money making skill comes at too high a price for others.
Say you found a job shooting people in the head for money. Like if you work for ICE or something…
You need to feed your family. Is this job ok? You may decide yes. I decided no. I will find another way to feed my family.
You don’t get to escape consequences because you are a small cog in a large system.
In the bigger picture, automation should free people from labor. But that requires some very greedy people to relax their grip ever so slightly. I imagine they see automation as a way to reduce reliance on labor, and if they don’t need labor, they don’t need people. So let them starve and stop having kids.
Aren't the true traitors still the ones paying the SE to do that work? The managerial slave-master class?
You always have a choice to make. You make it everyday. Get up. Go to a legitimate job. Work.
You probably choose not to steal, rob, impersonate someone else, or generally make money illegally.
It can be traitors all the way down.
> Edit: This is going to have huge ramifications for the tech security industry as these systems will be able to break security systems as easily it solved the proof. The sooner the good guys, if there are any left, understand this the better it will be for everybody.
What can the good guys do? Fire up Claude to improve their systems? Unless you have it working fully autonomously to counter-act abuse, I don't see how you can beat the "bad guys". There may be some industries where this is a solved problem (e.g. you can do all the validation server-sided, religiously follow best practices to prevent and mitigate abuse), but a lot of stuff like multiplayer video games will be doomed unless they move to a "you must use a locked down system we control" model. I honestly don't consider it liberating as someone that has various hobby projects, that now in addition to plain old DDoS I'll also have people spin up layer 7 attacks with just their credit card. It almost makes me want to give up instead of pushing forward in a world where the worst of the worst has access to the best of the best.
> I would go for a 2 or 3 hour walk with my phone using the remote control feature looking every 5 - 10 minutes to make sure it doesn't need human help.
That is a nightmarish scenario tbh
That nightmarish scenario is what T.S. Eliot was describing in "The Wasteland" which "portrays deep, existential ennui and boredom as defining symptoms of modern life following World War I."
Later this boredom was described by the Stones, "And though she’s not really ill / There’s a little yellow pill / She goes running for the shelter of a mother’s little helper".
It is a nightmare. Mostly what I'm thinking about while the agents are running is how bored I'm going to be. That is the joke, my deep thought on T.S. Eliot are about the wasteland this thing is going to create.
Nightmarish?! In comparison to the average person's actual job? I'm pretty sure that many people out there would sign up for a battle royale for a chance at such a job.
Would they? I'd love to get in touch
So sitting at a desk is nicer than a walk outside for you? Why would relaxation be a nightmare?
This type of slop comment is somehow worse than spam.
>After a week, scores of iterations, it can reverse engineer any website
Cool, let’s see the proof.
I posted a link but don't want to spam HN more than I have.
It is proof-of-concept. Seriously burns some tokens (~80k - ~200k) but doesn't require AI after to scrape and automate a website so if all the people at Browser Use, Browser Base, and every one pounding every website used it, I think, the net benefit would be in the billions. I would recommend using it in isolation. Nonetheless, it works very very well on my machine.
> This type of slop comment is somehow worse than spam.
Please don't be mean.
There is no proof, just a self-congratulatory word salad with dubious authenticity.
It’s insane how insufferable this place is now.
> I would go for a 2 or 3 hour walk with my phone using the remote control feature looking every 5 - 10 minutes
2-3 hours "walking" while having to check in every 5-10 minutes?
If I have to check in every 5-10 minutes, I won't taste coffee or hear that there's good music playing.
Just Claude code a push notification feature then
That's fucking insane. Thank you for sharing.
I had a bad feeling we were basically already there.
I have similar amounts of success (pretty good!) standing in line at a coffee shop talking to people who work for me through some action that needs to be taken and doing the same with AI.
However I do not trust AI anywhere near as much as I trust the humans. The AI is super capable but also occasionally a psychopath toddler. I sat in amused astonishment when faced with job 2 not running because job 1 was failing Claude went in to the database, changed the failure record to success, triggered job 2 which produced harmful garbage, and then claimed victory. Only the most troubled person would even think of doing that, but Claude thought it was the best solution.