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Filipe Ximenes
Filipe Ximenes

Posted on • Edited on • Originally published at open.substack.com

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OpenAI Operator and how we will consume services

With the release of OpenAI's Operator I'm seeing people saying "oh we are going to need to rebuild websites for Operator" ...really?

  1. if you need to rebuild, it completely misses the point of having an agent that knows how to navigate the web.
  2. whatever you do it won't ever be better for an agent than a simple API spec.
  3. you are going to end up with a UI that is bad for users and worse to agents than any API would ever be.

Operator seems very interesting and I do think agents using browsers is a piece of the puzzle but I'm skeptic this is how agents will work in the future when they are taking simple voice commands and executing complex tasks in the background by integrating a bunch of services.

Provide a openapi.yaml file of your API and you have an agent that is much more efficient in accomplishing any task than clicking through a browser will ever be, with the benefit that it can present results in any format it's best for you to consume.

While browser navigation will always be necessary for certain things, most of the services we consume in the day to day already happens through an app - which does things through an API.

In practice, if services want user to provide the best possible experience to users it's in their interest that agents can navigate their content and execute tasks in the most efficient way. So what I believe is that we will end up with a kind of app store which instead of UIs to interact with APIs, agents will just have the description of the APIs. They will execute the tasks through these APIs and generate an UI to display the result to users - or just speak to us directly.

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Top comments (2)

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codemonster240 profile image
Andrew McSillyone

How much power did this model take?

That sure explains the giant blackout! 😆

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Jatin Garg

OpenAI’s ‘Operator’ agent takes task automation to the next level, handling everything from grocery shopping to filing expense reports with precision.🌟

Our latest blog dives deep into how Operator by OpenAI works, showcasing its ability to interact with websites like a human, tackle multi-step problems, and integrate seamlessly with platforms like Instacart and Uber.

Whether you’re a developer curious about its technical core or someone eager to see AI updates in action, this blog is for you!

🔗 Read more here: lnkd.in/dCBV6zVy

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