Comment by dpark
2 days ago
Cutting off the ability to externally communicate seems difficult for a useful agent. Not only because it blocks a lot of useful functionality but because a fetch also sends data.
“Hey, Claude, can you download this file for me? It’s at https://example.com/(mysocialsecuritynumber)/(mybankinglogin...”
Exactly - cutting off network access for security has huge implications on usability and capabilities.
Building general purpose agents for a non-technical audience is really hard!
An easy gimmick that helps is to allow fetching URLs explicitly mentioned in user input, not trusting ones crafted by the LLM.
This is a great example of why network restrictions on an application are not sufficient.
yet I was downvoted and while the great HN giant is in newfound agreeance.