This is not a traditional computer operating system. We use the term "operating system" in two senses:
- An operating system for the company to be productive with AI, in a way that is safe, so that the security team can sleep at night.
- An operating system for AI workloads, analogous to the sense in which a traditional operating system manages compute workloads.
It looks to me like they just wanted to distinguish their product from other AI agents/sandboxes, so they called it an OS to make it sound bigger and better.
Wow this is really poor justification for its name, the folks at cloudflare really should not be overloading the term "Operating System" pointlessly like this.
They even put it in quotes, because they know what they did.
Maybe just take out the word "traditional" and be honest: "This is not an operating system. We're redefining the term because it is convenient for marketing."
Excluding vegetables from what convey “meat” was also not correct around 1300-1500. Definitions changes with usage and only time will tell the future of vegan steaks, meats, milks, sauvages, butters and other parties.
> food, nourishment, sustenance
> Narrower sense of "flesh of warm-blooded animals killed and used as food" is attested from c. 1300
Because AI enables a new layer more akin to an actual OS. But also because I imagine they all want all the things running through them and an OS is the widest net they can cast in that direction.
I think because the idea of an "agent operating system" is starting to feel more and more inevitable. Since I can use AI to:
- Pull information from external sources
- Transform and/or augment that information
- Publish information
I almost do not need a traditional OS anymore. This obviously isn't entirely true: I still use it to interact directly with humans, and it's the way I access my LLM. For now.
> This obviously isn't entirely true: [...] it's the way I access my LLM.
It doesn't change my opinion that there's a very real possibility that we move to thin clients or microkernels intended primarily to run chat interfaces (or some other UI that organizes LLM sessions and their outputs) either locally on the hardware, or against cloud computing environments. An operating system is just the interface a user has with their computer.
More to the point - it is possible to run an operating system on top of another operating system: this is what VMs are. I'm obviously not claiming that LLMs replace the glue between hardware and software(?!)
I'm not advocating for this model. But I'm also not sure it has any more lock-in than choosing an OS today: Windows, macOS, Linux, ChromeOS, Android, iOS.
I'm obviously not saying that LLMs replace the glue between hardware and software. That would be absurd.
An operating system is just the interface a user has to the programs they run on their computer. Surely you can imagine a world where you boot into a ChatGPT-like interface instead of the desktop OS you are familiar with?
Different computing paradigms already exist: mobile OS sure, but also ChromeOS... heck, install Arch Linux and you're dropped into a shell by default - not a GUI. How is this so different?
And it doesn't even have to replace your existing OS to be your operating system: If you purchase a cloud VM (say from AWS or DigitalOcean), you're likely running an operating system on top of another operating system already.
From the GitHub page:
It looks to me like they just wanted to distinguish their product from other AI agents/sandboxes, so they called it an OS to make it sound bigger and better.
Wow this is really poor justification for its name, the folks at cloudflare really should not be overloading the term "Operating System" pointlessly like this.
They even put it in quotes, because they know what they did.
Maybe just take out the word "traditional" and be honest: "This is not an operating system. We're redefining the term because it is convenient for marketing."
It's awful naming if they have to explain it.
the people criticizing the vibecoded name knows what they meant, it is just not correct. It is the same as vegan meat.
Excluding vegetables from what convey “meat” was also not correct around 1300-1500. Definitions changes with usage and only time will tell the future of vegan steaks, meats, milks, sauvages, butters and other parties.
> food, nourishment, sustenance
> Narrower sense of "flesh of warm-blooded animals killed and used as food" is attested from c. 1300
https://www.etymonline.com/word/meat
Mostly to get trolls to retweet and complain about it for free advertising. It's working. ;)
Because it sounds impressive to clueless people ($).
I agree, it has now become a cliche buzzword that product managers slap on boring non-technical things to make them sound important.
Isn’t there even a bug tracker that some company calls an ‘issue OS’ or something absurd?
Because AI enables a new layer more akin to an actual OS. But also because I imagine they all want all the things running through them and an OS is the widest net they can cast in that direction.
Cause they’re trying to build an ecosystem
i too clicked the link by this exactly 2 characters, "OS" should NOT be used in this way.
Same reason why grifters adopted web3 when Web 3.0 was already an established term.
Andy Jassy et al didn't quite name it that, but AWS was being thought of internally as "Internet OS".
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I disagree. Harness is a pretty great word, and it doesn't already have another familiar meaning.
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I think because the idea of an "agent operating system" is starting to feel more and more inevitable. Since I can use AI to:
I almost do not need a traditional OS anymore. This obviously isn't entirely true: I still use it to interact directly with humans, and it's the way I access my LLM. For now.
You need a "traditional" operating system to even run your LLM, or do you have your own custom collection of drivers you flash your machine with? :p
I already mentioned this:
> This obviously isn't entirely true: [...] it's the way I access my LLM.
It doesn't change my opinion that there's a very real possibility that we move to thin clients or microkernels intended primarily to run chat interfaces (or some other UI that organizes LLM sessions and their outputs) either locally on the hardware, or against cloud computing environments. An operating system is just the interface a user has with their computer.
More to the point - it is possible to run an operating system on top of another operating system: this is what VMs are. I'm obviously not claiming that LLMs replace the glue between hardware and software(?!)
> I almost do not need a traditional OS anymore.
You sure about that?
smells like lock-in to me.
I'm not advocating for this model. But I'm also not sure it has any more lock-in than choosing an OS today: Windows, macOS, Linux, ChromeOS, Android, iOS.
Does your LLM have hardware drivers in it? this is silly.
I'm obviously not saying that LLMs replace the glue between hardware and software. That would be absurd.
An operating system is just the interface a user has to the programs they run on their computer. Surely you can imagine a world where you boot into a ChatGPT-like interface instead of the desktop OS you are familiar with?
Different computing paradigms already exist: mobile OS sure, but also ChromeOS... heck, install Arch Linux and you're dropped into a shell by default - not a GUI. How is this so different?
And it doesn't even have to replace your existing OS to be your operating system: If you purchase a cloud VM (say from AWS or DigitalOcean), you're likely running an operating system on top of another operating system already.
Agreed, its like OSes have become so invisible people have actually forgotten what they do.
But "virtual machine" is not? Maybe "Virtual OS" is more acceptable?
This is really approaching peak AI psychosis