Comment by kennywinker
6 hours ago
I don’t think that will happen. It sounds good, and I would like it if things operated that way - but from the company perspective how do they, for example, have a tool call that gives the customer a discount, without it getting used when it shouldn’t?
Companies want ai to replace human customer service decision making, which means it can’t just be an api that an external agent can interact with, because it needs private knowledge of company processes and access to capabilities that are abusable.
But we’re already at the point where if you manage to talk to a human, mostly you end up speaking to someone with no actual power to resolve your issue - so i think basically the future is just going to suck
> from the company perspective how do they, for example, have a tool call that gives the customer a discount, without it getting used when it shouldn’t?
I might be misunderstanding your point but I think you're in agreement with the gp, as in they are arguing for a locked down interface behind which the AI sits, narrowed to use within whatever particular operations the user can access, as opposed to a wide open AI interface with access to any operation (in principle).
So in your example there's no way to ask the AI for any old discount because the interface for doing so is locked down to just the discounts you can access, although the AI may be able to apply a discount you didn't ask for dynamically, if allowed, to give the customer a better experience.
Of course both versions can be implemented securely, it's just probably in general a smaller attack surface if you provide a tighter interface first.
> how do they, for example, have a tool call that gives the customer a discount, without it getting used when it shouldn’t?
One possibility is that the company and the user both have AI agents, and that these are able to negotiate with each other. Then I talk to my local customized agent, which knows my preferences, and it explains the required context if the company’s agent does something that won’t make sense to me. But the company’s agent is still privy to the details required to offer discounts, say.
You prevent abuse of the API by models the same way you prevent abuse by humans: you have server side checks.
They can want anything they like, if customers want to use agents and they don't provide APIs they will lose out.
> have a tool call that gives the customer a discount, without it getting used when it shouldn’t?
without comment on the rest of your post, a lot of discounts are just dark patterns, buy 2 for $10 or one for $6 is one of the oldest dark patterns around, and a lot of people fall for it, when they really didn't need that much whatever it was they were buying. In fact there are laws outlawing these practices coming into force for various types of products (alcohol, sugar) .
Other types of discounts like loyalty are more vague personally I think are a minor dark pattern. Negotiated discount on bulk purchases b2b are a different class, but it could be argued that you should only get the discount that the seller saves on logistics.
I'm just pointing this out because its very normalized, 'signup and get 3 months free', 'buy 2 get one free' etc, people dont bat an eyelid at, the same as advertising , but they are all just the earliest versions of dopamine hacking and dark patterns that consensus now is coming around to say probably isn't the best thing when scaled beyond a simple one to one interaction. Why are snapchat dopamine hacking with streaks but your local coffee shop stamping your card for your 10th coffee free different?