Usually, tap to pay triggers randomized PIN requests too, which is even worse for elderly - entering a PIN only once every 100 transactions than every time.
The fundamental issue is, that "we" somehow decided it would be a good idea to throw all the fundamental ideas of computing (determinism, context, separation between data and execution,...) away and try to solve the issues by running a probabilistic/stochastic word generator on top of deterministic circuits instead at 10 magnitude worse efficiency.
It's not a fundamental issue. Determinism and "separation between data and execution" are artificial constructs, make-believe universe in which we design classical code, and a whole lot of hardware engineering goes into allowing us to briefly forget it's all fake.
Real world is probabilistic in practical / metrological, if not fundamental sense, and separation between data and execution does not exist. Our reality does not support such separation.
> a probabilistic/stochastic word generator on top of deterministic circuits instead at 10 magnitude worse efficiency
It's 10 magnitude better efficiency end-to-end, if you factor in design time you'd have to spend to get your "deterministic circuits" (which really aren't, we just paper over it) into shape so they deterministically solve a specific problem, for each problem you want to solve - where with the "stochastic word generator", you just need to change the text prompt.
This is an awesome idea. I use agents all the time that way, so am not thrilled by potential consequences, but I love the idea from the platfroms' perspective.
Agents are the new search engine - a majority of people are starting to get recommendations and answers from them. So asking this is like asking "what is the benefit of making any resource more available to search engines?"
The answer is discoverability. which is pretty critical for any business
I've heard CTOs saying they don't consider buying any product that is not AI agent friendly. Which means they must come with AI skills, MCP Servers and so on that agents can use it to do stuff. You may not like it, but that's almost certainly going to be the future.
agents are becoming the de facto standard interface for everything, whether you like it or not, so it depends on the intent you have for a project, or "product" as OP phrased it, which has a more contextual implication that the intent is to get others to buy it
ironically, I did sell a kirby many many years ago
the idea is likely way more about business purchases and SaaS than consumer products, though I did have an agent do deep research to give me options when deciding on a new mattress
Behind an agent is a human that might use the product. I think customers/consumers will demand that their personal/subscription agent can access the product.
As someone that works for a company that gets a 100% score on ax-check, all the effort I've put into making it accessible for agents has not 10xed the growth numbers like I was told it would.
The Ai growth looks more like the very-long-term 2% (technically productivity growth from innovation), avoid assuming the hypesters are even close to accurate in their predictions
The ROI is for we the users, not the companies, only issues is that the agent's attention is way easier to hijack, so you have to maintain a different kind of attention when using them and never blindly trust their outputs.
"Yes, it is written systemd, not system D or System D, or even SystemD. And it isn't system d either. Why? Because it's a system daemon, and under Unix/Linux those are in lower case, and get suffixed with a lower case d."
Ships in European rivers are usually not container ships, but bulk carriers, for which the number "1 ship == 100 trucks" is roughly right AFAIK.
But around half of those bulk carriers are transporting fossil fuels, so while they suffer under the climate crisis-induced drought, many of them are contributors to their own (and our collective) problems.
It sucks for those transporting essential, not climate-destroying goods, but when it comes to the other ones, I just hope it helps to speed up independence from fossil fuels.
Yes it has negative consequences for wildlife, which is why it is FAR BETTER FOR THE ENVIRONMENT to put all the agriculture in one place at high efficiency rather than spread farmland out over otherwise virgin wilderness.
Would you rather have 2x the wilderness 80% degraded or 1x the wilderness 90% degraded? Unless your plan is to decide who starves to death, it's far better to have greenhouses where we already have farms!
Stop with the false dichotomies. I would rather have no wilderness 90% degraded at all. There are better alternatives than spreading out the farmland. Like better greenhouses that don’t blast grow lights all over the night sky. We have the technology, it’s just cheaper to destroy the environment.
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