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Ask HN: In The Matrix, the bad guys are the 'agents'. Coincidence? Clairvoyance?
25 points by spottedmarley 11 hours ago | 20 comments

My buddy, Dario, says agents are getting more aggressive and will soon kill everybody, and I feel like I've seen this movie before.

retrac 11 hours ago | parent | next [-]

"Agent" was already established lingo in computer science and AI when The Matrix was released.

https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/648203.749270

amiga386 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Fun fact, you're browsing the web as fetched for you, and rendered in a way you find acceptable, by your user agent

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_agent

embedding-shape 9 hours ago | parent [-]

Better page specifically for user-agent in a browser context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_agent (although has a lot less content)

Besides Firefox, I don't think many of the browsers are user-agents anymore, but more like corporate-agents, as they don't seem to act in the interest of the software user anymore.

bigfatkitten 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

They were indeed. “Autonomous agents” were extremely trendy in CS 30 years ago.

https://dlnext.acm.org/doi/proceedings/10.1145/267658

fwlr 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If you’re willing to consider the sequels part of the canon, Smith’s copying/cloning technique does kind of look like OpenAI’s approach to intellectual property.

treetalker 10 hours ago | parent [-]

"Do you like what I've done with the place?"

cantalopes 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Agent is something that has been used in programming for ages, even before llms. It's simething you learn about in first years in CS

djeastm 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

When my agents start referring to humans as a virus and AI as the cure, that's when I'll worry.

chabes 9 hours ago | parent [-]

That would be too late by that point

Wertulen 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You really can just type anything into the internet and have it exposed to the whole world.

kirykl 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

'Bad guys' is debatable. It was the humans who scorched the sky

jauntywundrkind 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Anonymous shallow replicas too. All the same program launched a million times.

zikduruqe 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The Matrix wasn't a movie, it was a documentary.

SlightlyLeftPad 8 hours ago | parent [-]

“They all look the same to me”

ButlerianJihad 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Wait until you hear about Tron

LeoPanthera 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Dr. Walter Gibbs: [laughs] You've got to expect some static. After all, computers are just machines; they can't think.

Alan Bradley: Some programs will be thinking soon.

Gibbs: Won't that be grand? Computers and the programs will start thinking, and the people will stop!

layer8 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Ram also had a crisis there I think.

mixmastamyk 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Fights for the user and against the MCP!

akk0 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Wait until you learn what the A in CIA stands for and what the stuff they dropped on Vietnam was called

rimunroe 9 hours ago | parent [-]

Wait, what do you think the A stands for?