I want agents to be able to act on my behalf, that’s the entire point. An agent should be able to do anything I can do sitting at my browser.

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compiler-guy 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I suspect most people would be ok with this if they could only do it at the rate and frequency you yourself can do it. The problem is largely one of scale.

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daveoc64 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Is scale what we're discussing though?

e.g. a prompt of "fetch <article URL> and summarise it for me" is very close to what a human would be doing with a web browser, and doesn't seem to involve any kind of scaling issue.

	▲	compiler-guy an hour ago \| parent [-]
		It’s easy to write instructions that have the agent check once every fifteen minutes, or even once an hour, in perpetuity, which never sleeps. And people do write such instructions. A human can’t do that by hand for very long. The problem is that it is hard to distinguish your one off (which seems perfectly fine) from the tidal wave of bad actors.

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cruffle_duffle 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Then make agent friendly content. Take the text and make a markdown version.

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fineIllregister 3 hours ago | parent [-]

People doing this say it makes things worse because then the bots download both.

	▲	compiler-guy 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Not to mention that it solves none of the rate issues. If the scrapers are hitting your site 10,000 times a day, adding markdown isn’t going to change that at all.

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ryandrake 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Technically, even your browser is an agent. It says it in the HTTP: User-Agent. So is cURL. Every application the user runs is acting on the user's behalf.

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cruffle_duffle 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Dunno why the downvotes. I feel that is reasonable as well. Owners that block that stuff are doing so only to their detriment.