The Second Wave of the API-first Economy
Posted by Kabra___kiiiiiiiid@reddit | programming | View on Reddit | 27 comments
Posted by Kabra___kiiiiiiiid@reddit | programming | View on Reddit | 27 comments
sisyphus@reddit
I have to guess that a lot of people are just way busier than I am or something because I can't identify with a sentiment like this at all:
Logging into a website that literally has all your money to make a few clicks and confirm it's what you actually want is a "humiliating ritual"? You want to give that power to something that's not deterministic? You do this so often that it's a real win in your life to have it happen in 5 seconds instead of 5 minutes?
Ohhhh, nevermind, maybe it's that a lot of people are a lot richer than me.
roygbivasaur@reddit
People keep coming up with ideas that just inherently make the web less secure. Everyone’s main problem they want to solve seems to be “I don’t want to do 2 minutes of effort”, but the tradeoff is taking down all security measures and giving an LLM access to your whole life.
neo-raver@reddit
An LLM “agent” with bank access is such a juicy target for hackers. LLMs are already a security nightmare; I’m not even telling one my bank’s name, let alone give it a key in!
neo-raver@reddit
Yeah, that’s where the article turned from “yeah, APIs are cool! I wish more domains had them (again)!” To “oh, this is just another brain-dead AI shill”
Just like you said: this guy would really want to trust the bullshit machine to do something I can do in 90 seconds (tops) on a phone app? My bank is a regional credit union, and the app is still very convenient. I’m sure it’s at least as good with commercial banks that have more money to throw at mobile app development. And I know that exactly the money I want will go into the exact account I specified. Does this guy just wanna feel like a big-shot by reciting orders out loud?
docgravel@reddit
That’s funny because the first use case I thought of was “go through all my promo codes and price comparisons across delivery apps and order me the groceries I need for the cheapest price”. Or “check uber and Lyft and promo codes and get me the cheapest one”
gimpwiz@reddit
I only need to log into one. Why does the author need to log into both?
sisyphus@reddit
I have no idea and I assume he's telling the truth, but even so it seems like a weird way to argue that the traditionally most conservative, regulated and subject-to-intense-penalty-from-both-consumers-and-the-law for messing up IT orgs should all be API first because it will be easier for your LLM assistant to interact with.
sionescu@reddit
Not weird, just modern expectations. The EU had had this by law for a while and you can connect your financial planning software to your banks with what amounts to an API key. You can also connect a bank to another bank so you manage all your accounts from one place.
nanotree@reddit
The last part sounds completely alien to me. Like this person lives on a different planet.
How fucking rich do you need to be to need an AI assistant to do all of this kind of thing for you on a regular weekly basis. Insane.
SkoomaDentist@reddit
When I want to move 100e from one bank to another I start my banking app on my phone, show my face, hit the transfer button, fill out the details, hit confirm and show my face again. Not exactly onerous.
jcelerier@reddit
In my case it asks for two passwords (one for wise and one for my bank app that wise will open for the transfer), two SMS auth, one email verification before a transfer is done
SwiftOneSpeaks@reddit
But the humiliation! /s
SkoomaDentist@reddit
Look, I’m not that ugly!
jcelerier@reddit
It's completely insane for me to accept that logging in something should take more than 10 seconds, but there are more and more places where I have to go through three different login portals, a SMS auth, an authy token, etc. for accounts I frankly don't care about. Makes me want to give up tech altogether.
LIEUTENANT__CRUNCH@reddit
In bed: Robot, bang my wife. Confirm the position with me first.
NewPhoneNewSubs@reddit
Robot, compete with other robots to buy a hobbiest grade tool from another robot at a price that all robots agree is a steal. The tool should be such that i can tell my wife i need and invent a project to go with, and not one i already have. Then arrange a drone robot to pickup the tool from the seller robot. Repeat process for materials associated with the project. Pick a project that you will be able to sell to another robot so that we may sustain this cycle and not delve too far into equipping our drone fleet with small arms beyond what has proven necessary to protect the fleet from robot-driven piracy.
gramathy@reddit
Robot, experience this existential crisis for me
sisyphus@reddit
Once we get wives that are API first the robot can even tell them for us.
Full-Spectral@reddit
I don't even have an online account at my bank, because an account that doesn't exist can't be hacked. So there's zero chance I'm giving some LLM access to anything in my life that I consider important, sensitive, etc...
BlondieCoder@reddit
"We’re at the beginning of a new spring of APIs that’ll appear to support use by agents acting on behalf of people."
That does seem to be where things are heading. Many companies are already starting to build APIs with agents in mind.
SwiftOneSpeaks@reddit
I'm staunchly anti-current LLMs, but I've my using agents to help my web dev students take accessibility seriously. I feel like a hypocrite, but I'm not lying about the results and humans/assistive technology will benefit, so it seems worth it.
max123246@reddit
That's what I hope wins out. Using LLMs should make you more rigorous and build better safer more secure software. If you're using it to just ship more slop, you're just burning energy for nothing
pydry@reddit
Everything else basically works but the security picture is still a mess.
hraath@reddit
Wait can you not just
Open bank app with biometric auth, send an e transfer to other bank l
In like 10 seconds already?
To be much faster some agent would need to be speculatively executing on my thoughts.
SnooSnooper@reddit
For me I would need the agent to get on the horn with whatever bank support agent was tasked with interrogating me with an anti-fraud script before approving the transfer. Not likely to pass the smell test, but if yes then I guess it would make things more convenient.
ZippityZipZapZip@reddit
What the fuck.
Zarkdion@reddit
I broadly agree with this. But it depends a LOT on AI model hosters being able to perpetually sell access to their compute at rates we currently see with Claude. Which I think is a very rose-tinted view of things considering the fact that Anthropic is already doing market research on the effects of constraining its tools' most popular features to its $100/mo Max plan.