this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2025
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Original tweet:

screenshot of only the tweet by @DKThomp: "Fascinating @benthompson vision of the future of the Internet—i.e.,'The Agentic Web' Scenario: Before I go to sleep, I tell ChatGPT 'Plan my 5-year-old's birthday next Saturday, budget $500. When you've made the reservation, email these 20 ppl a printable invitation to attend. Also my wife wants to go to England in mid-July. Find 5 plausible flights for the family and make several distinct itineraries. Finally, pls edit this work memo.' When I go to sleep, the Al agent negotiates slots with two bowling alleys, buys a cake, emails printable invites, plans the trip, copy-edits, etc."

Transcript

Screenshot of a Bluesky quote chain.

The first post, by @DKThomp on Twitter, says: "Fascinating @benthompson vision of the future of the Internet—i.e., 'The Agentic Web' Scenario: Before I go to sleep, I tell ChatGPT 'Plan my 5-year-old's birthday next Saturday, budget $500. When you've made the reservation, email these 20 ppl a printable invitation to attend. Also my wife wants to go to England in mid-July. Find 5 plausible flights for the family and make several distinct itineraries. Finally, pls edit this work memo.'

When I go to sleep, the Al agent negotiates slots with two bowling alleys, buys a cake, emails printable invites, plans the trip, copy-edits, etc."

It is quoted by Drew Harwell on Bluesky: "Wouldn't do this in a million years".

This quote is then quoted by @cinemashoebox.bsky.social: "Waking up to 20 angry parents of my son's friends wondering why they've been sent an invitation to a BRITOTHDYA PRRRYT featuring a picture of Elsa with three eyes and tits bigger than her head. meanhile my wife is boarding a plane for her 176 hour flight to England via four layovers in Antarctica"

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[–] lime@feddit.nu 17 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 1 day ago

A computer can never find out

Therefore a computer must never fuck around

[–] hiramfromthechi@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago

No mention of all the privacy invasions you'd have to be good with so that the agents could do all that.

Now think about this with healthcare, finance, education, etc.

[–] umbraroze@slrpnk.net 19 points 2 days ago

I'm like, oh honey, we used to be able to do all this stuff. We had software for this. We had services in the web. Actually, I think we still do - hold on...

*looking at the national public transport route planning site*

*vague gesturing* this is peak technology and none of the AI bros have apparently heard of this shit, because they don't use public transport.

The Web used to cater to the niche services, until Big Tech rolled in, and now they try to replace it with patently inferior solutions.

[–] Krauerking@lemy.lol 5 points 1 day ago

People are so wealthy at the top that what they want is a secretary but still don't want to pay for one.

[–] Fuckfuckmyfuckingass@lemmy.world 115 points 2 days ago (3 children)

How is the AI supposed to schedule with venues while you're sleeping? Aren't the people who run the venues also sleeping?

[–] gex@lemmy.world 153 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Your agent would communicate with the venue's agent, after some negotiation they would agree on $400 dollars for a 7.5 minute party for 5000 children

[–] partial_accumen@lemmy.world 79 points 2 days ago (1 children)

after some negotiation they would agree on $400 dollars for a 7.5 minute party for 5000 children

Both AI agents assume that all children are perfectly spherical and the venue exists exclusively with no atmosphere in a vacuum.

[–] Uli@sopuli.xyz 39 points 2 days ago (3 children)

That's a great idea! Treating the children like perfectly spherical objects will let us calculate the flow of children through the bowling alley more like particles through a garden hose. Since we can accommodate many more children this way, let's expand the invitations to the entire school contacts list, with the new subject line, "Your child-sized balls are cordially invited!" The invitations are sent and your wife's travel plans have been amended to a one-day round trip starting and ending at the same airport to save on airfare costs. Is there anything else you need help with?

[–] Silic0n_Alph4@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

Luckily, your wife’s round trip will be with the best airline in existence.

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[–] makyo@lemmy.world 21 points 2 days ago (1 children)

They recently had the AI village experiment AI plan and carry out an event. They did finally have the event but there were some hiccups like they had to keep reminding the AIs that they were not coporeal and could not do things like drive to pick up the cake or make and bring signs to the event.

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[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 17 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (4 children)

Not if they are in a totally different time zone, such as with a country half-way around the world. Or if the venue has an automated system available 24/7... Like a website or app.

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[–] Dorkyd68@lemmy.world 15 points 2 days ago (1 children)

"Negotiates 2 slots at the bowling alley" does this guy think you have to Hagel to reserve a bowling lane??

[–] Alcoholicorn@mander.xyz 2 points 1 day ago

See in his future, the bowling ally has an AI that determines the maximum each customer is likely to pay, so yes.

[–] jontree255@lemmy.world 127 points 2 days ago (5 children)

Roundabout way to say “I’m a bad parent”.

I don’t have kids but pretty sure part of being a parent and forming a bond with your child is putting effort into raising them.

[–] wise_pancake@lemmy.ca 40 points 2 days ago

ChatGPT will know what they like so you don’t have to.

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[–] Nomecks@lemmy.ca 38 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Guess who's getting tungsten cubes for his birthday!

[–] Baguette@lemmy.blahaj.zone 12 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Fuck yea I love metallic cubes!

[–] Sonor@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

Could you take this off my colony? We no longer like it.

[–] Korhaka@sopuli.xyz 23 points 2 days ago (1 children)

How slow are they making ChatGPT for this to be an overnight task?

[–] prime_number_314159@lemmy.world 35 points 2 days ago (1 children)

It has to call the bowling alley 631 times between 2:10 AM and 10:03 AM when they finally pick up. These things take time.

[–] SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 1 day ago

No way. The AI would be smart. It would quickly realize they are closed and book lanes in a bowling alley on the other side of the globe

[–] darthelmet@lemmy.world 10 points 2 days ago

I know we’re mostly joking about how shitty AI currently is, but for the sake of the future, smarter AIs, don’t give them the ability to go contact others and spend money. That’s how you get the paper clip/stamp machine apocalypse.

[–] CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social 62 points 2 days ago (5 children)

I know I can't be the only one that, even if AI was up to doing all this reliably, wouldn't want AI spending my money on it's own like this, surely? Like, I can be pretty picky and tend to spend a lot of time shopping around for things. A significant fraction of the time I end up deciding not to buy anything because I can't find exactly what I want at a price I'm willing to spend for it. I think I'd get hella stressed out that my AI would just buy the first thing that fit a category, or the cheapest, or whatever some company paid the AI developer to have it prefer, or such like that, and not to mention the worry that I might suggest buying something as a joke to someone else and have the AI hear and take it seriously or something and then my money's gone before I realize.

[–] bridgeenjoyer@sh.itjust.works 39 points 2 days ago (1 children)

My friends trust llms to tell them what to buy. Surely that will never ne abused by capitalism. People are stupid.

[–] msage@programming.dev 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Which is doubly hilarious because that's the point of AI anyway.

Hide the web, or any other 'distractions', and just trust this AI 'friend' to make all the best decisions for you.

Fuck I hate this shit.

[–] bridgeenjoyer@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

And none of them see it. They say I need it or ill be left behind. I can't believe theyre this easily duped.

[–] msage@programming.dev 2 points 1 day ago

This is how democracy dies... with people willingly surrendering it.

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[–] ansiz@lemmy.world 34 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Is it really that hard to pull up a couple of websites to search for flights? What is this negotiating he's talking about anyway? Since when has haggling been part of buying plane tickets?

This magic A.I. also has a list of 20 kids to invite to a birthday party, you still had to spend the time teaching the bot who you wanted to email.

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[–] ellohir@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Isn't this similar to how Amazon Alexa is operating as a loss because nobody ever says "Alexa buy whatever"? The vast majority of people prefer to browse and check for themselves the products for 5 minutes rather than trusting a machine to choose for them.

[–] mavu@discuss.tchncs.de 21 points 2 days ago

"176 hour flight to England via 4 layovers in Antarctica" THIS is how you do comedy.

[–] Pratai@lemmy.world 23 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

If you use AI to plan your day, you deserve this.

[–] Kowowow@lemmy.ca 25 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Yes it would be nice for normal people to afford a secretary or buttler type but ai isn't there yet it needs more time to cook and stop shoving it into things unneeded

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[–] Saledovil@sh.itjust.works 7 points 2 days ago

This makes me wonder, what about promt injection. I'm not aware of a reliable way to protect against prompt injection.

[–] bridgeenjoyer@sh.itjust.works 15 points 2 days ago

There's a word for all these people. Lazy. Its just lazy assholes. And greed. Thats why I hate everything about our fake ai age.

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