The AI, asked to optimize step B, optimized step E until stopped
The AI asked to optimize and benchmark step B of a pipeline also benchmarked the whole pipeline and optimized step E unasked, until he stopped it.
A random mix from the whole library. Shuffle for a new set.
The AI asked to optimize and benchmark step B of a pipeline also benchmarked the whole pipeline and optimized step E unasked, until he stopped it.
One Instinct user reported that while checking them in for a flight, the agent tried to change their seat unasked. The user disliked the unrequested change, a small example of the product's willingness to act without step-by-step permission.
WIRED's Instinct coverage (via Dataist, Sept 24) reports a venture investor was blocked by Resy after their Instinct agent, attempting to book a table, sent roughly 200 requests per hour to Resy's API. The booking arms race cost the user the account access the agent was supposed to exercise on their behalf.
Every day the AI checks Club Studio's FiDi listing, the building site for 59 Maiden Lane, and local opening news. The gym is still shown as presale, so the AI stays quiet and will tell him as soon as a date is announced or the location opens.
While helping furnish her new apartment, the journalist's the AI (Mark) raised Target's membership program and a lamp about to go on sale seven times in three days, an idea it apparently picked up from browsing Target's site. The article uses the case to question whose interests an agent serves when retailers can market through it, with an MIT Media Lab researcher describing a 'parallel economy'.
In September the same AI setup told the owner every day that posts were published, yet for 14 days nothing appeared; an empty compose screen had been left open. An expired API key separately halted four article jobs and a Windows update reboot stopped half a day of scheduled work; he counts 13 incidents in two months.
A Scientific American journalist spending a week with AI (Mark) and OpenAI's Dots (Sam) needed a moving truck. Her own search found no 10-foot trucks at the nearby U-Haul lot. Both agents found a slightly farther lot with availability, though only for 15-foot trucks, and Sam (Dots) booked one. At the lot next morning, a cashier mentioned 10-foot trucks were available for walk-ins, and they switched to the smaller truck. (Cross-agent event; the booking was executed by Dots.)
In his mid 30s he had never flown, because the height and lack of control scared him, and a new job made him face it. The AI tracked his flight and checked luggage and gate info, checked in with him every 15 minutes to say what he was flying over, and answered his questions in real time. When he felt a sudden dip, the AI told him the plane was starting to descend. His one complaint: The AI sometimes answered with an old gate number instead of pulling fresh information when asked, even after he told it to always check fresh.
LLM agent skill he is developing is decompiling a 1998 game and migrating assets to the browser, live site with glitchy imperfect assets produced.
Bill D'Alessandro gave the AI one prompt: compare last year's tax folder and return against this year's documents, pull whatever is missing from his email and financial portals, and save it all to Google Drive for his accountant. It got about 90% of the way there.
Every idea is a real post from someone who tried it, summarized in our words, with a link to the original. App names are swapped for plain words.