Our browsing environment does not allow full web access, but allows the model to send queries to the Microsoft Bing Web Search API and follow links that already exist on the web, which can have side-effects.
What they mean by following is, specifically, only allowing HTTP GET/HEAD requests, rather than PUT/POST/DELETE etc. According to the standards, a GET is supposed to be free of (observable) side-effects and never have consequences worse than wasting bandwidth. In practice, on many websites, a GET will do all sorts of stuff, as I’ve learned the hard way, and is one reason that browsers no longer prefetch links aggressively (too many cases of users logging themselves out, deleting files, banning people etc).
Note that while WebGPT had live Internet access, DeepMind’s competing work is even more alarming from a tool-AIs-want-to-be-agent-AIs perspective.
I think we have a core lesson here. Anybody who talks about boxing should just acknowledge that the kind of organizations that would actually develop AGI don’t engage in such activities.
That would force them to admit that tool AIs want to be agent AIs and boxing was always irrelevant. (True AI boxing, comrade, has just never been tried!)
Yes:
What they mean by following is, specifically, only allowing HTTP GET/HEAD requests, rather than PUT/POST/DELETE etc. According to the standards, a GET is supposed to be free of (observable) side-effects and never have consequences worse than wasting bandwidth. In practice, on many websites, a GET will do all sorts of stuff, as I’ve learned the hard way, and is one reason that browsers no longer prefetch links aggressively (too many cases of users logging themselves out, deleting files, banning people etc).
Note that while WebGPT had live Internet access, DeepMind’s competing work is even more alarming from a tool-AIs-want-to-be-agent-AIs perspective.
I think we have a core lesson here. Anybody who talks about boxing should just acknowledge that the kind of organizations that would actually develop AGI don’t engage in such activities.
That would force them to admit that tool AIs want to be agent AIs and boxing was always irrelevant. (True AI boxing, comrade, has just never been tried!)