Plan a tour search and grocery order with location upfront
Casey Newton used Operator to gather London walking tours and then tried to make a grocery order, which failed because the city was wrong.
- What they did
- Casey Newton gave OpenAI's Operator two separate instructions. For the tour task, it opened TripAdvisor, searched for London walks, and returned several options with links. For the grocery task, they only asked it to help buy food, so it began looking in Des Moines and got stuck because it did not know the right location.
- How it went
- The tour lookup finished in roughly a minute. The grocery run failed, and Newton had to complete it himself; the Instacart items were bananas, seltzer, and raspberries, and finishing them took 15 minutes. Free ChatGPT produced a similar tour list more quickly.
- Tips
- When an agent uses its own browser, spell out the city and store because it may not have your location or account info. Ask it to pause and confirm before checkout.
Try it yourself with Operator
Look up the top [number] [type of tours] in [city] on TripAdvisor for [date range]. Return each option with its rating, length, price, and link. Then help me prepare an Instacart order for [grocery list] to be delivered to [full address in city]. Before you add anything, confirm the delivery city and store with me. Stop before checkout and show the total for approval.
Fill in the [brackets]. Agents can make mistakes, so review anything before it is sent, paid or deleted.
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