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Title: Teach mode, Rabbit's tool for automating R1 tasks, is now available to
all users

Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2024 17:00:36 +0000
Link: https://www.engadget.com/ai/teach-mode-rabbit...

When the Rabbit R1 arrived earlier this year, it was an unfinished product.
EngadgetΓÇÖs own Devindra Hardawar called it ΓÇ£a toy that fails at almost
everything.ΓÇ¥ Most of the features Rabbit promised, including its signature
ΓÇ£large action modelΓÇ¥ (LAM), were either missing at launch or didnΓÇÖt
work as promised. Now, after more 20 software updates since the spring,
Rabbit is releasing its most substantial update yet. Starting today, every R1
user now has beta access to teach mode, a feature that allows you to train
RabbitΓÇÖs AI model to automate tasks for you on any website you can visit
from your computer.

Rabbit CEO and founder Jesse Lyu gave me a demo of teach mode ahead of
todayΓÇÖs announcement. The tool is accessible through the companyΓÇÖs
Rabbithole hub, and features a relatively simple interface for programming
automations. Once logged into your Rabbit account, you navigate to a website
and input your credentials if theyΓÇÖre required to access the service you
want to teach the R1 to use for you. Lyu was quick to note Rabbit wonΓÇÖt
store any username and password you input; instead, the company saves the
cookie from your teach mode session for the R1 to use later. In June, Rabbit
had to move quickly to patch a security issue that could have led to a
serious data breach.

Once youΓÇÖve named your automation and written a description for it, all you
need to do is carry out the task you want to automate as you usually would.
RabbitΓÇÖs software will translate each click and interaction into
instructions the R1 can later carry out on its own. When Lyu demoed teach
mode for me, he taught his R1 to tweet for him.

Once the software has had a chance to analyze a lesson, you can replay the
automation before trying it out on your R1 to ensure it works properly. While
itΓÇÖs technically true you donΓÇÖt need any coding knowledge to use teach
mode, approaching it from a programming perspective is likely to produce
better results. ThatΓÇÖs because you can annotate the steps the software
records you doing when showing it an automation. ItΓÇÖs also useful from a
troubleshooting perspective, as you can see from the video embedded above.

After youΓÇÖve tested your automation, itΓÇÖs just a matter of asking your R1
to complete a query using teach mode. The resulting process isnΓÇÖt exactly
the polished experience I imagine most people have come to expect from their
mobile devices. The R1 announces each step of a task, and it can take a few
moments for the device to work its way through a query. According to Rabbit,
part of that is by design. Early testers found it helpful for the R1 to state
its progress.

IΓÇÖll be honest, itΓÇÖs hard to escape the conclusion that some of the R1
automations Lyu showed me, while creative, donΓÇÖt offer a more efficient way
to do certain tasks than the apps people are already familiar with, a point
he conceded when I said as much during our call.

ΓÇ£There are a lot of tasks that are not a single destination,ΓÇ¥ Lyu said.
To that point, where he believes teach mode will be transformational is in
interactions involving multiple platforms. Lyu gave an example of an R1 user
who taught his device to order groceries. With some work, that person could
use the R1ΓÇÖs camera to take photos of the shopping lists his wife produced,
which the device would then use to order the familyΓÇÖs weekly groceries from
their preferred stores.

Another area where the R1 could provide a better experience than a dedicated
app is in situations where there are competing standards, like the situation
that exists with smart home automation currently. Say youΓÇÖre trying to get
some HomeKit and Google Home devices to work together. You wonΓÇÖt need to
wait for the Matter Alliance to sort things out. With teach mode, the R1 will
navigate that mess for you.

ΓÇ£You need to think about velocity,ΓÇ¥ Lyu tells me before laying out
RabbitΓÇÖs end game with teach mode. For now, R1 users can freely add
community lessons they find on Rabbithole to their devices. Lyu envisions a
future where users will be able to sell their automations, with Rabbit taking
a cut. Moreover, while teach mode is currently limited to navigating
websites, Lyu suggests it will eventually learn to use more complex apps like
Excel. At that point, Lyu contends Rabbit will be in a position to deliver an
artificial general intelligence, one that will understand every piece of
software ever made for humans.

Of course, questions remain. One major one is whether people will pay for
community lessons if they could just as easily replicate an automation on
their own. Here, Rabbit expects things to play out like theyΓÇÖve done on
existing app stores, with most people choosing to download apps they like
instead of making their own. ΓÇ£For the future agent store, we anticipate a
similar situation where any user could teach their own lesson if they want
to, but most people will probably find lessons or agents created by other
users that meet their needs very well,ΓÇ¥ the company told me in an email.

I also asked Rabbit if the company is preparing for the possibility that some
platforms might block people from using teach mode to automate tasks on their
R1. In the companyΓÇÖs view, bot detection systems like CAPTCHA will need to
evolve to differentiate between ΓÇ£good agentsΓÇ¥ like those created by
Rabbit users and malicious bots.

ΓÇ£When a user uses LAM to perform tasks on third-party platforms, they are
logging into their own accounts with their own credentials, and paying those
companies directly for those subscriptions or services,ΓÇ¥ the company added.
ΓÇ£We are just providing a new platform for those transactions to happen,
similar to you can play music on your phone and on your laptop... We do not
see a conflict of interests here.ΓÇ¥

IΓÇÖm not so sure if things will play out as smoothly as Rabbit hopes, but
what is clear is that the company is closer to the future Lyu promised at the
start of the year ΓÇö even if that future still feels years away and may be
decided by another company. For now, Rabbit hopes R1 users embrace teach mode
enthusiastically, as that will allow the software to improve more quickly.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at
https://www.engadget.com/ai/teach-mode-rabbit...
is-now-available-to-all-users-170036677.html?src=rss

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