> Each new interaction requires processing ALL previous context I was under the impression that some kind of caching mechanism existed to mitigate this
Compact the conversation (CC)
The current hype around autonomous agents, and what actually works in production
41–50 of 268 posts
Re: The current hype around autonomous agents, and what actually works in production
#42[stub for offtopicness]
2015? The title should be 2025.
Re: The current hype around autonomous agents, and what actually works in production
#43[stub for offtopicness]
2015? Title is correct, this is a typo
Re: The current hype around autonomous agents, and what actually works in production
#44> Production systems need 99.9%+ reliability This is not remotely true. Think of any business process around your company. 99.9% availability would mean only 1min26 per day allowed for instability/errors/downtime. Surely your human collaborators aren't hitting this SLA. A single coffee break immediately breaks this (per collaborator!). Business Process Automation via AI doesn't need to be perfect. It simply needs to…
Alot of deterministic systems externalize their edge cases to the user. The software design doesn’t fully match the reality of how it gets used. Ai can be far more flexible in the face of dynamic and variable requirements.
Re: The current hype around autonomous agents, and what actually works in production
#45Re: The current hype around autonomous agents, and what actually works in production
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
Don't tell management about this, as they're all betting the house on AI agents next year.
Only one of these outcomes will be correct, so worth putting money on it if you think they're wrong a la The Big Short.
Not OP, but I've been thinking about this and concluded it's not quite so clear-cut. If I was going to go down this path, I think I would bet on competitors, rather than against incumbents.
My thinking: In a financial system collapse (a la The Big Short), the assets under analysis are themselves the things of value. Whereas betting on AI to collapse a technology business is at least one step removed from actual valuation, even assuming:
1. AI Agents do deliver just enough, and stay around long enough, for big corporations to lay off large number of employees
2. After doing so, AI quickly becomes prohibitively expensive for the business
3. The combination of the above factors tank business productivity
In the event of a perfect black swan, the trouble is that it's not actually clear that this combination of factors would result in concrete valuation drops. The business just "doesn't ship as much" or "ships more slowly". This is bad, but it's only really bad if you have competitors that can genuinely capitalise on that stall.
An example immediately on-hand: for non-AI reasons, the latest rumors are that Apple's next round of Macbook Pros will be delayed. This sucks. But isn't particularly damaging to the company's stock price because there isn't really a competitor in the market that can capitalise on that delay in a meaningful way.
Similarly, I couldn't really tell you what the most recent non-AI software features shipped by Netflix or Facebook or X actually were. How would I know if they're struggling internally and have stopped shipping features because AI is too expensive and all their devs were laid off?
I guess if you're looking for a severe black swan to bet against AI Agents in general, you'd need to find a company that was so entrenched and so completely committed to and dependent on AI that they could not financially survive a shock like that AND they're in a space where competitors will immediately seize advantage.
Don't get me wrong though, even if there's no opportunity to actually bet against that situation, it will still suck for literally everyone if it eventuates.
Re: The current hype around autonomous agents, and what actually works in production
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Hard truth" and "reality check" in the same post is dead giveaway. I read and generate hundreds of posts every month. I have to read books on writing to keep myself sane and not sound like an AI.
Absolutely! And you're right to think that. Here's why...
Applogies! You're exactly right, here's how this spans out…
Re: The current hype around autonomous agents, and what actually works in production
#48> Production systems need 99.9%+ reliability This is not remotely true. Think of any business process around your company. 99.9% availability would mean only 1min26 per day allowed for instability/errors/downtime. Surely your human collaborators aren't hitting this SLA. A single coffee break immediately breaks this (per collaborator!). Business Process Automation via AI doesn't need to be perfect. It simply needs to…
It's not just about up time. If the bridge collapses people die. Some of us aren't selling ads.
If "the bridge collapses and people die" because the team has a 1min26 "downtime" on a specific day, which is what you are arguing, then you have much bigger problems to solve than the performance of AI agents.
Re: The current hype around autonomous agents, and what actually works in production
#49Link does not work for me but as someone who does a lot of work with LLMs I am also betting against agents. Agents have captivated the minds of groups of people in each large engineering org. I have no idea what their goal is other then they work on “GenAI”. For over a year now they have been working on agents with the promise that the next framework that MSFT or Alphabet publishes will solve their woes. They don’t a…
Link is working for me — perhaps it was not 30 minutes ago? (Safari, MacOS)
Re: The current hype around autonomous agents, and what actually works in production
#50[stub for offtopicness]
This is obviously AI generated, if that matters. And I have an AI workflow that generates much better posts than this.
The thing that sucks about it is maybe his english is bad (not his native language) so he relies on LLM output for his posts. Im inclined to cut people slack for this. But the rub is that it is indistinguishable from spam/slop generated for marketing/ads/whatever.
Or it's possible that he is one of those people that _realy_ adopted LLMs into _all_ their workflow, I guess, and he thinks the output is good enough as is, because it captured his general points?
LLMs have certainly damaged trust in general internet reading now, that's for sure.