Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Zuckerberg says AI agent development going slower than expected

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

361–370 of 661 posts

Re: Zuckerberg says AI agent development going slower than expected

#361

Post by weinzierl »

onion2k wrote: post #315
efficax wrote: post #115

I was worried this time last year that by this time this year, companies would have slashed their engineering teams down to a handful and everything would be driven by mostly autonomous agents with human guidance. But it just hasn't happened. Do I write all my code with an agent now? Yes. Can you just give an agent a desired outcome and let it work, unsupervised? Absolutely not. I can produce more code than I used to…

Do I write all my code with an agent now? Yes. Can you just give an agent a desired outcome and let it work, unsupervised? Absolutely not. I strongly suspect that developers moving from writing code to managing agents to write code for them is very similar to developers moving into leadership and management roles and managing ICs to write code for them. Some devs just 'get it' and thrive, leading a team really well a…

"I strongly suspect that developers moving from writing code to managing agents to write code for them is very similar to developers moving into leadership and management roles and managing ICs to write code for them."

I doubt that. Management is mostly dealing with people, the actual "management"* part is not where developers moving into management roles typically fail, it's the people part. With agents you have the management part without the people part.

Re: Zuckerberg says AI agent development going slower than expected

#362

Post by hatefulheart »

Kudos wrote: post #358
hatefulheart wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Friend, you are commenting on a thread where one of the most prominent figures in tech (rightly or wrongly) is saying something did not meet expectations. As far as we can tell this is a man with every incentive to exaggerate and boost these products. In my world, when something is expensive and doesn’t meet expectations it called a failure. Especially when something has been as hyped, scrutinized, defended and attac…

Why are you assuming Zuck's expectations for progress of _his_ product have anything to do with the impact of that category of product for its users?

I’m sorry, what’s the question? Genuinely not sure.

I’ll rephrase, Zuckerberg would certainly enjoy agentic coding to be a wild success because it means less staff and more products he could fail to create.

Re: Zuckerberg says AI agent development going slower than expected

#363

Post by dingaling »

eloisant wrote: post #335
Kevcmk wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't like Zuckerberg at all but Instagram and WhatsApp purchases were _very_ good calls

They spied on their mobile users with the Facebook app to detect Instagram and WhatsApp growth early

By the time FB bought WhatsApp it had nearly a billion users. No need for technology conspiracy nonsense.

Re: Zuckerberg says AI agent development going slower than expected

#364

Post by jstummbillig »

SwellJoe wrote: post #319

Zuckerberg is proof you only need to get really lucky once. He's basically flailed at leading facebook ever since, going all in on monumentally dumb bets and erratically making headcount and project decisions, and still he somehow keeps getting richer.

People who never built a company have the craziest takes on company building, I swear.

Re: Zuckerberg says AI agent development going slower than expected

#365

Post by ulfw »

silisili wrote: post #334
SwellJoe wrote: post #319

Zuckerberg is proof you only need to get really lucky once. He's basically flailed at leading facebook ever since, going all in on monumentally dumb bets and erratically making headcount and project decisions, and still he somehow keeps getting richer.

There was no luck involved, just stealing and legal swindling.

A real proper true American! No wonder he gets along well with Trump

Re: Zuckerberg says AI agent development going slower than expected

#366

Post by lenkite »

Kevcmk wrote: post #329
SwellJoe wrote: post #319

Zuckerberg is proof you only need to get really lucky once. He's basically flailed at leading facebook ever since, going all in on monumentally dumb bets and erratically making headcount and project decisions, and still he somehow keeps getting richer.

I don't like Zuckerberg at all but Instagram and WhatsApp purchases were _very_ good calls

> Instagram and WhatsApp purchases were _very_ good calls

Elementary call when you have the data no-one else has thanks to illicit means and explicitly decided on a buy or bury strategy

Re: Zuckerberg says AI agent development going slower than expected

#367

Post by apsurd »

uniclaude wrote: post #354
SwellJoe wrote: post #319

Zuckerberg is proof you only need to get really lucky once. He's basically flailed at leading facebook ever since, going all in on monumentally dumb bets and erratically making headcount and project decisions, and still he somehow keeps getting richer.

Even if only for how well Instagram and WhatsApp were managed post acquisition, your message doesn’t hold up. Most large tech companies buy late and struggle to integrate the products and teams they acquire without creating massive damage. He didn’t. Twice. I am quite far from a fan of what he brought to the world (privacy nightmares), but to say that he’s a proof you only need to get lucky once is quite far off.

also: face tagging in photos, the fb app platform and the like button pioneered concepts that we take for granted today. also, how product is done internally, growth metrics, all borne from facebook.

The like button is an ingenious and insidious invention. It compelled every other external web property to willingly load fb sdk. It’s mind blowing how effective it is.

I am morally against Facebook, but anyone that says zucky was lucky, as a tech person, likely just sour grapes.

Re: Zuckerberg says AI agent development going slower than expected

#368

Post by eloisius »

ElProlactin wrote: post #340
eloisius wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course I don't know either way. However, I feel like it's going to be different, but maybe not apocalyptic. The market I am building for is photographers, and from what I can gather (and know first hand as a customer) is that there's real discontent with the toolmakers in our ecosystem. It seems like in the quest for every tech company to become a multi-billion dollar empire, they've lost the plot on making hammer…

But even the market for "photographers" is arguably in secular decline. Smartphones and AI have turned everyone into a photographer. The world is awash in visual content.

It's true. Magazines sales are dead. Product photography is probably toast (I'm seeing companies test what they can get away with using AI generated images of their food/products right now). Sports? I don't even follow it but I suspect it's all video content now. Funny enough wedding photography seems to be doing fine as far as a commercial segment goes.

But there are segments of the market that were always small, and AI doesn't threaten. Namely, fine-art and long-term documentary. The kind of work that gets shown as exhibition and sold as prints or photobooks. I can't imagine this stuff be supplanted by generative AI, because it has never been about economic efficiency. It's a labor of love for a photographer to work on a project for years at a time because the subject is important to them. And the customers of these works are not likely to accept lower-cost substitutes produced by a AI. The whole thing is too much about taste and thoroughly infused with humanist ethics. When I buy a photobook, I want to know that the artist lived and produced what I'm seeing, not just that it's pretty ink dots on paper.

From a market analysis perspective it's foolish to cater to these tiny and commercially nonviable artists. However, they have enormous esteem and influence within the community, and make part of their living as educators. I believe making tools that they need, and without blood-sucking cloud subscriptions, you are indirectly marketing to all the creatives (usually tending toward commercial) who attend workshops and see what tools they are running the workshop with.

Re: Zuckerberg says AI agent development going slower than expected

#369

Post by logicchains »

jsemrau wrote: post #217

The last two years have been perfect for accumulating tech debt. 2023 you would have probably implemented your Agents with LangChain and RAG 2025 you'd use MCP and OpenAI/Anthropic Agent SDK. 2027 you will use a workspace frameworks (Amazon, Microsoft) sensor libraries and world models. Agents are a fantastic generational technologies, but in mid-2026 the environment they are operating in is quickly changing. The onl…

>2027 you will use a workspace frameworks (Amazon, Microsoft) sensor libraries and world models.

The only people who'll be using Microsoft for anything AI are those whose employer forces them, like with Teams. All their AI offerings are overwhelmingly inferior for anything code related.

Re: Zuckerberg says AI agent development going slower than expected

#370

Post by Kudos »

hatefulheart wrote: post #362
Kudos wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you assuming Zuck's expectations for progress of _his_ product have anything to do with the impact of that category of product for its users?

I’m sorry, what’s the question? Genuinely not sure. I’ll rephrase, Zuckerberg would certainly enjoy agentic coding to be a wild success because it means less staff and more products he could fail to create.

Again, Zuck's success criteria don't necessarily align with that of others. In fact, I'd expect his success criteria are substantially different to most.
Post reply on HN