[stub for offtopicness]
Real question: what's the best way to short AI right now?
Just short any of the publicly traded companies with AI based valuations? Nvida, Meta? Seems like an awful idea but I'm often wrong.
The current hype around autonomous agents, and what actually works in production
101–110 of 268 posts
Re: The current hype around autonomous agents, and what actually works in production
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have no idea what agents are for, could be my own ignorance. That said, I have been using LLMs for a while now with great benefit. I did not notice anything missing, and I am not sure what agents bring to the table. Do you know?
An agent is an LLM + a tool call loop - it is quite a step up in terms of value in my experience
Agents are more than that.
Agents, besides tool use, also have memory, can plan work towards a goal, and can, through an iterative process (Reflect - Act), validate if they are on the right track.
Re: The current hype around autonomous agents, and what actually works in production
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
An agent is an LLM + a tool call loop - it is quite a step up in terms of value in my experience
What is the use case? What does it solve exactly, or what practical value does it give you? I am not sure what a tool call loop is.
If it were only tool use, then it would be the same as a lambda function.
Re: The current hype around autonomous agents, and what actually works in production
#104Link 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…
I think in general if everyone is talking about a solution and nobody is talking about problems then it's a sign we're in a bubble. For me the only problem I have is I find typing slow and laborious. I've always said if I could find a way to type less I would take it. That's why I've been using tab completion and refactoring tools etc for years now. So I'm kind of excited about being able to get my thoughts into the…
Maybe you are in a job where it’s not a good use case but there are fields that are handling massive amounts of data or have a huge amount of time waiting for processing data before moving to the next step that I think handing it off to an AI agent to solve then a human puts the pieces together based on its own logic and experiences would work quite nice.
Re: The current hype around autonomous agents, and what actually works in production
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
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That’s a bit reductive and misses the core issue. Of course companies want to reduce headcount or boost productivity, but many are pursuing these initiatives without a clear problem in mind. If the mandate were, say, “we’re building X to reduce customer support staff by 20%,” that would be a different story. Instead, it often feels like solution-first thinking without a clear target. Edit: not even going to reply to…
That is not a goal that can be shared without alienating the current workforce. So you can bet that goal was clearly stated at CXO level, and is being communicated/translated piece wise as let’s find out how much more productive we can get with AI. You’re going to find out about the goal once you reach it.
That is not to say you should work against your company, but bear in mind this is a goal and you should consider where you can add value outside of general code factory productivity and how for example you can become a force multiplier for the company.
Re: The current hype around autonomous agents, and what actually works in production
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
thats good to hear, theyre on their way there! on a personal note, I'm happy to hear that. I've been apprehensive and haven't tried it, purely due to my fear of the cost.
The standard way to use Claude Code is with a constant-cost subscription; one of their standard website accounts. It’s rate-limited but still generous. You can also use API tokens, yes, but that’s 5-10x more expensive. So I wouldn’t.
If API tokens are 10x more expensive doesn’t that imply that the constant-cost subscription is massively subsidized?
Re: The current hype around autonomous agents, and what actually works in production
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
[flagged]
That’s a bit reductive and misses the core issue. Of course companies want to reduce headcount or boost productivity, but many are pursuing these initiatives without a clear problem in mind. If the mandate were, say, “we’re building X to reduce customer support staff by 20%,” that would be a different story. Instead, it often feels like solution-first thinking without a clear target. Edit: not even going to reply to…
yes my organization head at my employer has asked us to submit: "Generative AI Agent" proposals for upcoming planning session. Apparently those ideas will get the big seat at the planning table. I've been trying to think of many ideas but they all end up being some sort of workflow automation that was possible without agent stuff.
Agreed with your annoyance at "they are replacing you" comments. like duh. Thats what they've been doing forever.
Re: The current hype around autonomous agents, and what actually works in production
#108From what I understand customer support chatbots have had some pretty good outcomes from ai agents. Or does that not count?
Re: The current hype around autonomous agents, and what actually works in production
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a good point, but it seems, empirically, that most parts of a standard passenger airplane have reliability approximating 100% in a predefined time window with proper inspection and maintenance, otherwise passenger transit would be impossible. When the system does start to degrade, e.g. because replacement parts and maintenance becomes unavailable or too costly (cf. the use of imported planes by Russian airlin…
It's about what you do with errors. If you let them compound they lead to destruction, if instead you inspect, maintain, reinspect, replace, etc. you can manage them. My point was that something extremely complex, like a plane, works, because the system tries hard to prevent compounding errors.
That works because each plane is (nearly) exactly the same as the one before it and we have exact specifications for the plane.
You can do maintenance, inspections, and replacement because of those specifications.
In software the equivalent of blueprints is code. The room for variation outside software “specifications” is infinite.
Human reliability when comes to assembling planes is also much higher than 99%, and LLM reliability creating code is much, much lower than 99%.
Re: The current hype around autonomous agents, and what actually works in production
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
What is the use case? What does it solve exactly, or what practical value does it give you? I am not sure what a tool call loop is.
An example: I updated a svelte component at work, and while i could test it in the browser and see it worked fine, the existing unit test suddenly started failing. I spent about an hour trying to figure out why the results logged in the test didn't match the results in the browser. I got frustrated, gave in and asked Claude Code, an AI agent. The tool call loop is something like: it reads my code, then looks up the d…
any examples outside of coding agents ?
Even in this example coding agent is short lived . I am curious about continuously running agents that are never done.