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Zuckerberg says AI agent development going slower than expected

reuters.com

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Re: Zuckerberg says AI agent development going slower than expected

#251

Post by Imustaskforhelp »

tffrr wrote: post #237

[flagged]

Although there is a difference in accrual earnings and cash flows. I was wrong with the number provided which although not as big as 1.5B of AI spend, is still a comparatively large number itself.

I have written an more in-depth comment if that interests ya (in a good faith discussion and please be kind to everybody)

also please don't call @kentonv an idiot and please read the HN guidelines[0]: Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Zuckerberg says AI agent development going slower than expected

#252

Post by theturtletalks »

_pdp_ wrote: post #229
kaydub wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies are putting a ton of effort into getting to that point of having agents do the work unsupervised. Whoever gets there first is going to be the winner. I personally don't think it's possible and I haven't written a line of code since Sept 2025. There's an AI psychosis going on right now, especially among the execs or management class, and we all gotta nod our heads in agreement and burn through tokens.

Agents already run unsupervised, and they can code unsupervised too. The real question is what worthwhile work we should point these capabilities at. Nobody has really cracked that yet.

The same worthwhile things we were working on before agents. I’m personally using them to autonomously build open-source Shopify for every vertical. I set out building it before AI, but AI actually makes the dream feel achievable.

Re: Zuckerberg says AI agent development going slower than expected

#253

Post by bigstrat2003 »

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…

Frankly: if you want it to be good and stable, you can't really go any faster than before. The time it takes you to review all the code is no less than it would've to just write it in the first place, because the actual typing things out was never the part which took up time.

Re: Zuckerberg says AI agent development going slower than expected

#254

Post by sealWithIt »

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…

I can similarly output 2-3x more code but everything stalls down to me having to review and integrate in a meaningful way the moment I am the one that has to maintain that code.

It's eerie to observe collaborators output code they don't understand, spend days chatting with Claude instead of reading (like really reading) compiler's output or 3 pages of manual, and how lost and oblivious they look when the AI fixates on solving a different problem than the one they have been tasked.

Re: Zuckerberg says AI agent development going slower than expected

#255

Post by 1eueje »

tjpnz wrote: post #41
alkyon wrote: post #8

I wonder what will be the next big thing for Zuck after metaverse failure and now AI coming to nothing? Perpetual motion machines?

They're going to try to push those stupid glasses next. Not convinced they'll succeed since it's not just the technology problem they need to solve. How do I find PMF for a product which encourages others to physically assault my users, while also not having it banned in various countries? We're talking about a societal shift that would need to happen and nobody's going to trust Meta again where that stuff's concerne…

They’re DOA

Only apple has the trust of its users to pull it off. And apple will make sure they do what they can to keep meta out

Re: Zuckerberg says AI agent development going slower than expected

#256

Post by bigstrat2003 »

paytonjjones wrote: post #133
darth_avocado wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More than that, I think people overestimate how much AI will progress as you throw more compute at it. It’s the “9 women can’t deliver a baby in a month” equivalent of AI. Additional compute won’t magically give you AGI.

Maybe not AGI, but if you look at the differences between, say, GPT-2 and GPT 5.5, it's remarkable how well it works to mostly just throw scale at the problem.

Not really. I didn't use GPT-2, but I don't think there was much difference between we got what out of GPT-3.5 and 5.5. It's still an unreliable tool which will go off the rails the second you aren't watching it like a hawk. It still has zero intelligence or ability to reason as to why its output is flawed. Just throwing more compute hasn't gotten us anything worth using.

Re: Zuckerberg says AI agent development going slower than expected

#257

Post by cuttothechase »

CodingJeebus wrote: post #230
kaydub wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies are putting a ton of effort into getting to that point of having agents do the work unsupervised. Whoever gets there first is going to be the winner. I personally don't think it's possible and I haven't written a line of code since Sept 2025. There's an AI psychosis going on right now, especially among the execs or management class, and we all gotta nod our heads in agreement and burn through tokens.

I don't think it's possible either. DHH pointed out in the most recent episode of Rework that AI removes a lot of the barriers to shipping code, therefore making it possible to build in lots of different directions in ways that was prohibitive to many organizations in the past. But this isn't necessarily a good thing, companies still need to understand what to build in order to ship a cohesive product. AI is great fo…

But that's the nature of the beast isnt it? A probabilistic token predictor will all always have some errors from a human perspective, more and more energy, money and resources will always be needed to control and direct towards desired outcomes.

Re: Zuckerberg says AI agent development going slower than expected

#259

Post by Schiendelman »

theturtletalks wrote: post #252
_pdp_ wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agents already run unsupervised, and they can code unsupervised too. The real question is what worthwhile work we should point these capabilities at. Nobody has really cracked that yet.

The same worthwhile things we were working on before agents. I’m personally using them to autonomously build open-source Shopify for every vertical. I set out building it before AI, but AI actually makes the dream feel achievable.

Have you got booked revenue for any of those verticals, using your system?

Re: Zuckerberg says AI agent development going slower than expected

#260

Post by ehnto »

skybrian wrote: post #185
steveBK123 wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This to me is the big leap from being good at coding to being good at many other tasks. Coding could be treated as a low stakes (time & money consequences for retries) closed loop system where most other tasks cannot. If it screws up booking your flight/hotel room, how does the agent verify this, and even if it verifies.. there is an actual cost to changes/cancellations. Similar with agentic e-commerce, lots of abili…

Seems like to make agents safe we need tentative, reversible transactions. How do you set up a travel plan and then review it? How do you modify it later? Unfortunately, travel keeps getting less flexible, with worse cancelation policies.

Because a lot of things in the real world require forward planning, I don't think everything can be just-in-time and tentative/reversible. Some things have to be committed to else you have real consequences and lose your money.
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