Zuckerberg says AI agent development going slower than expected • Hacker News Board

Re: Zuckerberg says AI agent development going slower than expected

#561

Post by ffsm8 » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 2:18 PM UTC

atomicnumber3 wrote: post #199

ffsm8 wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fwiw , you're conflating multiple things and consequently drawing premature conclusions. It can be massively over hyped for it's current capacity and decimate the white collar work. A lot of the difference of opinion is down to their point of view. At my dayjob, LLMs will not live up to anything because the enterprise is not structured to take advantage of it's strength. That's unlikely to change within the foreseeab…

Sure, naturally. And yet parent commenter is remarking that simultaneously no AI-true-believer startups have supplanted the old money, and simultaneously despite much talk the bigcos have not slashed headcount to tiny AI-powered teams.

Hmm, isn't that just down to the fact people always vastly underestimate the amount of work software takes?

It takes a lot of time to successfully deliver a product. Even at the more "extreme" end of expectation - like saying it's a X10 multiplier (I'd disagree on that, it's more like 0.5-3 - depending on the type of work you're working on) you'd still need multiple years to go from first line of code to displacing established players. Things just don't change that fast.

Re: Zuckerberg says AI agent development going slower than expected

#562

Post by HWR_14 » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 2:20 PM UTC

throwaway27448 wrote: post #542

Analemma_ wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say that about several other CEOs too if their fanboys wouldn't jump down my throat about it. Zuckerberg is just universally unpopular enough that you can get away with it

What is a popular CEO? They're generally untrustworthy people.

Steve Jobs was. Elon Musk is.

Outside of tech Warren Buffett seems popular.

Re: Zuckerberg says AI agent development going slower than expected

#563

Post by throwaway27448 » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 2:21 PM UTC

throwawayffffas wrote: post #552

throwaway27448 wrote: post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really wish people would stop using market cap as a standin for value. Investors are incredibly stupid. Meta has actual revenue to point at.

It's a concrete measure of available resources. More so than revenue.

It is precisely the opposite of a concrete measure of anything but investor valuation. Investor valuation (or even just asset value, for that matter) doesn't have much weight when figuring out how seriously to take a CEO's words. Revenue at least has a modicum of signal of competency.

Re: Zuckerberg says AI agent development going slower than expected

#564

Post by 1minusp » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 2:22 PM UTC

andreygrehov wrote: post #476

Who cares what Zuckerberg says about AI agents? He is a PHP developer from the early '00s who got lucky with Facebook. He's not an AI scientist or an AI researcher. What authority does he have to speak on the future of AI agents? Morale at his company is at an ATL, and that says more about his leadership skills he'd better off focusing on, otherwise the agents might replace him soon.

Even if zero net new insight, he has access to information on most things, not just AI, that the layperson might never have, even in the future. Not intended as praise at all (i'd say this is true for a lot of C-level in a lot of big companies).

Re: Zuckerberg says AI agent development going slower than expected

#565

Post by davidpapermill » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 2:23 PM UTC

andrewaylett wrote: post #424

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…

The thing is: I could produce 2-3 times as much code as before _without_ an LLM, if I didn't care about my colleagues' ability to review my output properly. Lines of code are a liability, not an asset. You want as few of them as you can get away with, without compromising the actual asset: the functionality. A huge part of the job of Software Engineering is producing the right amount of code at the right time.

> A huge part of the job of Software Engineering is producing the right amount of code at the right time.

I'd go further and say that usually the goal is to use as little code as possible without sacrificing readability.

Brevity is compression, and compression surfaces the salient points of a problem.

Elegance often comes down to brevity.

Re: Zuckerberg says AI agent development going slower than expected

#566

Post by dominotw » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 2:24 PM UTC

andreygrehov wrote: post #476

Who cares what Zuckerberg says about AI agents? He is a PHP developer from the early '00s who got lucky with Facebook. He's not an AI scientist or an AI researcher. What authority does he have to speak on the future of AI agents? Morale at his company is at an ATL, and that says more about his leadership skills he'd better off focusing on, otherwise the agents might replace him soon.

unlike sam altman who basically invented the transfomer

Re: Zuckerberg says AI agent development going slower than expected

#567

Post by dominotw » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 2:25 PM UTC

owebmaster wrote: post #544

cafebabbe wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question, is there a single successful large investment made by Meta recently ? I just know about the abject failures :)

Meta Glasses might be the next big thing.

glasses maybe but not meta glasses. Its not like meta has some patent on it.

Re: Zuckerberg says AI agent development going slower than expected

#568

Post by rogerrogerr » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 2:28 PM UTC

Toutouxc wrote: post #433

rogerrogerr wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can have a separate LLM as a brutal enforcer of an architecture decision. Works pretty well in the right harness.

Wider architectural guidelines, yes. "How a senior developer in this company would do it" — not so much.

That’s what code review is still for.

Re: Zuckerberg says AI agent development going slower than expected

#569

Post by ezoe » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 2:30 PM UTC

everdrive wrote: post #484

andreygrehov wrote: post #476

Who cares what Zuckerberg says about AI agents? He is a PHP developer from the early '00s who got lucky with Facebook. He's not an AI scientist or an AI researcher. What authority does he have to speak on the future of AI agents? Morale at his company is at an ATL, and that says more about his leadership skills he'd better off focusing on, otherwise the agents might replace him soon.

I don't like Zuckerberg whatsoever, but there are plenty of reasons you could potentially care about his opinion: - He could be well-placed to see whether AI agent development is successful since at a high level he oversees much of it, and will be getting detailed metrics and things. - Whether or not his opinion is correct, tech CEOs are notorious trend-chasers, and his opinion could set the tone for other companies.…

Being a CEO of a large corporation doesn't guarantee you the latest tech insight. You will be easily surrounded by yes men who speak what you wanted to hear.

Re: Zuckerberg says AI agent development going slower than expected

#570

Post by everdrive » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 2:31 PM UTC

ezoe wrote: post #569

everdrive wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't like Zuckerberg whatsoever, but there are plenty of reasons you could potentially care about his opinion: - He could be well-placed to see whether AI agent development is successful since at a high level he oversees much of it, and will be getting detailed metrics and things. - Whether or not his opinion is correct, tech CEOs are notorious trend-chasers, and his opinion could set the tone for other companies.…

Being a CEO of a large corporation doesn't guarantee you the latest tech insight. You will be easily surrounded by yes men who speak what you wanted to hear.

Agreed, all I'm saying is that his perception of the tech -- whether correct or incorrect could potentially either be trend-setting, or could be indicative of trends already in motion.