4 ms·

Link 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 peopl

Link 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 actually know what they are solving for except everything involves agents. I have yet to see agents solve anything but for some reason this idea that having an agent that you can send anything and everything will solve all problems for the company. LLMs have a ton of interesting applications but agents have yet to grasp me as interesting, I also don’t understand why so many large companies have focused time around it. They are not going to be cracking the code ahead of a commercial tool or open source project. In the time spent toying around with agents there are a lot of interesting applications that could have built, some of which may be technically an agent but without so much focus and effort on trying to solve for all use cases. Edit: after rereading my post wanted to clarify that I do think there is a place for tool call chains and the like but so many folks I have talked to first hand are trying to create something that works for everything and anything.

JKCalhoun 1y ago
Link is working for me — perhaps it was not 30 minutes ago? (Safari, MacOS)
johnisgood 1y ago
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?
- mhog_hn 1y ago
  An agent is an LLM + a tool call loop - it is quite a step up in terms of value in my experience
  - johnisgood 1y ago
    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.
    - ghuntley 1y ago
      > I am not sure what a tool call loop is. See https://ampcode.com/how-to-build-an-agent https://ampcode.com/how-to-build-an-agent
      - holler 1y ago
        that was a great read, thanks! - agentic noob
    - kro 1y ago
      The tools can be an editor/terminal/dev environment, automatically iterating to testing the changes and refining until a finished product, without a human developer, at least that is what some wish of it.
      - johnisgood 1y ago
        Oh, okay, I understand it now, especially with the other comment that said Cursor is one. OK, makes sense. Seems like it "just" reduces friction (quite a lot).
        csande17 1y ago
        Yeah, it's really just a user experience improvement. In particular, it makes AI look a lot better if it can internally retry a bunch of times until it comes up with valid code or whatever, instead of you having to see each error and prompt it to fix it. (Also, sometimes they can do fancy sampling tricks to force the AI to produce a syntactically valid result the first time. Mostly this is just used for simple JSON schemas though.)
- ivape 1y ago
  You are a manual agent to LLMs when you use things like ChatGPT. You go through a workflow loop when you try to investigate and consult with an LLM. Agents are just trying to automate your workflow against an LLM. It's basically just scripting. Scripting these LLMs is where we all want to go, but the context window length is a limiting factor, as well as inferencing on any notable sized window. I'll manage my whiney emotions over the term Agents, but you'll have to hold a gun to my head before I embrace "Agentic", which is a thoroughly stupid word. "Scripted workflow" is what it is, but I know there are some true "visionaries" out there ready to call it "Sentient workflow".
  - johnisgood 1y ago
    Exactly, thank you. What I am doing is definitely manual, it is the old-fashioned prompt-copy-paste-test-repeat cycle, but it has been educational.
  - stavros 1y ago
    I will join you in the fight against "agentic". Ridiculous.
A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 1y ago
<< I also don’t understand why so many large companies have focused time around it. They are not going to be cracking the code ahead of a commercial tool or open source project. I think it is a mix of fomo and the 'upside' potential of being able to minimize ( ideally remove ) the expensive "human component". Note, I am merely trying to portray a specific world model. << In the time spent toying around with agents there are a lot of interesting applications that could have built, some of which may be technically an agent but without so much focus and effort on trying to solve for all use cases. Preaching to the choir man. We just got custom AI tool ( which manages to have all my industry specific restrictions rendering it kinda pointless, low context making it annoying, and slower than normal, because it now has to go through several layers of approval including 'bias' ). At the same time, committee bickers over minute change to a process that has effectively no impact on anything of value. Bonkers.
- dickersnoodle 1y ago
  >I think it is a mix of fomo and the 'upside' potential of being able to minimize ( ideally remove ) the expensive "human component". Note, I am merely trying to portray a specific world model. IOW, it's a case of C-suite "monkey see, monkey do" kicked off by management consultants with crap to sell for very high prices...
globular-toast 1y ago
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 computer more quickly. But having it think for me? That's not a problem I have. Reading and assimilating information? Again, not a problem I have. Too much of this is about trying to apply a solution where there is no problem.
- georgeplusplus 1y ago
  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.
  - apwell23 1y ago
    not quite sure what you are proposing here. what exactly is AI agent solving in this example? I keep hearing vague stuff exactly like your comment at work from management. Its so infuriating.
    - georgeplusplus 1y ago
      For instance cyber security toolsets like mde capture a lot of data. That data is made meaningless unless someone is looking through it, at my org there isn’t enough manpower to do that, so one solution is using an agent to help characterize that network log data into suspicious or what’s worthy of a human to follow up on.
  - satyrun 1y ago
    The HN fallacy that is a large % of the posts on AI "AI is not good for what I do, therefore AI is useless"
wooque 1y ago
[flagged]
- infecto 1y ago
  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 comments below as they continue down a singular path of oh you ought to know what they are trying to do. The only point I was making is orgs are going solution-first without a real problem they are trying to solve and I don’t think that is the right approach.
  - exe34 1y ago
    > “we’re building X to reduce customer support staff by 20%,” I've never understood the "do X to increase/decrease Y by Z%". I remember working at McDonalds and the managers worked themselves up into a frenzy to increase "sale of McSlurry by 10%". All it meant was that they nagged people more and sold less of something else. It's not like people's stomachs got 10% larger.
    - coliveira 1y ago
      The sad part is that companies doing this will very soon figure out that the 20% less staff they "achieved" is only at a cost of 100% increase in development and fees to LLM vendor. Moreover, after a few years these fees will skyrocket because their businesses are now dependent on this technology and unlike people, LLMs are monopolized by just a few robber barons.
  - figassis 1y ago
    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.

JKCalhoun 1y ago

Link is working for me — perhaps it was not 30 minutes ago? (Safari, MacOS)

johnisgood 1y ago

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?

mhog_hn 1y ago
An agent is an LLM + a tool call loop - it is quite a step up in terms of value in my experience
- johnisgood 1y ago
  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.
  - ghuntley 1y ago
    > I am not sure what a tool call loop is. See https://ampcode.com/how-to-build-an-agent https://ampcode.com/how-to-build-an-agent
    - holler 1y ago
      that was a great read, thanks! - agentic noob
  - kro 1y ago
    The tools can be an editor/terminal/dev environment, automatically iterating to testing the changes and refining until a finished product, without a human developer, at least that is what some wish of it.
    - johnisgood 1y ago
      Oh, okay, I understand it now, especially with the other comment that said Cursor is one. OK, makes sense. Seems like it "just" reduces friction (quite a lot).
      - csande17 1y ago
        Yeah, it's really just a user experience improvement. In particular, it makes AI look a lot better if it can internally retry a bunch of times until it comes up with valid code or whatever, instead of you having to see each error and prompt it to fix it. (Also, sometimes they can do fancy sampling tricks to force the AI to produce a syntactically valid result the first time. Mostly this is just used for simple JSON schemas though.)
ivape 1y ago
You are a manual agent to LLMs when you use things like ChatGPT. You go through a workflow loop when you try to investigate and consult with an LLM. Agents are just trying to automate your workflow against an LLM. It's basically just scripting. Scripting these LLMs is where we all want to go, but the context window length is a limiting factor, as well as inferencing on any notable sized window. I'll manage my whiney emotions over the term Agents, but you'll have to hold a gun to my head before I embrace "Agentic", which is a thoroughly stupid word. "Scripted workflow" is what it is, but I know there are some true "visionaries" out there ready to call it "Sentient workflow".
- johnisgood 1y ago
  Exactly, thank you. What I am doing is definitely manual, it is the old-fashioned prompt-copy-paste-test-repeat cycle, but it has been educational.
- stavros 1y ago
  I will join you in the fight against "agentic". Ridiculous.

A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 1y ago

<< I also don’t understand why so many large companies have focused time around it. They are not going to be cracking the code ahead of a commercial tool or open source project. I think it is a mix of fomo and the 'upside' potential of being able to minimize ( ideally remove ) the expensive "human component". Note, I am merely trying to portray a specific world model. << In the time spent toying around with agents there are a lot of interesting applications that could have built, some of which may be technically an agent but without so much focus and effort on trying to solve for all use cases. Preaching to the choir man. We just got custom AI tool ( which manages to have all my industry specific restrictions rendering it kinda pointless, low context making it annoying, and slower than normal, because it now has to go through several layers of approval including 'bias' ). At the same time, committee bickers over minute change to a process that has effectively no impact on anything of value. Bonkers.

dickersnoodle 1y ago
>I think it is a mix of fomo and the 'upside' potential of being able to minimize ( ideally remove ) the expensive "human component". Note, I am merely trying to portray a specific world model. IOW, it's a case of C-suite "monkey see, monkey do" kicked off by management consultants with crap to sell for very high prices...

globular-toast 1y ago

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 computer more quickly. But having it think for me? That's not a problem I have. Reading and assimilating information? Again, not a problem I have. Too much of this is about trying to apply a solution where there is no problem.

georgeplusplus 1y ago
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.
- apwell23 1y ago
  not quite sure what you are proposing here. what exactly is AI agent solving in this example? I keep hearing vague stuff exactly like your comment at work from management. Its so infuriating.
  - georgeplusplus 1y ago
    For instance cyber security toolsets like mde capture a lot of data. That data is made meaningless unless someone is looking through it, at my org there isn’t enough manpower to do that, so one solution is using an agent to help characterize that network log data into suspicious or what’s worthy of a human to follow up on.
- satyrun 1y ago
  The HN fallacy that is a large % of the posts on AI "AI is not good for what I do, therefore AI is useless"

wooque 1y ago

[flagged]

infecto 1y ago
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 comments below as they continue down a singular path of oh you ought to know what they are trying to do. The only point I was making is orgs are going solution-first without a real problem they are trying to solve and I don’t think that is the right approach.
- exe34 1y ago
  > “we’re building X to reduce customer support staff by 20%,” I've never understood the "do X to increase/decrease Y by Z%". I remember working at McDonalds and the managers worked themselves up into a frenzy to increase "sale of McSlurry by 10%". All it meant was that they nagged people more and sold less of something else. It's not like people's stomachs got 10% larger.
  - coliveira 1y ago
    The sad part is that companies doing this will very soon figure out that the 20% less staff they "achieved" is only at a cost of 100% increase in development and fees to LLM vendor. Moreover, after a few years these fees will skyrocket because their businesses are now dependent on this technology and unlike people, LLMs are monopolized by just a few robber barons.
- figassis 1y ago
  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.