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It's agentic because it's an iterated loop that relies on tool calls. The conversion of prompt to SVG is (presumably) a pure product of inference. But the raste
by tptacek 1y ago
It's agentic because it's an iterated loop that relies on tool calls. The conversion of prompt to SVG is (presumably) a pure product of inference. But the rasterized SVG that the loop evaluates isn't; it's the product of hardcoded svg->jpg translation code (the model isn't inferring the raster). The loop is thus, in some small way, "grounded" (though not as firmly as a coding agent is grounded in a type-checking compiler's refusal to admit a hallucinated API).
- measurablefunc 1y agoHow does your argument work if I move the rasterization into the Markov chain? Or is your assumption that (SVG, JPG) pairs can never be encoded w/ a neural network?
- tptacek 1y agoIf that was what was actually happening you'd have a point, but it isn't.
- measurablefunc 1y agoThe definitions are not coherent. It's obvious enough to anyone who understands the technical details.
- tptacek 1y agoThe technical definition of an agent is an LLM being called in a loop, some of which calls include tool definitions. That's exactly what this is.
- measurablefunc 1y ago"Effectful loops" or "augmented loops" are much more descriptive of what is actually going on & do not confuse the reader w/ incoherent definitions of "agency".
- tptacek 1y agoSo this whole thread was just you trying to express that you don't like the common accepted definition of the term "agent"?
- measurablefunc 1y agoI prefer coherent definitions instead of corporate marketing. Whether I like the term or not is secondary. Judging by past instances of this same phenomenon I expect the word to lose all meaning as more companies start telling their customers about their "agentic" offerings.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]