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> doesn't change the fact that it's software that requires human interaction to work. Have you ever seen Claude Code launch a subagent? You've used it, right?
by ctoth 5mo ago
> doesn't change the fact that it's software that requires human interaction to work.
Have you ever seen Claude Code launch a subagent? You've used it, right? You've seen it launch a subagent to do work? You understand that that is, in fact, Claude Code running itself, right?
- fnoef 5mo agoMy Linux server runs a cron job, that can spin off a thread and even use other ~apps~ tools. Did I invent AGI?
- ctoth 5mo agoDoes your Linux server decide what processes it should launch at what time with a theory of what will happen next in order to complete a goal you specified in natural language? If so yes, I reckon you sure have!
- balls187 5mo agoClaude does not have a "theory" of anything, and I'd argue applying that mental model to LLM+Tools is a major reason why Claude can delete a production database.
- Jtarii 5mo agoWell, humans also routinely accidentely delete production databases. I think at this point arguing that LLMs are just clueless automatons that have no idea what they are doing is a losing battle.
- californical 5mo agoI mean maybe it’s a losing battle today, but it is correct. So in a few years when the dust settles, we’ll probably all be using LLMs as clueless automatons that still do useful work as tools
- timacles 5mo agoThey’re not clueless they just don’t have a memory and they don’t have judgement. They create the illusion of being able to make decisions but they are always just following a simple template.They do not consider nuance, they cannot judge between two difficult options in a real sense. Which is why they can delete prod databases and why they cannot do expert level work
- Jtarii 5mo ago>they cannot do expert level work Well this is just factually incorrect considering they are currently on par with grad students in some areas of mathematics.
- timacles 5mo agoNot sure if you are being pedantic but mathematics is quite different from other fields because it is highly structured, reasoning is explicit and it contains a dense volume of high level training data. Results are able to be verified easily due to its structure. Even then, they are most effective in assisting and are not able to produce results independently. If you have proof otherwise I would love to read up on it
- liquid_thyme 5mo agoI like to think of LLMs as idiot savants. Exceptional at certain tasks, but might also eat the table cloth if you stop paying attention at the wrong time. With humans, you can kind of interview/select for a more normalized distribution of outcomes, with outliers being less probable, but not impossible.
- freejazz 5mo agoWhen you're applying reasoning like this, sure, why not? What difference would it make?
- parliament32 5mo agoSo... systemd is AGI now?
- recursive 5mo agoMaybe. But probably not. It doesn't matter if it's AGI though. If those other apps and tools do simple things that are predictable, then we can be pretty sure what will happen. If those tools can modify their own configuration and create new cron jobs, it becomes much harder to say anything about what will happen.
- munk-a 5mo agoMost of us work on software that can modify its own configuration and create new jobs. I, too, have worked in ansible and terraform. The key break here is the lack of predictability and I think it's important that we don't get too starry eyed and accept that that might be a weakness - not a strength.
- ahoka 5mo agoWell do you make 100 billion bucks with it? If no, then not AGI.
- echelon 5mo agoAll AI requires steering as the results begin to decohere and self-enshittify over time. AI in the hands of an expert operator is an exoskeleton. AI left alone is a stooge. Nobody has built an all-AI operator capable of self-direction and choices superior to a human expert. When that happens, you'd better have your debts paid and bunker stocked. We haven't seen any signs of this yet. I'm totally open to the idea of that happening in the short term (within 5 years), but I'm pessimistic it'll happen so quickly. It seems as though there are major missing pieces of the puzzle. For now, AI is an exoskeleton. If you don't know how to pilot it, or if you turn the autopilot on and leave it alone, you're creating a mess. This is still an AI maximalist perspective. One expert with AI tools can outperform multiple experts without AI assistance. It's just got a much longer time horizon on us being wholly replaced.
- simonw 5mo agoI don't think subagents are representative of anything particularly interesting on the "agents can run themselves" front. They're tool calls. Claude Code provides a tool that lets the model say effectively: run_in_subagent("Figure out where JWTs are created and report back") The current frontier models are all capable of "prompting themselves" in this way, but it's really just a parlor trick to help avoid burning more tokens in the top context window. It's a really useful parlor trick, but I don't think it tells us anything profound.
- ctoth 5mo agoThe mechanism being simple is the interesting part. If one large complex goal can be split into subgoals and the subgoals completed without you, then you need a lot fewer humans to do a lot more work. The OP says AI requires human interaction to work. This simply isn't true. You know yourself that as agents get more reliable you can delegate more to them, including having them launch more subagents, thereby getting more work done, with fewer and fewer humans. The unlock is the Task tool, but the power comes from the smarter and smarter models actually being able to delegate hierarchical tasks well!
- otabdeveloper4 5mo agoYou misunderstand. The only reason to launch subagents is to avoid poisoning the LLM's already small context window with unrelated tokens. It doesn't make the LLM smarter or more capable.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- suttontom 5mo agoWtf? A sub-agent is a tool you give an agent and say "If you need to analyze logs delegate to the logs_viewer agent" so that the context window doesn't fill up with hundreds of thousands of tokens unnecessarily. In what universe do you live in where that mechanism somehow means you need fewer humans? Do you think this means "Build a car" can be accomplished just because an LLM can send a prompt to another LLM who reports back a response?
- DeathArrow 5mo agoA one liner shell script can run itself.
- recursive 5mo agoOne liner shell scripts can be analyzed. Some of them can be determined to not delete the production database. The others will not be executed.
- islandfox100 5mo agoSubstance aside, I feel this comment is combative enough to be considered unhelpful. Patronizing and talking down to others convinces no one and only serves as a temporary source of emotional catharsis and a less temporary source of reputational damage.
- boh 5mo agoYou're using it and if someone else was using it the output would be different. The point is really that simple.
- xboxnolifes 5mo agoMy claude has never yet launched itself from my terminal, gave itself a prompt, and then got to work. It has only ever spawned a sub-agent after I had given it a prompt. It was inert until a human got involved. If that is software running itself, then an if statement that spawns a process conditionally is running itself.