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Small language models are the future of agentic AI

(arxiv.org)
112 points favoboa | 2 comments | 01 Jul 25 03:33 UTC | HN request time: 0.511s | source
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bryant ◴[01 Jul 25 06:27 UTC] No.44431158[source]▶
A few weeks ago, I processed a product refund with Amazon via agent. It was simple, straightforward, and surprisingly obvious that it was backed by a language model based on how it responded to my frustration about it asking tons of questions. But in the end, it processed my refund without ever connecting me with a human being.

I don't know whether Amazon relies on LLMs or SLMs for this and for similar interactions, but it makes tons of financial sense to use SLMs for narrowly scoped agents. In use cases like customer service, the intelligence behind LLMs is all wasted on the task the agents are trained for.

Wouldn't surprise me if down the road we start suggesting role-specific SLMs rather than general LLMs as both an ethics- and security-risk mitigation too.

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automatic6131 ◴[01 Jul 25 08:42 UTC] No.44431884[source]▶
You can (used to?) get a refund on Amazon with normal CRUD app flow. Putting an SLM and a conversational interface over it is a backwards step.
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1. oblio ◴[01 Jul 25 10:24 UTC] No.44432408[source]▶
From our perspective as users. From the company's perspective? Net positive, they don't need to hire people.

We're going to be so messed up in a decade or so when only 10-20-30% of the population is employable in decent jobs.

People keep harping on about people moving on with their lives, but people don't. Many industrial heartlands in the developed world are wastelands compared to what they were: Walloonia in Belgium, Scotland in the UK, the Rust Belt in the US.

People don't really move on, they suffer, sometimes for generations.

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2. thatjoeoverthr ◴[01 Jul 25 10:42 UTC] No.44432502[source]▶
A CRUD flow is the actual automation, which was already digested into the economy by 2005 or so. PHP is not a guy in the back who types HTML really fast when you click a button :)

The LLM, here, is the opposite; additional human labor to build the integrations, additional capital for chips, heavy cost of inference, an additional skeuomorphic UI (it self identifies as a chat/texting situation) and your wasted time. I would almost call it "make work".