←back to thread

What to build instead of AI agents

(decodingml.substack.com)
233 points giuliomagnifico | 1 comments | 03 Jul 25 00:02 UTC | HN request time: 0.495s | source
Show context
mindwok ◴[03 Jul 25 01:06 UTC] No.44450569[source]▶
I'm not yet convinced (though I remain open to the idea) that AI agents are going to be a widely adopted pattern in the way people on LinkedIn suggest.

The way I use AI today is by keeping a pretty tight leash on it, a la Claude Code and Cursor. Not because the models aren't good enough, but because I like to weigh in frequently to provide taste and direction. Giving the AI more agency isn't necessarily desirable, because I want to provide that taste.

Maybe that'll change as I do more and new ergonomics reveal themselves, but right now I don't really want AI that's too agentic. Otherwise, I kind of lose connection to it.

replies(3): >>44450601 #>>44450841 #>>44451530 #
thimabi ◴[03 Jul 25 01:11 UTC] No.44450601[source]▶
Do you think that, over time, knowing how the models behave, simply providing more/better context and instructions can fill this gap of wanting to provide taste and direction to the models’ outputs and actions?

My experience is that, for many workflows, well-done “prompt engineering” is more than enough to make AI models behave more like we’d like without constantly needing us to weight in.

replies(4): >>44450627 #>>44450642 #>>44451992 #>>44452051 #
troupo ◴[03 Jul 25 05:55 UTC] No.44452051[source]▶
> knowing how the models behave, simply providing more/better context and instructions can fill this gap

No.

--- start quote ---

prompt engineering is nothing but an attempt to reverse-engineer a non-deterministic black box for which any of the parameters below are unknown:

- training set

- weights

- constraints on the model

- layers between you and the model that transform both your input and the model's output that can change at any time

- availability of compute for your specific query

- and definitely some more details I haven't thought of

https://dmitriid.com/prompting-llms-is-not-engineering

--- end quote ---

replies(2): >>44453280 #>>44453872 #
1. A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 ◴[03 Jul 25 11:24 UTC] No.44453872[source]▶
I think you are being unfairly downvoted as you raise a valid point. The real question is whether 'prompt engineering' has an edge over 'human resource management' ( as this is the obvious end goal here ). At this time, the answer is relatively simple, but I am not certain it will remain so.