David GerardNov 10

The key weakness in AI agents is that they're a lie. They don't work. They just don't fuckin' work. You can't set a hallucination engine to work doing tasks. It's pants on head stupid. The hype pretends this isn't the case and hypothesises a fabulous future where they work *at all*. This is a lie.

A useful model for "AI agents" is that they're the current excuse meme for AI. They're not a thing that works at all, now or in the fabulous future. But they're *such* good material for hypecrafting. No sausage at all, but *my god* that sizzle.

Show threadgigantosNov 10

@davidgerard I don’t know what you base this on. It most definitely work for some things, at least some of the time.

For example, someone I know needed to do some stuff with an Arduino to make it show a pretty wave pattern using unevenly distributed led lights. This person was a crafter, not a coder. However, by oploading a hand drawn picture of where the leds where placed it generated a web based simulator with sliders to tweak parameters. Then, when he was happy with the result after tuning the sliders, it generated code for the arduino that compiled and ran perfectly. First try.

It might have been an incredible amount of luck, but this non-technical person got his art project to work without needing to learn anything about code.

Show threadAvnerNov 10
@gigantos @davidgerard "works for some things, at least some of the times" is NOT the way these LLM tools are being pitched. I think there would be much less of a backlash if OpenAI and co were like "hey, here's an occasionally useful tool for generating text and here are the use cases it's actually good at," rather than "fire all your employees and replace them with AI, who cares if it's fit for purpose!"
Show threadDavid Gerard

@Avner @gigantos "i can use the radioactive anthrax bomb that was specifically funded and constructed as a weapon of mass destruction as a hammer" is also an unconvincing argument, though drive-bys keep not having any other argument

note how in this case it's not even the drive-by himself, it's an anecdote about someone else who allegedly had success at using the radioactive anthrax bomb as a hammer

and not in a way that has any relevance to "AI Agents" either, so it's just a driveby promptfondler pasting a random excuse

Nov 10 at 1:52pmWeb
Show threadgigantosNov 10
@davidgerard @Avner so now a long time follower of you is a drive by. Thanks for that.
Show threadDavid Fleetwood - RG AdminNov 10

@gigantos @davidgerard @Avner I mean, your story kind of discredits itself. Maybe it happened, maybe it didn't but a useful tool is one where you know when it will succeed or fail. Someone randomly having it work out does not change the calculus, stuck clocks are right twice a day after all.

Useful tools are ones where you can know when, where and how to apply them to get consistently useful results. LLMs cannot pass that most basic of tests.

Show threadAnthonyNov 10
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AI: It most definitely works for some things some of the time; or, 60% of the time it works every time