Agentic AI, is it worth the hype? What is working and what is not?
Comments
ben_w•4mo ago
That depends if you're asking as an investor, or if you're asking as someone who wants to use the tools.
If you want to use the tools, and you don't mind that they're behaving like someone who has only recently graduated and therefore still needs a lot of handholding (i.e. not actually "agentic") for anything above junior-grade, they are absolutely worth it, being much cheaper than any human anywhere in the world.
But the limit is they act like juniors, and will say "yes certainly" in a naïve-looking or fawning fashion to social-engineering-pattern attacks. You can replace juniors, but only juniors.
If you want investment advice: it's a massive bubble, and there's no obvious way for any company to make money by selling these capabilities because (1) there's no monopoly on supply so they're fighing on who can have the lowest profit margin, and (2) even without that, we're not very many years away from fancy models running on (normal) local hardware.
zerosizedweasle•4mo ago
It's a massive bubble. The technology will eventually pay off, but it doesn't mean the most of the current companies caught up in it will be around to have the payoff. There was a lot of pain in tech economy between 2001 and 2010. People forget about it, but that's also what happens after speculative mania.
conartist6•4mo ago
No. It will make you think you're blazing a trail somewhere new and exciting with great speed, but really you'll just be following and copying from others and losing your perspective and ability to think critically.
What works is people. Learning, building communities, relationships. Invest in yourself and you can't go wrong
ben_w•4mo ago
If you want to use the tools, and you don't mind that they're behaving like someone who has only recently graduated and therefore still needs a lot of handholding (i.e. not actually "agentic") for anything above junior-grade, they are absolutely worth it, being much cheaper than any human anywhere in the world.
But the limit is they act like juniors, and will say "yes certainly" in a naïve-looking or fawning fashion to social-engineering-pattern attacks. You can replace juniors, but only juniors.
If you want investment advice: it's a massive bubble, and there's no obvious way for any company to make money by selling these capabilities because (1) there's no monopoly on supply so they're fighing on who can have the lowest profit margin, and (2) even without that, we're not very many years away from fancy models running on (normal) local hardware.