Ask HN: Are AI Agents a Lie?
2 David1238 4 5/21/2025, 2:17:15 AM
LLMs awesome. They’ve changed how I code (Cursor), search for things, take notes, brainstorm, write emails, etc. (ChatGPT).
But I don’t use any AI agents. My friends don’t either. I haven’t even heard of any company building AI agents outside of the annoying customer service ones.
By AI agents I mean an LLM that does things in the background without needing constant feedback. Like booking a flight or scheduling a meeting.
The only useful “agentic” quality I’ve seen is basic file or web search to better answer my questions, which doesn’t feel like an agent.
Am I missing something? Why is there so much hype? Am I just understanding agents wrong?
How capable and flexible agents will become and how cost-effective they will be is completely unknown. Cost is going to matter a ton. I'd love to just have an agent that constantly watches dashboards for me powered by o3 but I'd be bankrupt before the end of the day.