this post was submitted on 17 Nov 2025
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This is a tricky one... if you can define good success/failure criteria, then the randomness coupled with an accurate measure of success, is how "AI" like Alpha Go learns to win games, really really well.
In using AI to build computer programs and systems, if you have good tests for what "success" looks like, you'd rather have a fair amount of randomness in the algorithms trying to make things work because when they don't and they fail, they end up stuck, out of ideas.
To play devils advocate, agentic things wouldn’t necessarily include software development. “Hey siri create me an e-commerce site” isn’t likely to happen for a long while, because like you said it’s a complex thing that doesn’t have clear success measures. But “hey siri get me a restaurant reservation at place, hire a taxi for me to get there, and let Brad know the details” can be broken down into a number of different “simple” things that have simple to define measures of success. Did a reservation get booked? Did we tell Brad the details? etc.
One would hope so, but of course Someone is trying it, and it has gone as poorly as you might imagine.
Yes, but my point is that it’s a completely separate problem. Think of agentics like powershell applets. They generally only do one thing, but you can chain them together to achieve a larger goal.
You’re complaining about single applet, or a specific type of applet, while the topic is applets in general.
Edit: Removing the bit where I think I totally missed your point.
I'm not saying it won't work. It will work.
But it will work because someone clever will fix the inate computer stupidity with hard-coded human cleverness. Again.