"AI" Agents, A Single Point of Failure (with Margaret Mitchell), 2025.03.31

After "AI" stopped meaning anything, the hype salesmen moved on to "AI" "agents", those allegedly indefatigable assistants, allegedly capable of operating your software for you -- whether you need to make a restaurant reservation, book a flight, or book a flight to a restaurant reservation. Hugging Face's Margaret Mitchell joins Emily and Alex to help break down what agents actually are, and what to actually worry about.

References:

PwC launches AI agent operating system to revolutionize AI workflows for enterprises
An Open-Source AI Agent for Doing Tasks on the Web
Scale AI announces multimillion-dollar defense deal, a major step in U.S. military automation

Other references:

Why handing over total control to AI agents would be a huge mistake

Fully Autonomous AI Agents Should Not be Developed

Bender vs. Bubeck: The Great Chatbot Debate: Do LLMs Really Understand?

Democratize art

Fresh AI Hell:

DOGE suggests replacing workers with "AI" (of course)

Vape, or the tamagotchi gets it

• Via @maaikeverbruggen

"AI" for psychotherapy, still bad, still hyped

Biology (not) of LLMs

Mark Cuban's grifty chatbot

• Via @Hypervisible

Palate cleanser: "AI is the letdown"
https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/27/tech/apple-ai-artificial-intelligence/index.html

Comic relief: "Fortified with AI"

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Emily

• Bluesky: emilymbender.bsky.social
• Mastodon: dair-community.social/@EmilyMBender

Alex

• Bluesky: alexhanna.bsky.social
• Mastodon: dair-community.social/@alex
• Twitter: @alexhanna

Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park. 
Production by Ozzy Llinas Goodman.