"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 (huggingface.co/meg) 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 (bit.ly/4luVuHX)
An Open-Source AI Agent for Doing Tasks on the Web (hai.stanford.edu/news/an-open-source-ai-agent-…)
Scale AI announces multimillion-dollar defense deal, a major step in U.S. military automation (cnbc.com/2025/03/05/scale-ai-announces-multimi…)
Other references:
Why handing over total control to AI agents would be a huge mistake (technologyreview.com/2025/03/24/1113647/why-ha…)
Fully Autonomous AI Agents Should Not be Developed (arxiv.org/abs/2502.02649)
Bender vs. Bubeck: The Great Chatbot Debate: Do LLMs Really Understand? (youtube.com/watch?v=YtIQVaSS5Pg)
Democratize art (bsky.app/profile/alepresser.com/post/3llocpwki…)
Fresh AI Hell:
DOGE suggests replacing workers with "AI" (of course) (forbes.com/sites/jasonwingard/2025/03/10/musk-…)
Vape, or the tamagotchi gets it (futurism.com/vape-tamagotchi)
• Via @maaikeverbruggen (bsky.app/profile/maaikeverbruggen.bsky.social/…)
"AI" for psychotherapy, still bad, still hyped (linkedin.com/posts/kasper-benjamin-reimer-bj%C…)
Biology (not) of LLMs (linkedin.com/posts/salathe_ive-only-skimmed-th…)
Mark Cuban's grifty chatbot (fortune.com/2025/03/26/billionaire-mark-cuban-…)
• Via @Hypervisible (bsky.app/profile/hypervisible.bsky.social/post…)
Palate cleanser: "AI is the letdown"
cnn.com/2025/03/27/tech/apple-ai-artificial-in…
Comic relief: "Fortified with AI" (bsky.app/profile/grandeped.bsky.social/post/3l…)
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Alex
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Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park (naomipleasurepark.com).
Production by Ozzy Llinas Goodman.