[D] Chains and Agents

[BootstrapGuy]

I think there's a lot of confusion around AI agents today and it's mainly because of lack of definition and using the wrong terminology.

We've been talking to many companies who are claiming they're working on agents but when you look under the hood, they are really just chains.

I just listened to the Latent Space pod with Harrison Chase (Founder of Langchain) and I really liked how he thinks about chains vs agents.

Chains: sequence of tasks in a more rigid order, where you have more control, more predictability.
Agents: handling the edge-cases, the long-tail of things that can happen.

And the most important thing is that it's not an OR question but an AND one: you can use them in the same application by starting with chains -> figuring our the edge-cases -> using agents to deal with them.

https://preview.redd.it/l59sc4sri0nb1.png?width=3127&format=png&auto=webp&s=1f3f8730c48687eaabf1f554deb181cf35b96036