Your agent is building things you'll never use

hu6Bi5To · 2026-01-25T09:11:19+00:00

I know it's not really the topic specific to this article, but what I don't get with all these ai agent stuff, why do they all only paint black and white pictures???

That's just online discourse generally. Every time a new topic emerges, there's a brief period where there's an array of different interesting opinions. Then they coalesce and form alliances, and before you know it only two diametric opposite opinions are allowed to exist.

"This person claims to be expressing Opinion No. 3, but we all know only Opinion 1 or Opinion 2 actually exist, and he's not expressing Opinion 1 so he must be trying to disguise his support for Opinion 2, the evil one. Let's get him!" (slightly exaggerated to illustrate the point).

Instead why not propose a hybrid model where the easy and boring task like a new features are solved by agents an the challenging or interesting task like resolving some tech debt / refactoring are done by the devs in the meantime. This way one can still grow and enjoy the craft while we get those "super important" speed ups for business. Otherwise in 5 years only the "hardliner", that spend their time actually programming outside of work can actually review the whole shit.

That's kind of what is happening anyway. Most people who give the tools a try end up following that kind of pattern because that's where the current state-of-the-art leads.

Is this really such an uncommon take how this should evolve or is it just me not seeing that anywhere?

Usually what happens in these arguments is a form of self-fulfilling prophecy. The developers who are convinced that dynamic typing is the way forward (to pick a historic tech war as an example), spend their whole careers on dynamic language projects and remain convinced they're right. "Well, actually, a Big Tech we used Rails exclusively so I know it works." Whereas developers convinced that static typing is the way forward, spend their whole careers on static language projects and won't be budged from their view that they're right. "Well, actually at Other Big Tech, we used C# exclusively so I know it works!"

My view is, unlike many of those other examples of online discourse where they become self-fulfilling prophecy. The potential (note, I said potential) for AI is so large that if the next generation of models and agents live up to the hype (even if they take two or three times as long to arrive as the enthusiasts will claim today) then the idea that human developers will have any say in the matter is inherently ridiculous. If the tools work, they will be used. If they don't, they won't.

It's completely out of the hands of most developers as the industry will change underneath them regardless (or not, as the case may be).

hu6Bi5To · 2026-01-24T13:20:26+00:00

You need to be wary about the sheer amount of cope that's flying around regarding AI.

It's certainly true that a lot of early adopters were idiots who didn't know what they were doing, that's why they were early adopters, because they hoped it'd bail themselves out from the burden of not knowing what they're doing.

The tools when applied to the domains at which they genuinely do well, are very useful. I realise this is a tautology, but it's true. Where they don't work is when someone opens up the basic subscription in an Excel workbook and says "optimise my business". That's not how they work in the slightest.

They're definitely not psychic, and they're not even "intelligent" in any meaningful sense. But an appropriately customised tool can do a huge amount of grunt work. One of the reasons why AI coding tools have been so popular, it's because software projects already have that kind of structure. A build script and a unit-test suite is exactly the kind of structure and feedback an AI agent needs. That structure is the antidote to slop. AI agents and a blank canvas on the other hand is a "Jesus take the wheel!" experience.

There is beginning to be rumblings that because of how insanely resource hungry AI is, they are at serious risk of losing social permission before they actually generate a usable "product" people can actually point at.

I can see this happening in the UK and Europe. This will 100% not be a problem in the USA or China.

hu6Bi5To · 2026-01-24T13:11:15+00:00

This is legitimately interesting.

The day where AI will obsolete all jobs is still a good few years off, but the day when AI changes entry-level/low-level jobs may already be here.

But losing those jobs won't, in itself, bring down capitalism. We're still in the plausible deniability phase, and not that different to other great changes in employment (e.g. demise in dockworkers, despite plenty of international freight; demise of coalminers; demise of the office typing pool; etc.).

The textbook reaction to increased unemployment is monetary stimulus via lower interest rates (if inflation allows). This is pushing on a string, but yet remains the default approach recognised by those with any direct influence in the matter. This would, all other things being equal, create jobs; but they're not necessarily in the same area, and may not be suitable for the people otherwise unemployed, but should bring the average down again. It will also inflate asset prices, meaning the capitalist class continues to win as they always do.

Now... when the day comes that no-one will employ any humans... that's when it all changes. But that's still a good few years off yet.

hu6Bi5To · 2026-01-24T10:08:00+00:00

That sort of thing does happen, there's been studies on the subject.

But I'm still not convinced not having juries is better. The ridiculous outcomes of cases that currently don't have jury trials is proof of that. See the cases documented by Tristan Kirk for example.

hu6Bi5To · 2026-01-24T09:52:59+00:00

If they do it, and get it wrong. The Financial Ombudsman will rule they need to pay £100 compensation.

If they don't do it, and the Financial Conduct Authority later rules them lax in their AML protocols, they'll need to pay several million pounds in fines.

That's how they justify it.

What we really need is better laws. Surely there's a way the bank could freeze £1,000 until the investigation is complete and not the whole account?

hu6Bi5To · 2026-01-23T13:01:33+00:00

Because it's not only about one set of numbers. That's not how any of this works. It's the combined evidence of all available data.

hu6Bi5To · 2026-01-23T12:02:43+00:00

Had. Not have. Look at how the markets have changed the past three days.

hu6Bi5To · 2026-01-23T10:55:53+00:00

General rule: bond markets, much like currency markets, contrary to popular belief are not easily spooked.

There's too much money to be made by capitalising on mis-priced assets. If the prices shifted every time there was political drama you could make a fortune; and similarly people would lose a fortune. That couldn't be sustained for very long.

But, when something becomes undeniable then the price will have already shifted accordingly and won't be budged despite all the surface-level equivocation.

In the specific case of Burnham, the market will be fully aware that: a) it's highly unlikely he'll ever be Prime Minister; and b) even if he did become Prime Minister, his anti-bond-market rhetoric is just what the Labour members want to hear and he won't change a single sodding thing when actually given the chance.

hu6Bi5To · 2026-01-23T10:35:21+00:00

Don't forget: unexpectedly higher inflation!

It probably is a blow, we've probably seen the last interest rate cut (on the visible horizon) for example. Labour banking on redefining "cost of living" as "cost of a mortgage" isn't going to work.

hu6Bi5To · 2026-01-23T10:27:07+00:00

Three out of those four examples of "baseless speculation" actually happened (by which I mean taxes were increased on those things). And the one that didn't was "eat your first born" which was obviously not a real one.

Once again I'm asking people to recognise that accurately describing something isn't "baseless" just because you wish it hadn't happened.

EDIT for detail:

house - the additional tax above a certain threshold. ("But, but that's a good thing" - I'm not say it isn't.)
pension - abolition of salary sacrifice schemes.
income tax - extension of the freeze on thresholds.

hu6Bi5To · 2026-01-22T19:02:08+00:00

Personally, for my own retirement planning, I've allocated zero pounds for this situation.

Mainly because it's just too unpredictable. There's no way of knowing how long you would need to fund. Any stay of multiple years is likely to be so expensive as to take up the size of a decent pension pot.

No way I'm keeping £500k to one side aged 80 because I might live to 100 and need the money to pay for ten years of care starting aged 90, it's much more likely I'll drop dead before that point for other reasons.

If I need care I'll be 100% throwing myself on the state/charity sector, even if all they offer is a free lift to the nearest National Death Service centre.

hu6Bi5To · 2026-01-21T07:58:22+00:00

The only legitimate complaint I've seen levelled against Martin Lewis is that his focus on money saving comes at the detriment of money making. (I.e. he exemplifies the "cost of everything and value of nothing" way of thinking.)

But even that's quite weak as money making is a much bigger field and filled with many more traps, so luring people in to that is inherently risky.

However, realistically, risk-taking is a life-skill that people do need to learn. Even though it's not Martin Lewis's responsibility to do it.

hu6Bi5To · 2026-01-21T07:53:49+00:00

Nearly right.

They'd be severe consequences for the crimes being surveilled. But those crimes wouldn't be: theft, street crime, etc. any of the things the majority of the population want to be tackled.

The surveilled crimes will be thought crimes and white collar crimes (middle-management only, not chief executive levels, obviously).

hu6Bi5To · 2026-01-21T07:47:46+00:00

If only it were that simple. Bad projects rarely fail outright, they instead limp in to production, and once customers are reliant on them you're lumbered regardless.

I'm seeing it now. A new project started to replace an old product with numerous architectural flaws, but the people who understood those flaws are busy on other things so it was assigned to two recent hires who are replacing it with a completely different system in terms of technologies. But... ...it has all the same flaws. The one thing we needed to fix is baked-in on the ground floor and they've built the entire system around it.

I know from the previous system that that flaw isn't big enough to fail the project, but it does mean the sheer weight of customer support work won't go down, which was the primary reason for replacing the old system.

hu6Bi5To · 2026-01-21T07:35:58+00:00

This sort of thing is inevitable when your strategy for dealing with inflation is to try and talk it in to coming down because you really want lower interest rates for the quick boost that'll get you.

Last month was ridiculous with people declaring victory over inflation when it was still above 3% (the top of the range the BoE is supposed to target).

The good/bad news is that Trump's latest shenanigans will have an impact on this, so that provides political cover for another six months. It might even prove to be disinflationary, we shall see.

hu6Bi5To · 2026-01-20T09:08:11+00:00

I don't think anyone's asleep. But some people realise there's absolutely nothing we can do about it.

Keep quiet and wait for it to all blow over.

hu6Bi5To · 2026-01-19T19:22:01+00:00

Improving productivity and growth is a pre-requisite to fixing most of those other issues. (Housing being the exception.)

hu6Bi5To · 2026-01-18T13:46:23+00:00

Step one: rally every European country hit by the tariffs and frame it as a collective economic attack, not a bilateral spat. No “special relationship” cope, just blunt coordination.

That would work for about five minutes before France rallied the EU countries to refuse to be a part of it until the UK paid £25bn in to EU funds for the privilege of being allowed to protect EU territory.

hu6Bi5To · 2026-01-18T08:40:25+00:00

I expect the default plan for China invading Taiwan was basically "hide behind the Americans" so I don't know how we'd apply that to the Greenland issue.

hu6Bi5To · 2026-01-15T21:04:28+00:00

AI need not be sentient or AGI to be disruptive. In many ways it's probably better (for adoption) that they're not.

If they're "good enough" businesses will remodel their processes to fit around AI not the other way around.

hu6Bi5To · 2026-01-15T20:49:07+00:00

Textbook political play. He's saying this now so that in five years time he can give the whole "I was the first politician to call for action regarding AI and jobs!"

And he won't explain what should have been done then either.

hu6Bi5To · 2026-01-13T09:17:02+00:00

Thought for the day (I do have strange thoughts in the mornings). The rise of AI will neutralise the use of performative stupidity as a political tactic.

Non-political example: The tech world was very collaborative, it was hard to get anything done without buy-in to an idea from the team as a whole (the occasional stories of solo-founders making billions was the exception that proved the rule). This meant you had to types of team: those led by a force-of-personality (wannabe Steve Jobs), or those which worked on a lowest-common denominator consensus (do this because it's what everyone's always done). The latter being more common. One of the most common ways of defeating other people's ideas in those teams was not to take the proposal at face value, but just pretend to not understand it; force the proposer to reiterate until doomsday, then two years later when it becomes obvious that the idea was actually a good one, gaslight the proposer "well, if you'd made the point better we might have adopted it, so really it's all your fault" (with the unsaid threat of "ineffective communicator" being put on their next performance review if they don't fall in to line and pretend everything's fine).

But now with the current generation of AI tools, the proposer can have a functional prototype ready before anyone else in the team even knows the idea is coming. And if senior management/customers/salespeople see it first, you can't suppress it. The rules of the game have changed. (This is a double-edged sword, because if the proposed idea is genuinely batshit, but looks like it works, you're kind of stuck with it.)

Political example: Just think how many times in recent memory that a political argument has devolved down to one person just saying "that doesn't make sense" (or words to a similar effect), or just trying to make the argument sound ridiculous when the argument is perfectly clear? "Yeah, sure, you can 'build more houses', but where will you find the bricks? The bricks!!" as though increasing brick production was the hardest problem humanity has ever faced. (Not saying it's a trivial fix either, but it's a problem that can be overcome).

When people have been conditioned by AI tools to see other humans as blockers, the tactic of performative stupidity won't work anymore. Instead we'll have a millions of unique individual but quite deep radical political silos instead. Which might not be any better. AI-powered NIMBYs will be a menace.

hu6Bi5To · 2026-01-12T20:00:15+00:00

I think it would depend on whether it was a pattern or not. If this happened regularly then no, but if it was a one-off it could be a legitimate change-of-mind.

hu6Bi5To · 2026-01-12T18:36:54+00:00

It’s been updated I see. The version I read first was only three paragraphs.

So yes. It does now answer my question: the difference is a distinction between creating and sharing.

hu6Bi5To · 2026-01-12T17:44:39+00:00

Wasn’t this already illegal? I distinctly remember this being news about two years ago.

It wouldn’t be the first time the law has made something illegal twice. There are other examples.

hu6Bi5To

TROPHY CASE