Even a16z VCs say no one really knows what an AI agent is

The extending to the point of being meaningless is as old as the technology industry. The top current is “AI agent” and its variants such as “agents”.

Thus, amazingly, No one really knows what the AI ​​agent isThe Even software engineering backgrounds who are one of the premier Venture Capital Ferms work for Andresen Harovits, they fund the Madley AI Startups, which has no agreeable.

Three A 16 Z infrastructure investment partner – Guido Applynezler, Matt Bornstein and Yoko Li – attempted to bring agent’s own definition during the recent Podcast episode “What is the AI ​​agent?”

For the sight, supporters of hot AI companies such as A1 16 Z, OpenAI and Unsfier (Cursor maker), So much on AI opportunities that it is trying to increase a 20 billion dollar megapund for more investment in the sector, sources said Reuters Last month. Returning to September, two more A1 16 Z VC Written by explaining the excitement of the farm Its corporate blog: “We believe each White Caller will have an AI Copilot of the role. Some of these roles will be made completely automatically with AI agents.”

In order to cash in rumors, AI Startup’s “A continuation” describes their products as an agent, Apenezler says.

“The agent that I heard as an agent I heard as an agent was basically a cute prompt at the top of any kind of knowledge base,” said Appointment. This so -called agent takes a question from a man, then brings a “canned” response, such as supporting the IT help desk.

However That made agentsOr Would like to create themDescribed as replacing their human worker.

To do this really, their AI software “should be something near the AGI,” says “Appointment, which means” it needs to continue for a long time “and” it needs to work independently about the problem. “

Yet this national thing is “still not working,” he and Lee said both.

Reality is that this newborn AI agent found technology Have been an amazingly difficult journey to work reliablyJasper Carmichael-Jack, CEO of Artisan, Sales AI Agent, told TechCrunch last month. Carmichael-Jack is hiring people even after promoting his startup viral “Man recruiting people”.

In order to become an AI real human worker replacement, there are significant technical problems for solutions, Such as endless long -term memories (And spent related to it), and Out of the hallucinationsThe Because no organization is an employee – human or artificial – who cannot think of the previous conversation and who is randomly false.

During the podcast, the A16Z trio has landed in a strong definition of what is possible today. As described in Lee, an AI agent is a logical, dynamic decision tree with multi-step LLM.

In other words, he said that an agent is not a bot that only does any work, but it must be able to decide on the task and take action autonomously, such as a list of possibilities from a database, decide which one to email and write emails. Or enter the code and decide where to insert it.

Whether agents could actually replace people in the real future, all three VCE agreed that they could use something like now, just as automation did. However, as it actually increases productivity, more human workers are not less.

Bornstein said he couldn’t imagine a time – giving agents the current status – where people would be unnecessary. The technology industry from “Silicon Valley” can “forget” the technology that most people have jobs for which human creativity and “thoughts” need, he described. To replace people with a bot, “I’m not sure that even theoretically possible,” he said.

Nevertheless, the speech of this national human replacement – often to make marketing/business models and/or pricing – “A major reason for the confusion we are now facing,” Bornstein says.

The uphight is, if the AI ​​agents see the uses of all the cutting edge of the agents if they are skeptical of the bold claims that AI agent agencies are today, it should probably be the rest of us.