by NewUser76312 on 4/8/25, 3:56 PM with 13 comments
It got me thinking, are these AI Agents actually useful or valuable to anyone?
I'm fairly technical and I use AI to generate code to make POC projects go faster. I'm not on board with blindly 'vibe coding' though, I think it's dangerous and potentially slower when you get screwed over later trying to fix a large project. I think from other discussions, many on HN are in a similar boat as me - that is, using AI for code generation is certainly valuable, but having an 'agent' just 'work' for you probably isn't.
But anyways, research and outreach, how about those, anyone finding use for these use cases? I've seen a ton of criticism on these deep research products. They seem akin to summarizing the first page of links of a google search, and they're full of sources you'd want to ignore anyways for serious research (e.g. reddit posts). So I'm dubious as to their quality.
Another theme that I think could be useful is using LLMs as advanced/easier RPA tools. Basically, think RPA with some flexibility based on different contexts that can be captured via text. Maybe this is what this 'MCP' hype is all about.
So I'm very curious, who's using what would count as 'AI Agents' (i.e. something more than text chat/prompts), and getting real value from them?
by muzani on 4/9/25, 2:56 AM
Over the weekend, I made a game. It's heavily dialogue based. I wanted a screen and game content that centers around this gameplay. It's not a classic VN, more customized like Ace Attorney.
It's a free game so I need an intro that hooks people in the first 30 seconds. What examples are good for this? Since there's few games like this, I look into movies. I don't want that scene from Inglourious Basterds, that's too fresh. There's a lot of good stuff in classic film, before the 80s that nobody has seen. These movies had to carry themselves on content because they didn't have special effects.
And that's where DeepResearch comes in.
I'm looking for specific films that fit the tutorial of the game that I'm trying to build. Without going into details, there's 4 mechanics I want to squeeze into the tutorial level. I'm looking for specific scenes that capture these mechanics.
One intent is "How do I get players to not skip dialogue like they would with a VN?" AI's interpretation of this is "scripts that encourage impatience". I didn't even know what question to ask, and it helped to rephrase my intent into the right questions then find examples of those.
It wrote a 6000 word essay, plenty of citations, some with clips. I don't have to spend a couple nights watching Psycho or The Night of the Hunter. I can just jump straight to the clips I want. I can skim 24 different movies in the same two nights.
by paulcole on 4/12/25, 3:10 PM
Then isn’t this a terrible place to ask your question? The echo chamber is just going to reinforce what you believe to be true.
Do you think the vibe coders getting a lot done are going to be sitting here arguing with the Never-AI-stans of Hacker News?
by admissionsguy on 4/11/25, 7:54 AM
by babyent on 4/10/25, 12:00 AM
by cratermoon on 4/8/25, 6:21 PM
by runjake on 4/8/25, 5:16 PM
I would love an intelligent agent I can converse with via both voice and text that has access to all my information, privacy be damned.
by datadrivenangel on 4/8/25, 7:28 PM
Software applications with more intelligent interfaces get us closer to a bicycle for the mind. LLMs are already a part of some of those.