> the problem may be less about knowing a particular technique and more about the agent’s ability to keep its actual goal as the primary constraint.
I think the limiting factor is often the human's ability to articulate the goal and hold the agent accountable.
The working memory of technical people and the way they communicate often seems to prioritize how they're doing a task and not why they're doing it. So when they talk to you about their problem, they give you the human equivalent of modem noises and stack traces. This is such a common problem on tech support and Q&A forums like StackOverflow that it spawned its own terminology and website: https://xyproblem.info/
The agents don't respond to XY problems any better than a colleague does, and usually much worse.
An effective colleague asks why, and we need a similar relationship between the agent and its human supervisor.
I think the limiting factor is often the human's ability to articulate the goal and hold the agent accountable.
The working memory of technical people and the way they communicate often seems to prioritize how they're doing a task and not why they're doing it. So when they talk to you about their problem, they give you the human equivalent of modem noises and stack traces. This is such a common problem on tech support and Q&A forums like StackOverflow that it spawned its own terminology and website: https://xyproblem.info/
The agents don't respond to XY problems any better than a colleague does, and usually much worse.
An effective colleague asks why, and we need a similar relationship between the agent and its human supervisor.