Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

AI agents are all the rage. Really? Of course these things are old news.

OpenAI released the ChatGPT Agent recently. Wow! Great stuff! Okay, it is pretty good stuff. Here is a prompt in plain, everyday English. When something happens, do something. Here are instructions in plain, everyday English. Do that complex task. Good stuff.

Uh, let’s see. Programming a computer: if this then do that. Uh, been doing that since someone invented a one and a zero.

But wait, this is more complicated. This involves analysis of lots of data that is complicated and requires some computation (and maybe “thougtht”) before doing something else that is complicated and requires some computation (and maybe “thought”).

I did a PhD dissertation in computer vision in the late 1980s. I used an idea called a frame where I attached actions to the frame. Analysis of imagery caused an action in the frame to happen. Sort of like an AI agent? That was way back when. I didn’t invent the frame. It existed from a couple of decades before me. It was just something useful that fit part of what I was doing. Old stuff.

Ten years ago I worked with some grad students at George Mason University. They were doing what AI agents are doing. Complex analysis auto-magically triggering complex actions. Too bad they didn’t call their work agentic AI. I guess folks would have laughed at them, but that is more history.

Well, today’s AI agents do much more with much more. They should, they run on super-duper computers the size of giant buildings (called AI datacenters). My AI frames ran on an Intel 386 processor (or was it a 286 processor? I forget).

AI agents? Lots of potential. I walk into a building, tell a computer, “I have a pain here in my lower back.” The computer triggers a series of exams using computer-controlled equipment, analyzes the results, and prescribes treatment. I tell a computer, “Sell this family land.” The computer finds the going rate for land, runs advertisements in the right venues, takes calls from buyers, shows the buyers videos of the land, and has the buyer sign a contract and deposit the money in my account.

Yes, things like the above are useful. Got an AI agent that does those things? Let me know when.