Why AI Agents Feel Scammy, Despite the Impressive Demos

Hint: AI Agents Are Sometimes Not the Right Tool for the Job

Lately, it’s become trendy to predict that software engineering will mostly be done by AI agents (*) working autonomously in the background, while human developers mainly manage and direct these agents (a view that Mark Zuckerberg and others support). This is a departure from the “co-pilot” mode of AI interaction (e.g. using ChatGPT, Cursor, etc), which requires humans to actively steer the AI output through small chat interactions.