He helped write one of the seminal texts about software engineering. Here's what he thinks about AI agents.
AI agents are like "genies," said Kent Beck, one of the authors of the seminal "Agile Manifesto" — they'll often grant your wish, but not always in the way you'd like them to.
"They will not do what you mean. They have their own agenda," Beck said on a recent episode of The Pragmatic Engineer podcast. "And the best analogy I could find is a genie. It grants you wishes, and then you wish for something, and then you get it, but it's not what you actually wanted."
After 50 years in programming, including a stint at Facebook and a hand in the foundational text about agile software development, Beck said he's now having the most fun of his entire career — and it's partly thanks to AI agents, even despite their unpredictability.
"I'm trying all of the tools," he said. "Because right now, nobody knows what process is going to work best. Nobody knows anything. We should all be trying all the things that we can imagine, and then the truth will emerge out of all of that. So that's what I'm doing."
Beck was one of the 17 authors of the 2001 paper the " Agile Manifesto," which outlines four values and 12 principles for faster software development. The paper inspired the "agile method" of software development, which became commonplace in Silicon Valley because of its efficiency-boosting techniques.
Today, AI is already being used to replace human labor, particularly in programming, where it's hitting early-career engineers the hardest while simultaneously speeding up software development. Given the current state of coding, Beck believes that fundamental organizational skills are increasingly important rather than particular technical specializations.
"So, having a vision, being able to set milestones towards that vision, keeping track of a design to maintain the levels or control the levels of complexity as you go forward," Beck said. "Those are hugely leveraged skills now, compared to, 'I know where to put the ampersands, and the stars, and the brackets in Rust.'"
Though Beck does incorporate AI into his process, he doesn't necessarily trust it, he said. The technology isn't consistent enough to be relied upon.
"Sometimes it even seems like the agent kind of has it in for you," he said. "'If you're going to make me do all this work, I'm just going to delete all your tests and pretend I'm finished, ha, ha, ha.'"
Results are so inconsistent, he added, that using AI to code can sometimes feel like gambling.
"It feels like a rat and the pellet," he said. "It's like there's just a run button and I have to click it every time. And I click it and it is a dopamine rush because this is exactly like a slot machine. You've got intermittent reinforcement, you've got negative outcomes and positive outcomes."
Once in a while, though, the output will be just right — and Beck will be tempted to spin the wheel all over again.
"The distribution is fairly random, seemingly. So it's literally an addictive loop to have it. You say, 'Go do this thing.' And then sometimes it's just magic."
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
CBS News
7 minutes ago
- CBS News
New apartment building in downtown Brighton draws mixed responses
A new apartment building in Brighton, Michigan, was granted a preliminary site approval by the city's Planning Commission Monday night. If approved, the new building would bring significant change to Brighton's downtown area. "We had this vacant parking lot," said Megan Allor Farkas, a broker with DA Building. "There was more that we could do with it than just leave it a parking lot." The five-story building, Allor on North, would include 144 apartment units on the corner of Hyne and West North streets. "In December of last year, we entered into a pre-development agreement that just allows us and the city to work together to see what we can do to benefit us, to benefit them, and where everyone could win in this development," she said. The building project was met with a mix of responses from community members. Facebook posts about the project include well over 200 comments. Residents who didn't want to go on camera said they're concerned about traffic congestion, the size of the building and availability of parking. "I understand their concerns, but we're not going to build something unless we have a market study done, a traffic study done on it, because if it doesn't make sense-- people aren't going to want to live there either," said Farkas. City officials and the Planning Commission were unavailable for an interview on Tuesday.
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Iran asks its people to delete WhatsApp from their devices
Iranian state television on Tuesday afternoon urged the country's public to remove the messaging platform WhatsApp from their smartphones, alleging the app — without offering specific evidence — gathered user information to send to Israel. In a statement, WhatsApp said it was 'concerned these false reports will be an excuse for our services to be blocked at a time when people need them the most.' WhatsApp uses end-to-end encryption, meaning a service provider in the middle can't read a message. 'We do not track your precise location, we don't keep logs of who everyone is messaging and we do not track the personal messages people are sending one another," it added. 'We do not provide bulk information to any government.' End-to-end encryption means that messages are scrambled so that only the sender and recipient can see them. If anyone else intercepts the message, all they will see is a garble that can't be unscrambled without the key. WhatsApp is owned by Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram. Iran has blocked access to various social media platforms over the years but many people in the country use proxies and virtual private networks, or VPNs, to access them. It banned WhatsApp and Google Play in 2022 during mass protests against the government over the death of a woman held by the country's morality police. That ban was lifted late last year. WhatsApp had been one of Iran's most popular messaging apps besides Instagram and Telegram.
CNET
2 hours ago
- CNET
Meta's All In on AI Creating the Ads You See on Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp
Meta is working toward a future where many of the ads you see on Facebook or Instagram are created from scratch by artificial intelligence, and thus more easily targeted specifically to you. Its goal is fully automated AI-powered ad generation by the end of 2026, the Wall Street Journal first reported. Following this initial news, TikTok also announced it's launching AI-powered advertising features on its platform and Meta unveiled that ads are now coming to WhatsApp -- further strengthening the threads between advertising and AI. These moves could cut out roles for many human copywriters, designers and media buyers and potentially shake up the $600 billion global ad business, but it also could be a new, lower-cost resource for small and medium-sized businesses. Along the way it will likely raise fresh questions about creativity and accuracy as AI edges into another realm of decision-making by humans. Meta has broad ambitions to weave AI across its platforms. It has already integrated its Meta AI chatbot across Instagram, Facebook, Messenger and WhatsApp, explored creating AI avatars on Instagram, and worked generative AI tools into its apps. Meta did not respond to a request for comment. With competitors like Google and Amazon also building AI-powered ad systems, automating advertising is just one more piece of a much larger puzzle. To gain a deeper understanding of how this news affects the ad industry and the almost 4 billion people who use Meta platforms, I spoke to Gary Kayye, a professor of advertising at UNC Chapel Hill and an industry professional for over 30 years. Kayye, who embraces and requires AI use in his classroom, views this as an opportunity for anyone in the world to make AI work for them when it comes to marketing and commerce. "All of a sudden, millions of individual creators who were intimidated by advertising can start small and grow," Kayye said. "Then, as they grow their businesses, they're going to advertise more and then they're going to spend more, so you're going to increase the amount of commerce globally." Read more: What Is Meta AI? Everything to Know About These AI Tools What's in it for you If you're on Facebook, Instagram or WhatsApp, expect to see more personalized ads. The AI-driven systems allow companies to specify which users it wants to target so the AI can hone the images, video and text accordingly, the Journal reported. They may even whip up new versions of ads in real time depending on where you are. You could see a car ad showing the car driving up a mountain if you're in a snowy location, or see that same car driving in city streets if you're in an urban environment, the Journal reported. "The low-hanging fruit for AI in advertising has always been programmatic (ads)," Kayye said, referring to the digital advertisements bought and sold automatically using software and algorithms. "You upload an image, a short description, pick the audience, and AI can do the rest. If Facebook's AI can predict the right audience well enough, then create multiple ad variations and run A/B/C/D tests automatically, that could be sort of magical." At the same time, media and ethics experts warn that fully automating ad creation could open the door to misinformation, biased targeting and further erosion of accountability in digital advertising. AI is susceptible to mistakes and manipulation, and it can be used to spread harmful messaging, such as AI-generated deepfakes. There's also the threat to jobs at traditional ad agencies and marketing firms, something Meta is downplaying. "We believe AI will enable agencies and advertisers to focus precious time and resources on the creativity that matters," Alex Schultz, chief marketing officer and vice president of analytics at Meta, wrote in a LinkedIn post. "While we think there will ultimately be more automation in marketing, the role that agencies play is going to become ever more important through their ability to plan, execute and measure across platforms." Kayye expects a shift toward AI automation will only affect agencies that don't diversify or expand beyond social media marketing, and those that have relied on one strategy for too long. "What really kills a business is being an assembly line of creativity," he said. "This will impact those doing the same thing for every client over and over and over. AI is going to expose that faster." Humans will always have a role in advertising, Kayye said, since strategy, creative storytelling and building brand loyalty are very human endeavors. "AI still can't do original thought. It can remix, it can emulate, but it doesn't have a brain," he added. "Good prompting is a form of creativity. AI can write the copy, but you need to know how to ask it the right way, so it can give you something worth reading." Read more: How to Opt Out of Instagram and Facebook Using Your Posts for AI What's in it for companies Businesses would explain their product or marketing ideas to the AI ad tool and give it a budget goal. The machine would take over from there, generating ad copy, visuals, targeting strategies and even media placement decisions, all without human intervention. In the short term, this would start with AI making suggestions or streamlining parts of the ad process. But over time, Meta wants AI to be capable of managing entire campaigns on its own, from start to finish, according to the Journal. A spokesperson for Meta told the Journal that advertisers would remain "in control" of their campaigns, but the broader vision paints a future where AI is the creative director, media planner and performance analyst all in one. The new effort builds on the existing suite of AI-powered ad tools at Meta, such as Advantage Plus and generative tools introduced in 2023. Those features allow marketers to automatically create image backgrounds, write copy variations and test ad formats. The company said small businesses would be the key beneficiary of this AI approach, especially those lacking the time or resources to hire marketing teams. "In the not-too-distant future, we want to get to a world where any business will be able to just tell us what objective they're trying to achieve, like selling something or getting a new customer, how much they're willing to pay for each result, and connect their bank account and then we just do the rest for them," CEO Mark Zuckerberg said at the annual Meta shareholder meeting last month.
