I Am the Bottleneck Holding My AI Agents Back
Running several agents at once, I discovered that my reading, judgment, and energy were what could not keep up. So I decided to give myself a break.
Okay, I have to admit it—
I am the bottleneck holding my AI agents back.
Yes, I—or humans, really—am the biggest bottleneck and the ceiling on what these AI workers can get done. Finally, I have to admit that.
Sometimes the agents produce work far faster than I can read their analysis and feedback, make my own judgment, and send back my suggestions so they can move on to the next round.
To give myself a bigger window to think, I have several agents working on different things or projects at once. Ideally, tasks that will keep them busy for a while.
In reality, that did not buy me much time. It just turned me into an octopus. At that moment, I thought of “Chicken Cutlet Brother” (鸡排哥), the street-food vendor in Jingdezhen who went viral online, and suddenly felt I could relate.
I also noticed a slightly unhealthy habit developing: I cannot stand seeing the little circle beside an agent's conversation stop spinning. When it stops, I get a little uncomfortable.
But if you want to keep all those circles spinning nonstop, you cannot simply close your eyes. You have to keep dealing with situations and problems, reading enormous amounts of text and documentation, and switching between different things to think and make decisions.
In the end, the most exhausted one is probably the human. The AI has only used a little electricity and some tokens... Its energy is always there, ready for a refill.
So I started turning on myself, wondering whether my way of working was wrong. After all, it did not seem like I could blame the AI.
Ridiculous, isn't it? Haha...
We live in an age of cognitive overload. I have been saying that a lot lately.
The human is the bottleneck holding the AIs back. And finally, I have to admit it.
All right. I am going to give myself a break and go see the film Once Upon a Time in the Middle East (《欢迎来龙餐馆》) tomorrow.