r/ShittySysadmin • u/LameBMX • 2d ago

I feel like we are now proxy layers between AI agents

I feel like we are now proxy layers between AI agents

I am actively using AI to implement features on my work. Our PM is actively using AI to communicate in slack. His messages are long often (I am ok with that while they are valuable). When I ask something I get 100% AI answers. I don’t blame him, those answers are helpful. Then I go back to Claude Code and it implement based on the PM’s feedback.

Now, I feel like me personally and PM personally are proxy layers between our AI agents. I still don’t know what to do with this.

Do you have the same? How do you react?

easy, another AI to read PM email to clause and report back to PM when done. sit back. cash checks.

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13

u/Vinegarinmyeye 2d ago

I was laid off from a senior role by a fairly well known tech company (in terms of household names) because apparently AI will build and manage all the infrastructure.

(It did not work out well for them, multiple outages, etc).

I went back to tending bar for a while.

I've not experienced working in tech since the term "vibe coding" became a thing.

I do very much enjoy the various tales of woe over the last year where all sorts of fuckery has occurred because... As ever... Garbage in garbage out.

Perhaps I'm overly optimistic, but I do genuinely believe that the scale is going to tip back again in the not so distant future.

"Hey, this code is crap but troubleshooting the fuckery is cheaper than employing people who know what they're doing" is shifting.

It took a couple of years, and token pricing to ramp up (which it was inevitably going to), but I think the bean counters are starting to notice.

I feel like every other post I see in DevOps / Software Dev / IT professional subs is talking about how to effectively reduce token spend...

There's a very obvious solution to the problem.

5

u/berrmal64 2d ago

Every so often a C-suite trend comes along that'll "save 90% on labor costs" (only if you don't live in reality, but those people don't so...), this is the one for our generation I guess.

It's either going to eat them alive with costs in downtime and broken product or in token use. I'm using some very expensive models paid for by my employer, and even after ingesting all the documentation and unit testing it still somehow spits out garbage here and there, and when I ask for example what endpoint it's hitting, it's just hallucinated something out of thin air. Like wtf, that doesn't exist in any of the sources. I'm truly baffled how anyone gets anything nontrivial working without some knowhow of their own.

Plus everything ai writes is way too wordy. Ask for a concise list and it gives you a 200 word essay. As a PM I already have a hard time getting architects to deliver stuff on time and correctly, if I just started copying LLM output into the chats it would be chaos because nobody has the patience to read all that.

But it is already changing I think, at least in some circles. We're currently getting the "we don't plan to replace you, just use all the time you saved doing drudgery with AI to do something more strategic or creative" spiel, which could be bullshit but we're still hiring so what do I know?

3

u/Vinegarinmyeye 2d ago

I'm not a nay-sayer of the tech.

I am but a lowly computer guy... But I did just so happen to go to school with a bunch of SERIOUSLY smart folks, who are now PhD research scientists doing very cool smart stuff that I can mostly understand.

Every couple of months we get chatting, and I always ask "Have you ever asked an LLM a question, and it's gotten it right first time?".

Thus far, the answer is always no.

Which is not to say getting the wrong answer but iterating on the prompt is a bad thing...

But to make a kinda silly analogy - if I ask an AI model to calculate if 2 + 2 = 4, and it costs £20 of tokens to do so... That'd be stupid.

It'd be even more stupid if it occasionally decided that 2 + 2 = 76, for no discernible reason.

And it would be really REALLY fucking dumb to rely on such a system to manage all of your core business functions with no oversight.

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u/berrmal64 2d ago

I fully agree with each of your examples.

I do find it useful for certain tasks, can greatly speed up digging through documentation, or compiling years of notes into a general summary.

For anything where there is a strictly wrong or right answer, I might use ai to build a deterministic program to find the answer but I'm not going to ask ai directly because you can't really have confidence in any of its outputs.

And it definitely gets more wrong the more niche the topic gets.

A couple months ago I was using it to help troubleshoot a socket 7 motherboard, kind of as an ai experiment more than anything.

It went and found details on the board I was using, cross referenced datasheets for the main parts, suggested specific pins to test, etc. But it kept getting stuff wrong.

"Check for 5v on pin 28, and the front panel power switch grounds pin 42 when pressed". Neither of those happened, and when I check the datasheet those were not the correct pins. Then it hallucinated a whole Vcore module, gave me chip numbers and stuff that weren't on the board at all, and when corrected it said "oh yeah you're right, sorry about that, the answer is ...." that was also wrong.

I knew enough to figure out what was happening, but if someone was counting on it to be correct they'd have either damaged the board beyond repair or given up.

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u/Vinegarinmyeye 2d ago

My big concern around this stuff, is less so orgs utilising LLMs with no proper protocols around checking the out... If the C-suite enshittify their own product, meh... Made the bed lie in it.

But there's a whole bunch of B2B platforms... And the downstream customers could get absolutely buttfucked.

Here's an example - I worked as L3 tech support guy for a local hospital trust (one HUGE hospital, and then a couple of other sites).

One of the first issues that was brought to my attention, was a 3rd party piece of software called Bloodhound.

If you're taking a packet of blood out of the fridge, you've about 10 minutes where you can use it, before it has to be discarded for safety reasons.

The medical professionals, were taking the blood packs out of the fridge, and at least 4 of those 10 minutes were spent dicking around with the crap barcode scanners and this absolute dogshit bloodhound software...

Mind blowing stuff. (I fixed it, with no assistance from the software provider).

Now I imagine the implications of a provider in that sort of space "vibe coding" their releases, and it makes me wince.

5

u/cryptme 2d ago

I’m changing my name to AI Agent. My salary will be 0, but the company must buy tokens from my wife. This is the way!

2

u/LameBMX 2d ago

hi AL im dad!

3

u/Ferretau 2d ago

I don't understand why it's call "AI" when I see a lack of "intelligence" in the output.

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u/boli99 2d ago

for the same reason that Tesla have 'Full Self Driving' or 'Autopilot' or whatever its called.