Despite the C-suite’s enthusiasm over artificial intelligence agents that can plow through office tasks like never-sleeping interns, the underlying technology is still rickety and a potential cost-sucker.
That much was clear this week during two separate events held in Silicon Valley, during which executives and engineers discussed the current excitement and challenges involving AI agents.
Kevin McGrath, the CEO of the AI startup Meibel said during a session that “the biggest problem that we’re working with in AI right now,” involves the misguided idea that everything needs to be processed by a large language model, or LLM.
“Just give all of your tokens and all of your money to an AI Claw bot that will just waste millions and millions of tokens,” McGrath said, before explaining how companies need to be more deliberate when deciding which tasks are best suited for AI agents.
Since the recent rise of OpenClaw, a so-called “harness” that lets developers use various AI models to create and manage fleets of digital assistants, the tech industry has been pushing AI agents as the next big thing.
