Bounded Autonomy: Between Free Will and Determinism
summary
Claims that a handcrafted simple fix outperforms a complex agent: a CV generator loses to HTML with an asserted 100x improvement. Production scale details matter: Oliver runs around 4,000 assets a day for 200 plus brands. Concrete techniques include replace internet access with curated documentation, shrink context to the minimum that works, build your own harness and memory, and follow the rule to never automate a job you cannot do yourself.
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chapters (15)
- 0:00Start
- 0:14Introduction and talk theme: Bounded Autonomy
- 1:13About Oliver and GenAI in advertising
- 2:24The structure of an ad agency
- 3:35Why agents are used for speed and scale
- 4:27Slow down and look at model limitations
- 5:52The problem with current "band-aid" solutions
- 6:51The role of context windows in agent capability
- 8:11How to effectively constrain models with documentation
- 9:29Constraints as a driver for creativity
- 10:32Fundamentals: Building your own harness and memory
- 11:25The power of simplicity (The CV/HTML example)
- 12:34AI as a translation process
- 14:14Using multiple representation structures
- 15:22Agent workflows and the "don't automate what you can't do" rule
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