Comment by d4rkp4ttern
4 hours ago
An interesting shift I’ve seen over the past few weeks, is we’re starting to refer to bare LLMs themselves as “agents”.
Used to be that agent = LLM + scaffold/harness/loop/whatever.
4 hours ago
An interesting shift I’ve seen over the past few weeks, is we’re starting to refer to bare LLMs themselves as “agents”.
Used to be that agent = LLM + scaffold/harness/loop/whatever.
I think some of the distinction here is that the more recent "bare LLMs" have been more purpose built, augmented with "agent" specific RL, and in general more fine tuned for the requirements of "agents". Things such as specific reasoning capabilities, tool calling, etc.
These all make the "bare LLMs" better suited to be used within the "agent" harness.
I think the more accurate term would be "agentic LLMs" instead of calling them "agents" outright. As to why its the case now, probably just human laziness and colloquialisms.
Yes, the post training is the special sauce.
My definition of agent has always been an LLM with "effectful" tools, run in a loop where the LLM gets to decide when the task is complete. In other words, an LLM with "agency".