AI Agents: Friend or Foe? | When to Automate vs When to Let AI Explore

When should you let AI agents loose on your processes, and when should you keep them on a tight leash? Peter and Dave explore the messy reality of using agentic AI for process improvement.

They dig into why the processes you can easily map might not be the ones where AI agents add the most value. From recruitment pipelines that need human intuition to DevOps workflows that demand zero variation, not every process is created equal when it comes to AI intervention.

Timestamps:
0:00 - Introduction
0:33 - Process mapping vs reality
2:17 - The recruitment pipeline example
4:31 - When variance is good vs bad
6:27 - AI as backup system vs replacement
8:14 - The bitter lesson and process design
10:57 - AI regression to the mean problem
12:44 - Wrapping up: categorizing processes
15:53 - Final thoughts and contact info

This week's takeaways:
Categorize your processes first - some need consistency, others benefit from exploration
Not all processes are equal when it comes to AI intervention
Train AI to know when to hand off to other systems
Understand the difference between consistency and exploration in your workflows

Resource: Ethan Mollick's "The Bitter Lesson versus The Garbage Can": https://substack.com/home/post/p-1691...

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