Alan Kay, pioneer of object-oriented programming and the graphical user interface, talking about agents and tools in 1990.

Link to the whole video from WWDC:

Great clip. The nostalgia, reverence and admiration for these early pioneering programmers is high. So rad.

We must RETVRN to minor-key organs and clipart slides.

Great video, brother. So fascinating how prescient truly great people are. Best part is that they still explain things simply enough that anyone can grasp them

@harryhalpin yes, and what about General Magic, the hot bed of CS grads in the mid 90’s. I remember the IPO ! I first heard the term ‘agent’ in this context from them. They were just 35 years early!!

Is ontology meant to compensate for the limitations of AI? Or is it meant to enable AI to handle the unpredictability of human behavior? I’m curious about your opinion.

@mrkspflr Graphical user interface is great Object-oriented programming is used ~50x more than it should be

@mindthelongterm Fascinating, illuminating, and prescient…

it failed then and it will fail again dont be fooled this time that non technical users will be able to code they think at a different level of abstraction and detail

I remember reading Patti Maes academic papers on "Intelligent Agents" before 2000

Shut up baby killer

BANGER

@natemcguire You mentioned nothing of his pioneering of prodigious mustachios

The Human Use of Human Beings => The Human Use of Agentic AI

And this happy and precise metaphor applies today not only because of AI agents but also because of its meshing with human agents in a production network

an actual hero, and very nice man.

OO and GUI were both enormous mistakes

OO is a joke

He said agents are something that "we will manage it", not "it will manage us".

90년대에 이미 에이전트 개념을 저렇게 정리해둔 거 보면 진짜 시대를 앞서갔네. 지금 우리가 대단한 거 하는 줄 알았는데 그냥 30년 전 숙제 검사 받는 기분임.

what a great mustache

Good one.

and how exactly do you think this is relevant

everyone seems to reference him when talking about new ideas not made. seems cliche but interesting

Man he is explaining the agents exactly what's happening with ai agents nowadays

can I please have an embedded eng job at palantir I am fairly good at using AI tooling

Object oriented programmer was in Simula late 1969