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Ask HN: If 1 person can control 10 AI agents, why would still need that person?
With agentic frameworks becoming more accessible, it's plausible that one skilled individual could coordinate multiple AI agents to do the work of an entire team. Ten agents handling design, code, legal reviews, content, ops—coordinated by a single human or whatever you can think.
It sounds like augmentation. But taken further, it’s also clear that this compresses the chain of value. Why pay for ten salaries—or even one intermediary—when a client could learn to command the agents directly?
Some say, “You still need a conductor for the orchestra.” That one person is the integrator, the pilot, the one who makes sure the agents are working toward a coherent outcome. Fair enough.
But here’s the counterpoint: clients already do this kind of integration. They don’t ask their suppliers to "be creative," they give precise goals and constraints. If the agents become intuitive enough to understand those same inputs directly, what’s left for the human in the middle to add?
If I used to hire a designer, and now I just prompt a design agent myself… and if the same logic applies to coding, marketing, or legal reasoning… then how far are we really from businesses where clients orchestrate their own AI “staff” directly?
Is the human coordinator role just a temporary bridge?
I’m genuinely curious: have you started working this way? Are you seeing clients question your place in the loop? What do you think we’re underestimating—or overestimating?
- bigyabai 1y ago> If the agents become intuitive enough to understand those same inputs directly, what’s left for the human in the middle to add? Patience. People don't pay others to do work they're willing to do themselves.
- minimaxir 1y agoJust because they are Agents doesn't mean their output is correct and/or acceptable quality.
- codingdave 1y ago> clients already do this kind of integration. They don’t ask their suppliers to "be creative," they give precise goals and constraints. I'm not sure who your clients are. Mine do have goals, but ask me to be creative and come up with the constraints. Literally, I had someone ask me for exactly that on my last call. My folks are nowhere near precise. If they were, they would not need me.
- benoau 1y agoThe person you're referring to is more like a conductor. Everyone in an orchestra can play their instruments just fine. Better than fine. They are great at it. But the conductor keeps them coordinated and synchronized. But these conductors will consolidate and become obsolete too. After everyone else in the chain. Some ideas question why we would need "middleman" software at all in a decade: what's the point of Photoshop if you can ask AI to fix blemishes and manipulate images and compose your graphics without it? On some level it's selling picks and shovels after the gold rush.
- mikewarot 1y agoAnalogy - If a machinist oversees 10 cnc machines, yes you still need him. There's always going to be some level of expertise involved and especially with AI some person has to exercise judgement, watching out for hallucinations.
- flornt 1y agoWhat you’re referring to is the difference between automation — following the rules — and autonomy — having the ability to break or adapt them. A traditional machine just follows instructions. It doesn’t make decisions on its own. But from what I understand, AI agents can show a certain level of autonomy. They don’t just execute predefined steps; they can adjust, prioritize, even improvise within a given framework.
- kasey_junk 1y agoCnc machines adjust, prioritize and go against stated plans.
- dragonwriter 1y ago> Why pay for ten salaries—or even one intermediary—when a client could learn to command the agents directly? Because if it takes one full-time person to coordinate the agents, and those agents together perform a function that the client wants to support some other endeavor, in order to replace the agent coordinator, they would have to abandon the other things they do for the endeavor for which they are hiring the firm supplying the agents. If the client was literally completely passive and had no other role in their task than hiring the firm for something that wasn't part of a larger effort thet were actively engaged in, then, sure, they would have nothing relevant to the task to sacrifice by being the agent coordinator, they'd just need to spend the time learning to be an agent coordinator, and then actually become an active full-time participant rather than completely passive -- but presumably they were passive because that's exactly the level of engagement they were willing to put in, or, at least, because they found that being more active in the task had some associated disutility.
- tacostakohashi 1y agoSee the "doorman fallacy". Customers don't actually want to do the work of their vendors. I don't want to scan my own groceries at a supermarket, or check myself in for a flight (if checking backs, or traveling internationally anyway). If I wanted to be doing that kind of work, I'd get a job at a supermarket or an airline.
- szszrk 1y agoWeird examples. Self service cash registers are huge in Europe and as the tech matured even elderly are choosing them to not wait in queues. There are a lot of complains, but on par with standard registries. Self checkout on flights, the online one, is the easiest and biggest time saver. Up to a point where cost is not the most important factor to fly with carry-on only.
- flornt 1y agoYes, but it's not exactly the same. Self-service checkouts are just a way to buy your groceries — same with online shops. In those cases, the human is simply involved in selling a product, not delivering a service in itself. What I'm thinking about is an AI agent that actually provides services the way a human would — like doing strategic monitoring, replying to emails, or producing documents as part of an AI-enabled workflow."
- malfist 1y agoSelf service checkouts are huge because they chronically understaff checkouts so if you want to get out quickly you have to temporarily be an employee of the store.
- flornt 1y agosee my answer below.I guess it's not quite the same thing. Self-service checkouts are just a way to buy your groceries — same with online shops. In both cases, the human is (or was) mainly there to help sell a product, not to deliver a service in the proper sense. Sure, you could argue that it’s still a form of service, but the core business of a company like Walmart isn’t about providing human services — it’s about selling goods.
- aristofun 1y agoI think you don’t really get the idea of engineering. The job is not to spit out code (but even here 10 or even 100 junior-mid developers will not deliver complex enough product without proper guidance from advanced people) - the job is to create a solution. Clients don’t care how exactly it is done, they pay for end result.
- flornt 1y agoSure, but once the solution is built, why would a company keep paying someone externally just to watch/control it? Won’t the future be about having an AI agent that can be fine-tuned to your company’s needs through natural language?"
- aristofun 1y ago> just to watch/control it I think that you don't realize how maintaining software products work Who is going to watch/control the agent and make sure it's doing the right work?
- tuyguntn 1y agoBecause agents don't have a concept of accountability, even if they're capable enough to replace coordinator, we (humans) probably not going to let them do important things, we always want to have a final say, otherwise how do you know where it is going? Imagine you are a trader and asked agents to build you a perfect trading system and they discuss every next buy/sell and take a call to execute the action. How do you know in the long term you are making money? What if they decided to cheat on you and started buying stocks which will definitely crash in 1 month, while showing you a progress of profit by day trading other stocks. Would you just let them do what they're doing?
- RonArlo 1y ago[dead]
- MelanieDean 1y ago[dead]
- gilbertrevis 1y ago[dead]
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- DavidHopper1 1y ago[flagged]
- segmondy 1y agoAgain, you are playing around with an idea that's not concrete. So perhaps you won't need that person. Perhaps AI agents will be so good, you can control all of them via conversion/prompting. In which case, any individual could control multiple agents. So the question should be, "Will AI agents get good enough, where any individual with just a conversion can get a fully functional AI agent such as a coding agent, a legal review agent, a design agent?"
- cylinderthought 1y agotemporary bridge.
- moonhive 1y agoThe human in the loop won’t disappear it will evolve. AI agents still need someone who understands context, prioritizes goals, manages trade-offs, and spots misalignment across outputs. That’s not just orchestration, that’s judgment. Clients may think they can manage agents directly, but most won’t have the clarity or system thinking to turn AI output into coherent outcomes. That’s where founders, strategists, and builders still add real leverage. The future isn’t agent vs human it’s high-leverage humans using agents better than anyone else.
- babyent 1y agoStatic HTML -> Flash Web Apps -> AJAX -> HTML5 + React -> [we are here right now]