Quoting Boris Mann
Simon Willison · Simon Willison · 2026-05-13
Simon Willison shares Boris Mann's observation that phrases like '11 AI agents' are semantically empty, no more meaningful than claiming to have 11 spreadsheets or 11 browser tabs.
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Extraction
Topics: ai-agentsagent-definitionsai-terminology
Claims
- Quantifying AI agent counts conveys no meaningful information about what work is being done or how.
- Counting agents is as arbitrary and uninformative as counting spreadsheets or browser tabs.
Key quotes
"11 AI agents" is meaningless as a phrase. If I said "I have 11 spreadsheets" or "I have 11 browser tabs" to do my work, it means about the same thing. — Boris Mann