# Agents Are Not Enough

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.16241 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.16241/

## Key facts

- Cited by 5 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 2 of its 12 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 19 Dec 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [The Landscape of Emerging AI Agent Architectures for Reasoning, Planning, and Tool Calling: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.11584/) (2024)
- [An Analysis and Comparison of ACT-R and Soar](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.09305/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 5 of 5)

- [Future of Work with AI Agents: Auditing Automation and Augmentation Potential across the U.S. Workforce](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.06576/) (2025)
- [Value of Information: A Framework for Human-Agent Communication](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.06407/) (2026)
- [Agentic Workflows for Conversational Human-AI Interaction Design](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.18002/) (2025)
- [From Craft to Constitution: A Governance-First Paradigm for Principled Agent Engineering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.13857/) (2025)
- [Toward Epistemic Stability: Engineering Consistent Procedures for Industrial LLM Hallucination Reduction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.10047/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

In the midst of the growing integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) into various aspects of our lives, agents are experiencing a resurgence. These autonomous programs that act on behalf of humans are neither new nor exclusive to the mainstream AI movement. By exploring past incarnations of agents, we can understand what has been done previously, what worked, and more importantly, what did not pan out and why. This understanding lets us to examine what distinguishes the current focus on agents. While generative AI is appealing, this technology alone is insufficient to make new generations of agents more successful. To make the current wave of agents effective and sustainable, we envision an ecosystem that includes not only agents but also Sims, which represent user preferences and behaviors, as well as Assistants, which directly interact with the user and coordinate the execution of user tasks with the help of the agents.