Talking Drupal #485 - AI Autonomy

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Jan 20, 2025

In this discussion, guest Jay Callicott, a Drupal developer and AI advocate with nearly 20 years of experience, dives into AI Autonomy and its transformative effects on Drupal development. He shares his journey with AI, emphasizing its potential to revolutionize workflows while cautioning against job displacement. Jay discusses the new AI Agents module and the benefits of decoupled systems like Drupal X, as well as the risks of skill decay in an AI-driven world. By prioritizing continuous learning, developers can effectively navigate this evolving landscape.

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ANECDOTE

Jay's Drupal & AI Journey

Jay Callicott's Drupal journey began with version 4.6, driven by a passion for the technology.
His experience spans enterprise projects, architect roles, and speaking engagements, solidifying his expertise in Drupal and AI.

INSIGHT

Spark of AI Interest

Jay Callicott's interest in AI was sparked by ChatGPT's release and its rapid user growth.
He was fascinated by its potential and immediately began experimenting with LLMs and code generation tools.

INSIGHT

Defining AI Autonomy

AI autonomy, better described as AI agents, involves systems performing tasks with reduced human input.
These agents handle more task-driven operations independently, often with human-in-the-loop confirmation.

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Today we are talking about AI Autonomy, How it could help Drupal Development, and AI in the future with guest Jay Callicott. We’ll also cover AI Agents as our module of the week.

For show notes visit: https://www.talkingDrupal.com/485

Topics

What got you interested in this topic
What is meant by AI Autonomy
You suggested in your blog post in the Drop Times that developers will manage AI can you elaborate
AI coming for our jobs
Drupal X
Do decoupled sites have an advantage
Is the future going to be all prompts
Skill decay
What would you say to a CEO thinking about replacing developers with AI

Resources

Guests

Jay Callicott - drupalninja99

Hosts

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi Scott Weston - scott-weston

MOTW Correspondent

Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu

Brief description:
- Have you ever wanted to leverage AI-powered tools to get information about or change the configuration of your website? There’s a module for that
Module name/project name:
- AI Agents
Brief history
- How old: created in Aug 2024 by Marcus Johansson (marcus_johansson) of FreelyGive
- Versions available: 1.0.1 which supports Drupal 10.3 and 11
Maintainership
- Actively maintained: that release was in the past week, and was part of the significant effort to get stable releases of the AI modules that are included in Drupal CMS
- Security coverage
- Documentation included within the module’s codebase
- Number of open issues: 30 open issues, 7 of which are bugs against the current branch
Usage stats:
- 119 sites but I suspect that number will increase rapidly once people start using Drupal CMS
Module features and usage
- In AI terminology, an agent is a system able to interact with its environment, collect data, and use the data to perform self-determined tasks
- The AI Agents module is a framework to provide agents that can perform a variety of functions in your Drupal website
- It depends on the AI module that we had Jamie Abrahams on the podcast to talk about back in episode #468
- The module includes plugins that provide three agents, namely:
- A Field Type Agent that can create or edit fields using the Field API, or answer questions about the fields your site has defined
- A Content Type agent that can create, edit, or answer questions about node types
- Taxonomy Agent that can do the same for your site’s vocabularies
- Anyone who saw the Driesnote AI demos from DrupalCon Barcelona or Singapore will have seen agents in action, in that example through interaction in a chatbot
- Technically, the plugins are UI agnostic, however. So theoretically you could trigger an agent in other ways. But today, AI Agents power the AI chatbot that you can use in the AI recipe that is included in the recently released Drupal CMS 1.0
- The AI Agents module also includes some submodules. An experimental form integration submodule adds UI elements to the interfaces for managing fields, content types, and vocabularies, an explorer submodule provides debugging tools, and an experimental Extra submodule provides agents for working with webforms and views. I have also seen a demo of some work underway to provide an ECA agent, so you may soon be able to get your Drupal site to build out ECA models based on the business logic you describe to it