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OpenAI Developer Slams AI Agent Swarms for Wasting Tokens

Eric Provencher, an OpenAI Codex developer, argues that AI agent swarms are inefficient, leading to wasted tokens and no significant quality improvement. He explains that agents often distrust each other, resulting in redundant checks and a "coordination tax." Provencher cites an example where over a thousand agents were used for a task that a single agent could have completed more cost-effectively. AI

IMPACT Suggests current multi-agent AI systems may be inefficient and costly, potentially impacting how complex tasks are automated.

RANK_REASON Opinion piece from a developer at a major AI lab criticizing a specific AI technique.

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AI-generated summary · Google Gemini · from 1 sources. How we write summaries →

OpenAI Developer Slams AI Agent Swarms for Wasting Tokens

How we ranked this

Signal score
9 / 100
Composite score across the factors below. Higher = stronger signal that this story matters right now.
Newsworthiness bucket
Commentary
Opinion piece from a developer at a major AI lab criticizing a specific AI technique.
Source corroboration
Single-source cluster
Only one publisher covered this so far. Single-source stories can still rank when the publisher is high-authority, but they lack cross-source corroboration.
Topics
opinion, infra
Editorial topic classification. Feeds into how the story surfaces on /topic/<slug> hub pages and into the per-entity coverage mix.
AI-industry relevance
High
Clearly on-topic for AI-industry coverage.
Story freshness
Breaking (< 6h)
Fresh story with cross-source coverage still developing. Ranking may shift as more sources report.

Full methodology in our editorial standards.

COVERAGE [1]

  1. The Decoder TIER_1 English(EN) · Matthias Bastian ·

    AI agent swarms are a massive waste of tokens with zero quality gain, says OpenAI Codex developer

    <p><img alt="" class="attachment-full size-full wp-post-image" height="768" src="https://the-decoder.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/openai_logo_draft.png" style="height: auto; margin-bottom: 10px;" width="1376" /></p> <p> OpenAI Codex developer Eric Provencher warns that running …