Comment by TomGarden

5 hours ago

Agreed.

I'm genuinely worried about all our short term investment in mitigating the failure modes of models that may only be SOTA for a few months.

It's very possible people being 'late' adopting AI may end up with a leg up, not only because they spent more time polishing personal skills during this time, but also because they don't bring all the baggage of 'AI competence' that is becoming irrelevant at breakneck speed.

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TomGarden

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skybrian  4 hours ago

Suppose you use LLMs in a more straightforward way, like asking coding agents to make specific changes rather than attempting to build a software factory?

That could be seen either as early adoption that’s overfitted to current capabilities or as late adoption of LLM’s more advanced capabilities.

1980phipsi  4 hours ago

The people who are adopting LLMs later are also slower to adopt new technology in general. The samples of people who adopt early and adopt late have different characteristics.

pbronez  4 hours ago

This is “second mover advantage.” There are several dynamics that can make it better to wait and move later. Framed in terms of firms, moving late is advantaged when:

- the product category is long lived

- switching costs are low for buyers

- there are objective standards of quality

- product imitation costs are low

https://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/the_second_...

Let’s consider those criteria for an individual competing in the labor market with AI. The category should be long lived, AI is here to stay. Switching costs (here, hiring/firing by employers/clients) are low. Objective quality standards fails; technical labor is notoriously difficult to quantify. Imitation costs (can you copy someone else’s good ideas) are moderate but decreasing. That’s where model and tooling improvement shows up.

Based on this analysis, I agree that late movers are well positioned IF the market leaders continue to improve models and tooling to integrate best practices that were previously individual skills.

Early movers should exploit the lack of objective standards. Use your experience with the first generation of tools as marketing to win and retain clients. Continue to invest in soft skills like communication.