Comment by mizzao
1 day ago
The swarm-based HF hack, and the observation that 40-50% of the compute at AI labs goes into training the next generation of agents, doesn't count?
We're all over here using agents to code projects that used to take weeks and feeling pretty good about it, and they're using agents to build the next generation of frontier models — an order of magnitude more complex problem...
Whenever someone finds out how to apply this level of agentic sophistication to a problem that actually matters to consumers, then you'll have that monument that everyone can see.
> Whenever someone finds out how to apply this level of agentic sophistication to a problem that actually matters to consumers
Isn't this a massive alarm bell? That the capability hasn't done much for consumers yet that isn't basically toys? Although I suppose the pitch was always B2B "you can automate away your expensive white collar workers" and it's not clear how widespread that is actually happening.
It did a lot for consumers who dare to use it. It didn't do much for consumers who wait for middleman businesses to offer AI-based services, but that is not because of AI, but existing business model of SaaS.
The businesses pay for tokens and try to deliver their usual enshittified experience, and nothing interesting gets created, because it cannot - enshittification extinguishes all power of AI. Using AI to full extent, in contrast, obviates most need for the business in the first place. So they're all struggling to design an AI powered product, in a world where those very products are already becoming subsumed by AI.
So normies wait for middleware companies to get their shit together or (much more likely) finally die, while people with software experience and eagerness to use AI just don't subscribe, because their favorite LLM handles that work just fine.
OAI is still hiring lots of humans for business and engineering roles instead of automating them with their best-in-class AI capabilities (https://openai.com/careers/search/). What does it tell you when they apparently don't "dare to use" their own models?
1 reply →
What is the incentive to try? Any such application, if profitable, would immediately be replicated. If one person can use agents to do something profitable, anyone can use agents to easily copy it. Hence you have Anthropic locking down their models and removing features customers can access, to try and protect their own slim advantage.
I think if you build a product that takes a lot of serious AI work to both build and run, it's going to be hard to replicate just like past "good products" were hard to replicate. It's just that the bar for what's "hard to replicate" is way higher than before.
And I thought that building your own castle and hoping your moat is wide enough was always a losing strategy in the end. We shall see how it ends this time.
Google, Apple, etc are basically stone star forteresses and your conclusion is that moats don't work?
1 reply →
With this stuff I immediately wish I was more economically literate. Bare with me. Let’s say one of these labs can use agents to replicate work otherwise done by humans. This proves that anyone with agents can eventually do this, unfortunately I don’t think its a moat like a platform (like facebook) provides, given that everyone is leapfrogging each-other constantly. Thus, it kind of becomes a commodity / low margin business?
Depending on the type of output, the value immediately (?) goes to the electricity cost of the LLMs and the cost of materials. So: more “efficient”, but without a big margin, right? So its cheaper for the workers that remain working, other workers are displaced, and capital owners now have a super slim margin business which can be instantly replicated at a place where material cost are lower (?).
Thus, it almost seems like “value add” by humans would in this simplified view be vastly diminished, and all that remains is resource wealth. Pop the materials in on one end and let the AI manufacture the product. Great news for the third world assuming the USA doesn't invade them.
Also, whose the consumer? Or are we going back to a strange medieval time where consumers are not of concern?
I don’t know what to think
> all that remains is resource wealth
Final vindication of the Georgists. All value flows back as "rent", which in the 21st century includes IP licensing.
> Great news for the third world
Not sure about this in a world where there isn't demand for human labour. Especially in the post-consumer world. Very difficult future to see. Possible that it will deliver enough capability and expertise to drastically improve things; possible that without skilled human review that fails catastrophically.
I'm reminded of the Houthis asking Claude to build them a missile guidance system. We're going to see the Toyota Hilux + .50 cal "technical" combo get some weird targeting system upgrades.
Georgism is objectively correct, which is why it'll never happen. Every parasite on earth has incentives to destroy any attempt at real taxation of their wealth.
Electricity is important, even more important than AI (despite some rhetoric).
We don’t see electricity companies among the biggest companies in the world, except in China where they are a state owned monopoly… maybe a good analogy after all.
> We don’t see electricity companies among the biggest companies in the world except in China where they are a state owned monopoly… maybe a good analogy after all.
All over the world they're either state owned or very tightly controlled, precisely because they would be among the biggest companies in the world and even worse than that, they would be essential. If Google Search goes down for 2 days, meh, you can handle it. If the national grid goes down for 2 days your aggressive neighboring country can invade.
> Bare with me.
It depends; can you send pics first?
Mercy for us non native speakers i beg
Maybe raw intelligence is not the bottleneck for what can be accomplished with the current data available in a form agents can access it?
> The swarm-based HF hack, and the observation that 40-50% of the compute at AI labs goes into training the next generation of agents, doesn't count?
Most peoples jobs do not involve hacking other services in large scale fuzzing/whatnot attacks.
> Whenever someone finds out how to apply this level of agentic sophistication to a problem that actually matters to consumers, then you'll have that monument that everyone can see.
It does not seem to me that tech industry or its investors care about consumers even a little bit. Consumer preferences dont matter once you have enough or raw economic power, I guess.