Interesting to see these experiments. This is early but imagine in few years there will be companies mostly run by agents with a light overview from a human operator. What then happens to scaling of the bussinesses? I would assume, just like today anyone can vibe code an app, there will be vibecoded bussinesses. Maybe its time to start building infrastructure for these bussinesses instead, its a non existent market yet, but give it a few years.
Part of the issue is that the worst kind of people are already head over heels excited about this. We're already seeing the Crypto->Web3->LLM get rich quick folks take to this like wildfire. And much like wildfire, they'll raze the ground to ashes before anyone can use it for legitimate means.
If you think I'm joking, check this out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-Rqv9dOB1U
I don't think any of us are ready for the wave of sloppy shit that's going to hit us soon.
Most/all of these LinkedIn influencer types are showing off what amounts to busy-boxes, but for adults rather than for babies, presented as if these are at all useful for real world use or are showing anything useful. That YouTube channel does an okay job of calling it out.
My favorite term for this in general is "irrational exuberance". Plenty of it was seen during the most bubble-like days of the 1997-2000 dotcom boom. Anyone remember beenz and flooz?
I was at ground zero at Nortel during that time. Quite an interesting (depressing?) place to be at the very start of your career!
Anything you can share about this time?
It took a very unrealistic amount of time to realize that the IP theft, artificial blockers and corruption had started a lot earlier than presumed. The Nortel dismantling should be taught as an example of infoSec espionage on the levels of corporate terrorism.
Can you elaborate? I don't think this is a well known topic at all
I think they’re talking about how Huawei got their start
That’s a great book.
It’s a classic get rich quick scheme. Wanna run a business and make money without actually doing anything? Try our AI!
Out of all the people I know, the exact same set of people are in to LLMs now who were previously into: NFTs, then Crypto before that, then Online Poker before that, then Dropshipping and LeadGen before that. The Venn diagram circles overlap exactly.
Right. Scroll back on their X timelines and you see it.
The only thing I can say about LLMs is that we might end up with some broad, stable utility from them, when the dust settles. The only thing crypto is really good for is hiding the source of impermissible donations.
[dead]
And they made money on all of these stages, except for online poker.
All that really says is that they didn't get big out of any one of those. If one your "people" had gotten big off of online poker, say, would they be teaching the poor to code, or giving them mosquito nets?
It's a very naive supposition that the terminally greedy and immoral people would stop after getting rich once, rather than trying again and again every time there's an opportunity.
I’m not on normal social media so I had no idea that stuff was out there.
Absolutely incredible trolling from some of those people I’m sure, while others are actual believers
Prosperity gospel for the non-religious, basically.
This is gold, tysm for posting
His whole channel is full of commentary like this. It's simultaneously funny and really informative about the sort of blend of grift and AI psychosis that is genuinely out there.
It would truly be a sad day if I had to experience unsatisfying content.
I hope such a day never arrives.
>Part of the issue is that the worst kind of people are already head over heels excited about this.
This. Not only this but it has expanded this pool of people. Now you don't just have to be malicious, you can just be lazy and excited about not having to lift a finger, and/or you could just be dumb and excited about doing things you were never able to before.
Competent, well meaning people need not apply. Grifters, sloths and bozos will do just fine.
Oh please. Not only is this needlessly cynical but it demonstrates no ability to think for yourself. "Broad categories I don't like are excited about this, therefore it won't work."
Of course you'd feel no need to justify all the exceptions when people you don't like are excited about a movie, food item or video game. Yuur justification for cynicism is vacuous, which will obscure realistic concerns.
Part of me low key hopes that the slop will manage to attract all the VC funding so that profit-driven AI automation firms don't get anywhere too quickly, and those of us who are independently working on the problem step-by-step from first principles have time to get to the low hanging fruits in the market.
Immediately knew what that video would be before I clicked it.
Eric Morrison is doing the gods' work.
This sounds ideal to me. Fire flushes out pretty much any grifter quickly.
Part of the boon of this will just be dealing with less employees.
Not so much reducing cost by reducing headcount, but reducing liability; it's the legal labyrinth which is the barrier to entry to scale business. While it is present elsewhere, it's universal in employment.
The real question is "how big can a business be before it requires a legal department?" That an AI can automate many rote tasks and have some expertise means the benefits of scale with less of the risk.
After seeing a crazy amount of non-programmers, sometimes with 10 years of experience, basically turning off their brains and offloading most their thinking to some LLM and turning their days into "please check this product and tell me what I should do next", I don't see why not.
I've seen: designers, performance marketers, data scientists, SEO experts, product managers, engineering managers, CRM expert, all using it for pretty much every single individual part of their job. I don't have to even mention programmers, of course.
Once in a while the most egregious ones get caught. I've seen so far a product manager, three data scientists, a CRM person and several developers getting fired for doing absolutely nothing but showing up, firing Claude with a few integrations to a dozen tools and prompting "do the work".
Might sound harsh, but after the last few years, I really don't see why an LLM wouldn't do a better job by itself compared to 80% of employees of tech companies, honestly.
To answer the sibling that is flagged. I vouched but it’s still grey.
These people were fired because their work was considered shit by their managers and produced no results. They were replaced by nobody. They were dead weight pretending to work.
EDIT: I think this sounds quite similar to tales of developers and Excel wizards automating their jobs in secret and producing the same results. This was not the case here, as the results were considered low quality.
Isn't that .. what people were told to do? To use AI for as much of their job as possible?
This is absolutely true, but even the most charitable interpretation of “maximize the use of AI” doesn’t include “do nothing but prompt and you’ll keep your job”.
One can argue semantics and fairness all day long, but if an employee is adding no value to their $90 Claude signature, then they’re gonna get fired as soon as someone realizes. :/
One of the biggest traps LLMs enable is the fantasy of getting away with it. Tools that make you feel like you can get away with it bring out the worst in people. It's not a reflection of the technology but of the people.
Every time we see another AI agent "gone rogue", every time we see more LLM slop turning up by e-mail, comments, blog articles, people did that. Not AI -- people feel like they can get away with it. People are setting the machines out to do these things. We should be addressing the people, not the machines. The machines are the symptom.
Every time people manage to get away with something, it's insane, it's addictive. It's all over once you get caught, but until then, maybe forever, LLMs can feel like a cheat code...
Reminds me of the early internet, the whole declaration of cyberspace thing, the fantasy of information freedom.
[dead]
What would that look like, I assume youre talking about building infra ontop of the infra debt for datacenters
And we made fun of 90’s cartoon villains… They would blush and retire if they saw what’s being excitedly peddled today as “the future”.
Pray tell, what will these fantastical vibe coded business sell, and why will anyone pay for it?
[dead]
This infrastructure is already being built. There is finally a serious demand for microtransactions.
> what happens to scaling of the businesses?
This is a fundamentally political question. When different customers demand different new features, and other customers demand particular bug fixes, who do you satisfy first? The one with a small but growing account, or the old account who has been with you from the beginning? I would challenge anybody who thinks agents mean you can just do everything, immediately - by all means, prove me wrong and build Google again overnight.
And how is growth financed? Reinvestment, equity, debt? I would challenge anybody who thinks this can be reduced to a calculation, because money ultimately flows between humans; even if somebody grants an agent access to a current account (and some are, experimenting with vibe day-trading), a human always retains final control and can liquidate that account whenever they like.
[flagged]
10,610 commits since June. How much are you spending on AI?
what's the real life verification that all this code does something useful?