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Yeah, there's a real opportunity for one of these companies to invest time in a model that's tuned for, to use your term, agent-assisted developement. Trouble

Yeah, there's a real opportunity for one of these companies to invest time in a model that's tuned for, to use your term, agent-assisted developement. Trouble is, everyone inside their buildings seems to believe that no one will be working like that in a year or two.

popalchemist 4mo ago
Whether they believe it or not is immaterial. It is the end-goal they want to achieve, because then they own the means of production entirely.
- jatora 4mo ago
  I find these nefarious intention theories shallow. It can both be the case that the endstate is them owning the means of production without that being the intended guiding goal. Companies can chase profit without being Leninistic boogeymen.
  - cousinbryce 4mo ago
    Sam Allan has said some things that would make Lenin blush
  - WhyIsItAlwaysHN 4mo ago
    There is no nefariousness in owning all the means of production, it's the endgame of maximizing profit. However the result is exactly the same, concentration of power.
    - pigpop 4mo ago
      This is such a defeatist and low agency take. "means of production" are not a limited resource like gold that you have to extract from natural sources or divvy up. They are fundamentally skill and knowledge that anyone can attain and put to use, maybe not on the same scale as a well funded business but even those businesses had to start somewhere in order to grow to the size they are now. So rather than casting aspersions on them, your time would be better spent learning how you too can create some means of production and start producing value.
      - breezybottom 4mo ago
        You think AI tech doesn't use rare earth metals?
        pigpop 3mo ago
        Rare earth metals aren't rare, it's a misnomer.
        breezybottom 3mo ago
        Depends on how you define rare. Also irrelevant — the only thing important to the argument is that they are "limited resources."
      - WhyIsItAlwaysHN 3mo ago
        AI companies are trying to mechanize skill and knowledge and to own the infrastructure around it. If they succeed, your suggestion does not work. Even if they can't succeed, they will try because that's the most obvious path to maximizing profit for them. Also about "creating" means of production, these companies actively try to sabotage this as another profit maximization strategy. They buy all the ram, so others cannot compete. They buy startups who succeed, so they stop competing. It's not aspersions, it's just describing the phenomenon. Even if I take your suggestion to heart, once my company would be big enough, if I wanted to optimize for profit, I would have to do the same as these companies. The end result is concentrated power.
    - popalchemist 4mo ago
      No nefariousness other than the subjugation of the majority of humanity? You're insane
      - WhyIsItAlwaysHN 4mo ago
        What I meant is that nefariousness from people is not a prerequisite. It's a machine that wants to maximize all profit and all the evil is a natural product. If you magically put saints in charge they would be eaten and replaced by the same kind of people very quickly if the end goal remains.
        popalchemist 3mo ago
        The "evil" is not just in the effect, it is in the callous, sociopathic disregard for the sanctity of life that lives in Zuckerberg and all the individuals involved; that is the evil "prima materia" out of which downstream actions and outcomes are borne.
- pigpop 4mo ago
  They own the means of production for the leading models but they're far from monopolizing them since the techniques are well known. At this point it's a matter of having a head start and lots of capital to pay for the data annotation and GPU time to train them. Others are playing catch-up but they're hot on their heals which is the biggest reason for them to continue spending like crazy to keep their leads. For the non-bleeding edge they have a lot of competition with more competitors showing up every day. The way this is playing out is not surprising, it's similar to any other technological breakthrough as it becomes commercialized. Eventually those means of production will become commoditized as well.
  - deleted 4mo ago
    [deleted]
- quaverquaver 4mo ago
  these are capital intensive commodity businesses. They can be plenty big - see railroads or airplanes... or refining... but that doesn't mean that most value won't be added elsewhere.
jambalaya8 4mo ago
As I said, working ourselves out of our jobs within the span of a few years.
everforward 4mo ago
There’s no way to justify their valuations if they get downgraded to a pair programming tool. They need fully agentic stuff to work and replace human engineers to even come close. Offhand, I’m not even certain whether a model like that could justify the constant retraining we’re doing on the agentic models. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to spend millions or billions on training to reduce hallucinations by 0.3% if your model assumes a human is in the loop to course-correct them.
- JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
  > no way to justify their valuations if they get downgraded to a pair programming tool I think there is. Pair today doesn’t mean they’re locked into that forever.
  - ChrisLTD 4mo ago
    Their valuations don't make sense as just programming tools, period. Forget about if they are still human driven.
    - JumpCrisscross 3mo ago
      > Their valuations don't make sense as just programming tools, period Yup. I think we agree. These valuations aren’t made or unmade by whether their tools are being used as vibe agents or pair programmers.
  - 4rf 4mo ago
    you always post about valuations but never share your own. go ahead m8 we are all waiting... the stage is yours. lets see your model.
- sanderjd 4mo ago
  My two cents is that the way to square this circle is that the valuations should be lower and they should be spending a lot less on constant retraining. Unfortunately (from my perspective) it seems like the US companies are increasingly stuck in their current model. I think it's a competitive disadvantage. But obviously most of the real insiders seem to disagree with me, so I'm probably wrong :)
pkulak 4mo ago
And every benchmark is "build GTA-6 from nothing, as a single-page web app".
ricardobayes 4mo ago
They have to, but also everyone working at 3D printing companies thought "industry 4.0" is going to completely override everything, we are going to print housing and going to print a mug at home and drink coffee out of it. Today's news that Amazon is hiring 11k interns. I think part of the AI story was used as a convenient excuse to get rid of some "fat" and some covid overhiring and gave companies an out to change course.
rconti 4mo ago
I wonder how portable the existing models are for different use cases. As good as they are for greenfield development or working in a single or across a few tightly coupled repos, they're absolutely terrible at debugging distributed systems and make incredibly wrong yet extremely confident assertions all the time. I don't know if it's a matter of just requiring a tiny amount of optimization or wholesale redesign.

popalchemist 4mo ago

Whether they believe it or not is immaterial. It is the end-goal they want to achieve, because then they own the means of production entirely.

jatora 4mo ago
I find these nefarious intention theories shallow. It can both be the case that the endstate is them owning the means of production without that being the intended guiding goal. Companies can chase profit without being Leninistic boogeymen.
- cousinbryce 4mo ago
  Sam Allan has said some things that would make Lenin blush
- WhyIsItAlwaysHN 4mo ago
  There is no nefariousness in owning all the means of production, it's the endgame of maximizing profit. However the result is exactly the same, concentration of power.
  - pigpop 4mo ago
    This is such a defeatist and low agency take. "means of production" are not a limited resource like gold that you have to extract from natural sources or divvy up. They are fundamentally skill and knowledge that anyone can attain and put to use, maybe not on the same scale as a well funded business but even those businesses had to start somewhere in order to grow to the size they are now. So rather than casting aspersions on them, your time would be better spent learning how you too can create some means of production and start producing value.
    - breezybottom 4mo ago
      You think AI tech doesn't use rare earth metals?
      - pigpop 3mo ago
        Rare earth metals aren't rare, it's a misnomer.
        breezybottom 3mo ago
        Depends on how you define rare. Also irrelevant — the only thing important to the argument is that they are "limited resources."
    - WhyIsItAlwaysHN 3mo ago
      AI companies are trying to mechanize skill and knowledge and to own the infrastructure around it. If they succeed, your suggestion does not work. Even if they can't succeed, they will try because that's the most obvious path to maximizing profit for them. Also about "creating" means of production, these companies actively try to sabotage this as another profit maximization strategy. They buy all the ram, so others cannot compete. They buy startups who succeed, so they stop competing. It's not aspersions, it's just describing the phenomenon. Even if I take your suggestion to heart, once my company would be big enough, if I wanted to optimize for profit, I would have to do the same as these companies. The end result is concentrated power.
  - popalchemist 4mo ago
    No nefariousness other than the subjugation of the majority of humanity? You're insane
    - WhyIsItAlwaysHN 4mo ago
      What I meant is that nefariousness from people is not a prerequisite. It's a machine that wants to maximize all profit and all the evil is a natural product. If you magically put saints in charge they would be eaten and replaced by the same kind of people very quickly if the end goal remains.
      - popalchemist 3mo ago
        The "evil" is not just in the effect, it is in the callous, sociopathic disregard for the sanctity of life that lives in Zuckerberg and all the individuals involved; that is the evil "prima materia" out of which downstream actions and outcomes are borne.
pigpop 4mo ago
They own the means of production for the leading models but they're far from monopolizing them since the techniques are well known. At this point it's a matter of having a head start and lots of capital to pay for the data annotation and GPU time to train them. Others are playing catch-up but they're hot on their heals which is the biggest reason for them to continue spending like crazy to keep their leads. For the non-bleeding edge they have a lot of competition with more competitors showing up every day. The way this is playing out is not surprising, it's similar to any other technological breakthrough as it becomes commercialized. Eventually those means of production will become commoditized as well.
- deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
quaverquaver 4mo ago
these are capital intensive commodity businesses. They can be plenty big - see railroads or airplanes... or refining... but that doesn't mean that most value won't be added elsewhere.

jambalaya8 4mo ago

As I said, working ourselves out of our jobs within the span of a few years.

everforward 4mo ago

There’s no way to justify their valuations if they get downgraded to a pair programming tool. They need fully agentic stuff to work and replace human engineers to even come close. Offhand, I’m not even certain whether a model like that could justify the constant retraining we’re doing on the agentic models. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to spend millions or billions on training to reduce hallucinations by 0.3% if your model assumes a human is in the loop to course-correct them.

JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
> no way to justify their valuations if they get downgraded to a pair programming tool I think there is. Pair today doesn’t mean they’re locked into that forever.
- ChrisLTD 4mo ago
  Their valuations don't make sense as just programming tools, period. Forget about if they are still human driven.
  - JumpCrisscross 3mo ago
    > Their valuations don't make sense as just programming tools, period Yup. I think we agree. These valuations aren’t made or unmade by whether their tools are being used as vibe agents or pair programmers.
- 4rf 4mo ago
  you always post about valuations but never share your own. go ahead m8 we are all waiting... the stage is yours. lets see your model.
sanderjd 4mo ago
My two cents is that the way to square this circle is that the valuations should be lower and they should be spending a lot less on constant retraining. Unfortunately (from my perspective) it seems like the US companies are increasingly stuck in their current model. I think it's a competitive disadvantage. But obviously most of the real insiders seem to disagree with me, so I'm probably wrong :)

pkulak 4mo ago

And every benchmark is "build GTA-6 from nothing, as a single-page web app".

ricardobayes 4mo ago

They have to, but also everyone working at 3D printing companies thought "industry 4.0" is going to completely override everything, we are going to print housing and going to print a mug at home and drink coffee out of it. Today's news that Amazon is hiring 11k interns. I think part of the AI story was used as a convenient excuse to get rid of some "fat" and some covid overhiring and gave companies an out to change course.

rconti 4mo ago

I wonder how portable the existing models are for different use cases. As good as they are for greenfield development or working in a single or across a few tightly coupled repos, they're absolutely terrible at debugging distributed systems and make incredibly wrong yet extremely confident assertions all the time. I don't know if it's a matter of just requiring a tiny amount of optimization or wholesale redesign.