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You should write an agent

fly.io

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Re: You should write an agent

#111

Post by roadside_picnic »

furyofantares wrote: post #99
hoppp wrote: post #93

I should? what problems can I solve, that can be only done with an agent? As long as every AI provider is operating at a loss starting a sustainably monetizable project doesn't feel that realistic.

> As long as every AI provider is operating at a loss None of them are doing that. They need funding because the next model has always been much more expensive to train than the profits of the previous model. And many do offer a lot of free usage which is of course operated at a loss. But I don't think any are operating inference at a loss, I think their margins are actually rather large.

Parent comment never said operating inference at a loss, though it wouldn't surprise me, they just said "operating at a loss" which they most definitely are [0].

However, knowing a few people on teams at inference-only providers, I can promise you some of them absolutely are operating inference at a loss.

0. https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/29/microsoft_earnings_q1...

Re: You should write an agent

#112

Post by vinhnx »

> “You only think you understand how a bicycle works, until you learn to ride one.”

This resonates deeply with me. That's why I built one myself [0], I really really love to truly understand how coding agents work. The learning has been immense for me, I now have working knowledge of ANSI escape codes, grapheme clusters, terminal emulators, Unicode normalization, VT protocols, PTY sessions, and filesystem operations - all the low-level details I would have never think about until I were implementing them.

[0] https://github.com/vinhnx/vtcode

Re: You should write an agent

#113

Post by throwaway8xak92 »

furyofantares wrote: post #99
hoppp wrote: post #93

I should? what problems can I solve, that can be only done with an agent? As long as every AI provider is operating at a loss starting a sustainably monetizable project doesn't feel that realistic.

> As long as every AI provider is operating at a loss None of them are doing that. They need funding because the next model has always been much more expensive to train than the profits of the previous model. And many do offer a lot of free usage which is of course operated at a loss. But I don't think any are operating inference at a loss, I think their margins are actually rather large.

> None of them are doing that.

Can you point us to the data?

Re: You should write an agent

#114

Post by hshdhdhehd »

There is a lot of stuff I should do. From making my own CPU from a breadboard of nand gates to building a CDN in Rust. But aint got time for all the things.

That said I built an LLM following Karpathy's tutorial. So I think it aims good to dabble a bit.

Re: You should write an agent

#116

Post by johnfn »

hoppp wrote: post #93

I should? what problems can I solve, that can be only done with an agent? As long as every AI provider is operating at a loss starting a sustainably monetizable project doesn't feel that realistic.

The post is just about playing around with the tech for fun. Why does monetization come into it? It feels like saying you don't want to use Python because Astral, the company that makes uv, is operating at a loss. What?

Re: You should write an agent

#117

Post by paulcole »

hoppp wrote: post #93

I should? what problems can I solve, that can be only done with an agent? As long as every AI provider is operating at a loss starting a sustainably monetizable project doesn't feel that realistic.

I love how programmers generally tout themselves as these tinkerers who love learning about and exploring technology… until it comes to AI and then it’s like “show me the profitable use case.” Just say you don’t like AI!

Re: You should write an agent

#118

Post by furyofantares »

roadside_picnic wrote: post #111
furyofantares wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As long as every AI provider is operating at a loss None of them are doing that. They need funding because the next model has always been much more expensive to train than the profits of the previous model. And many do offer a lot of free usage which is of course operated at a loss. But I don't think any are operating inference at a loss, I think their margins are actually rather large.

Parent comment never said operating inference at a loss, though it wouldn't surprise me, they just said "operating at a loss" which they most definitely are [0]. However, knowing a few people on teams at inference-only providers, I can promise you some of them absolutely are operating inference at a loss. 0. https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/29/microsoft_earnings_q1...

> Parent comment never said operating inference at a loss

Context. Whether inference is profitable at current prices is what informs how risky it is to build a product that depends on buying inference, which is what the post was about.

Re: You should write an agent

#119

Post by fluidcruft »

GoatInGrey wrote: post #108
furyofantares wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As long as every AI provider is operating at a loss None of them are doing that. They need funding because the next model has always been much more expensive to train than the profits of the previous model. And many do offer a lot of free usage which is of course operated at a loss. But I don't think any are operating inference at a loss, I think their margins are actually rather large.

So AI companies are profitable when you ignore some of the things they have to spend money on to operate? Snark aside, inference is still being done at a loss. Anthropic, the most profitable AI vendor, is operating at a roughly -140% margin. xAI is the worst at somewhere around -3,600% margin.

If they are not operating inference at a loss and current models remain useful (why would they regress?), they could just stop developing the next model.

Re: You should write an agent

#120

Post by kalkin »

GoatInGrey wrote: post #108
furyofantares wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As long as every AI provider is operating at a loss None of them are doing that. They need funding because the next model has always been much more expensive to train than the profits of the previous model. And many do offer a lot of free usage which is of course operated at a loss. But I don't think any are operating inference at a loss, I think their margins are actually rather large.

So AI companies are profitable when you ignore some of the things they have to spend money on to operate? Snark aside, inference is still being done at a loss. Anthropic, the most profitable AI vendor, is operating at a roughly -140% margin. xAI is the worst at somewhere around -3,600% margin.

Where do those numbers come from?
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