Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Companies Are Just a Graph of Algorithms

danielmiessler.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 20 posts

Re: Companies Are Just a Graph of Algorithms

#11

Post by peter_d_sherman »

I personally like this article, its concepts, its charts and its graphs...

Observation: There probably is a market for documenting all of a business's processes and workflows (which business owner wouldn't want some really cool charts of all of their business processes?), and that should be able to done quickly and cheaply with Text-to-Image LLM's (NanoBanana, ?, ???). Well, if there's value on the one side, and the ability to deliver under cost and under budget on the other, then that's a value-to-cost asymmetry and subsequently a candidate for a scalable service business...

Related:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_process_re-engineerin...

Re: Companies Are Just a Graph of Algorithms

#13

Post by jochem9 »

peter_d_sherman wrote: post #11

I personally like this article, its concepts, its charts and its graphs... Observation: There probably is a market for documenting all of a business's processes and workflows (which business owner wouldn't want some really cool charts of all of their business processes?), and that should be able to done quickly and cheaply with Text-to-Image LLM's (NanoBanana, ?, ???). Well, if there's value on the one side, and the…

Yes. As someone else points out: the techniques for this exist (and have existed for decades). It was never worth it to fully pursuit it, especially for more messy human-heavy processes.

Now with AI you can get way more detailed (AI can interview humans, and you can do it in a format that doesn't feel like an interview - e.g by 'simply' having AI be a fly on the wall). AI can make sense of messy inputs and then you can present that to people who know the process, who can easily point out flaws. The flows/maps will not be perfect, but you can always get more detailed once you bump into the limitations of imperfection.

And absolutely do business leaders want maps like this. They often have no idea what exactly is happening in their org. Or they have a gut feel that there are massive inefficiencies, but they cannot get the insights into where they are because there are too many moving parts that do not effectively talk to each other (silos, politics, etc).

Re: Companies Are Just a Graph of Algorithms

#14

Post by actionfromafar »

jochem9 wrote: post #13
peter_d_sherman wrote: post #11

I personally like this article, its concepts, its charts and its graphs... Observation: There probably is a market for documenting all of a business's processes and workflows (which business owner wouldn't want some really cool charts of all of their business processes?), and that should be able to done quickly and cheaply with Text-to-Image LLM's (NanoBanana, ?, ???). Well, if there's value on the one side, and the…

Yes. As someone else points out: the techniques for this exist (and have existed for decades). It was never worth it to fully pursuit it, especially for more messy human-heavy processes. Now with AI you can get way more detailed (AI can interview humans, and you can do it in a format that doesn't feel like an interview - e.g by 'simply' having AI be a fly on the wall). AI can make sense of messy inputs and then you c…

So, full Panopticon it is then.

Re: Companies Are Just a Graph of Algorithms

#15

Post by danielrm26 »

jacques_chester wrote: post #7
danielrm26 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed that there's some measure of chaotic/creative work that won't fall into this type of category. But much or most regular enterprise work is very much able to be done by having and regularly updating an SOP and then executing the task according to that SOP. We suck at it. AI will be far better at it. And we'll sit above it and decide how to tweak the SOP based on taste/preference/expertise, whatever. But the day…

I recognize all these words, I can sense, perceive, parse and reason about all of these words. Yet I cannot derive a sensible meaning from them. The pragmatics is of a flailing fish singing Waltzing Matilda to a teleporting cucumber. There's nothing transparent or inspectable about a sparse fog of floating point numbers. Rendered as a picture it's the color of a television, tuned to a dead channel. As a sound: kssssh…

Meanwhile thousands of people are using things like prompts and skills and Cowork to do actual work.

If you think this is theoretical at this point it's because you're not using it to do real stuff.

Re: Companies Are Just a Graph of Algorithms

#16

Post by ArekDymalski »

>If you were to have done this exercise for any business in 2022 it would have given that business a significant advantage.

Hmm, what about businesses that have done it in 1922? Because that's how old the methodology is:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_process_mapping

Re: Companies Are Just a Graph of Algorithms

#17

Post by davidivadavid »

jacques_chester wrote: post #8

When I see a complex socioeconomic phenomenon described as "just" I know for certain that someone is about to spectacularly fail to have read books. This is value stream mapping. No, business process reengineering. No, systems dynamics. No, a Krebs cycle. No, ... People could always do these things. It was never a sword that only AI enthusiasts could draw from the stone. By god people, the AI has read books, can't yo…

Right. Because something is reducible, modulo a bunch of stuff you're not looking at, to a simplistic model, doesn't make it "just" that. Use of the word "just" is often a good tell you're about to read something naive.

Re: Companies Are Just a Graph of Algorithms

#18

Post by OutOfHere »

At best this is limited to the algorithmic component of companies that drives information exchange. Beyond it, companies also are a collection of datasets, finances, property, and physical workers affecting property, although yes, they can in principle be controlled by AI. Another part is the evolution of a company's algorithms.

Re: Companies Are Just a Graph of Algorithms

#19

Post by jacques_chester »

danielrm26 wrote: post #15
jacques_chester wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recognize all these words, I can sense, perceive, parse and reason about all of these words. Yet I cannot derive a sensible meaning from them. The pragmatics is of a flailing fish singing Waltzing Matilda to a teleporting cucumber. There's nothing transparent or inspectable about a sparse fog of floating point numbers. Rendered as a picture it's the color of a television, tuned to a dead channel. As a sound: kssssh…

Meanwhile thousands of people are using things like prompts and skills and Cowork to do actual work . If you think this is theoretical at this point it's because you're not using it to do real stuff.

Mate until last week I had quite literally unlimited, unmetered access to frontier models from every major lab. No quotas, no brownouts, none of the stuff civilians gripe about. Chairman Mark had handed out the titanium amex and said "go forth and multiply my expenses".

What I saw was not ~ * ~ actual work ~ * ~. It wasn't "real stuff" either. What I witnessed was the most spectacular immolation of surplus I have ever seen. So much time, money and intelligence being pissed up against a wall in order to show the boss what a jolly good job you're doing.

When I tried to use it for actual work -- with, I repeat, utterly limitless amounts of tokens to burn -- it sucked balls. No matter how breathless the hype that this generation had finally cracked it, they all sucked. It produced flabby, buggy code by the gallon. It routinely fucked up and wasted my time. More than once I would wrestle with something for two or three days, give up, then bang a good solution in about an hour. Yes, I used rules and skills and .md files and and and and and and. Skill issue, you say? Well look, if hammers shot spikes through my hand one time in 20 then the skill issue is using the bloody doomhammer in the first place.

The actual work being done here is manic bullshitting and pissing in the village well. Shipping clanker clinker isn't productivity.

Post reply on HN