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AI, Tools and Transformation

ben-evans.com

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Re: AI, Tools and Transformation

#51

Post by onion2k »

mcrk wrote: post #31
zacksiri wrote: post #4

The way I see it is AI collapses hierarchy. Abstraction layers will become more flat both in software and in society. Because ultimately software and layers of heirarchy in society exists to serve a function. But now those functions are being replaced. Imagine this you used to need a library for common things in your software project. Even if you just need one function but because it was easier to just import a libra…

> Now not anymore you just need to tell the LLM and it does it in both, and you get better results too. That's weird I just asked fable to build airbnb app clone and it didn't do a good job. Am I using the wrong model?

That probably means Fable doesn't have enough understanding of what AirBNB is in order to build a clone.

If you think about it, people don't really write much about how an app like that actually works. They write about the impact on travel, the impact on property prices, how to use it to book a vacation, and a bit about how it's a two-sided market place app, but not so much about what it actually does.

I assume that Fable has no access to it apart from the listing pages so it can't see behind the scenes to the property management side or the AirBnB admin stuff. The code isn't open so Fable isn't learning from that. There's probably a bunch of clones on Github but quality will vary.

If you want a clone of an app like that you'll need to build a large amount of context first, and even then you'll probably miss a lot.

Re: AI, Tools and Transformation

#52

Post by beecasthurlbow »

jaynetics wrote: post #10
ryuuseijin wrote: post #2

> You need audit, security, maintenance and accountability. I think this is where the role of humans will move towards in the future. Things like accountability can't really be outsourced to AI. This relates to solving the alignment problem: if you give the AI a specific goal and it has to plan sub-goals, how can you be sure the sub-goals align with your interests. For tasks in an isloated environment, this doesn't r…

I think most developers and most dev work is now in the field of websites, apps, and other stuff that is by nature connected to the internet, and has some relatively monolithic backend that has not been built with "blast doors" or other internal safeguards. I guess it will take considerable time until most software is in a state where the impact of AI changes can be reliably estimated without looking at the changes t…

> I expect the gruesome writing style of LLMs to be fixed relatively soon, seeing how it can already be prevented with just a few lines of stylistic instructions

What instructions do you use to prevent the gruesome writing style? I have… not found this to be the case.

Re: AI, Tools and Transformation

#53

Post by lelanthran »

zacksiri wrote: post #4

The way I see it is AI collapses hierarchy. Abstraction layers will become more flat both in software and in society. Because ultimately software and layers of heirarchy in society exists to serve a function. But now those functions are being replaced. Imagine this you used to need a library for common things in your software project. Even if you just need one function but because it was easier to just import a libra…

> The way I see it is AI collapses hierarchy

Right. Because the owners of capital will let you have access to the largest models, without which you can't compete with them.

I think that there is a high probability of increased inequality, just like the how the added productivity in the past led to large gains for the capital holders, and next to no gains for the other 90%.

Re: AI, Tools and Transformation

#54

Post by lelanthran »

yoz-y wrote: post #13
zacksiri wrote: post #4

The way I see it is AI collapses hierarchy. Abstraction layers will become more flat both in software and in society. Because ultimately software and layers of heirarchy in society exists to serve a function. But now those functions are being replaced. Imagine this you used to need a library for common things in your software project. Even if you just need one function but because it was easier to just import a libra…

I am honestly _astonished_ that the current crop of agents are not all written natively for every platform. I tried porting a moderately complex workout app that I’ve built over years (and which includes a whole agentic loop) from web to iOS native. It took me a couple of evenings. There is now no excuse to not offer a native experience for every supported platform when you are a bigger company. Make one of the platf…

Could be that models are not yet at the point where they are able to write code as well as we think they can.

I mean, there's a limit on the complexity of a phone workout app, but almost unbounded complexity in even simple business apps.

Re: AI, Tools and Transformation

#56

Post by benedictevans »

Kuyawa wrote: post #46

> It’s very tempting to imagine that AI turns everyone into a tool-builder It is not imagination, it is the undeniable truth. The quality of the tool is proportional to the competency of the builder, it always has been that way, AI makes the building process shorter by a magnitude

The entire essay explains why I think this is wrong. At a minimum, it is not 'undeniable' - I just denied it ;). Which part of the chain of reasoning I laid out do you disagree with, and why?

Re: AI, Tools and Transformation

#57

Post by benedictevans »

simianwords wrote: post #36
ryuuseijin wrote: post #2

> You need audit, security, maintenance and accountability. I think this is where the role of humans will move towards in the future. Things like accountability can't really be outsourced to AI. This relates to solving the alignment problem: if you give the AI a specific goal and it has to plan sub-goals, how can you be sure the sub-goals align with your interests. For tasks in an isloated environment, this doesn't r…

False. Accountability is the result of difficulty of things. As things get easier you need fewer accountable people. Like, you need a guy who understands Linux and be accountable for Linux working well in your company. But if Linux does a good job that doesn’t leak, you don’t need a Linux guy.

Who decides whether Linux is doing well enough? Who is responsible for fixing bugs or incorporating new requirements? Who is checking that it follows this month's new regulatory requirements? As the tasks scales to become more important, any organization needs to have systematic answers to those kinds of questions. And yes, you can use software for that (we always did!), but you still need a human somewhere who is exercising judgment.

Re: AI, Tools and Transformation

#58

Post by pixl97 »

benedictevans wrote: post #57
simianwords wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

False. Accountability is the result of difficulty of things. As things get easier you need fewer accountable people. Like, you need a guy who understands Linux and be accountable for Linux working well in your company. But if Linux does a good job that doesn’t leak, you don’t need a Linux guy.

Who decides whether Linux is doing well enough? Who is responsible for fixing bugs or incorporating new requirements? Who is checking that it follows this month's new regulatory requirements? As the tasks scales to become more important, any organization needs to have systematic answers to those kinds of questions. And yes, you can use software for that (we always did!), but you still need a human somewhere who is ex…

I mean with the METR report on the HF attack we saw spontaneous self organization in that model. I'm not saying that currently replaces human judgment but it does appear there are paths to complex AI agents systems that handle a lot of this.

Re: AI, Tools and Transformation

#59

Post by sunrunner »

odo1242 wrote: post #45
Fordec wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of those four, I think accountability is truly the only moat. The other three are varying amounts of both testable and iterated on via adversarial agents steel-manning the implementations. Accountability will not come before AIs achieve legal personhood, and that probably will not happen in my lifetime. And if it does in some jurisdictions (which I am not betting money on, this is a full full AGI scenario after multi…

AIs achieving legal personhood isn’t going to do much. You can’t just put an AI behind bars

FreeBSD has had jails for decades now.

Re: AI, Tools and Transformation

#60

Post by HEmanZ »

lelanthran wrote: post #53
zacksiri wrote: post #4

The way I see it is AI collapses hierarchy. Abstraction layers will become more flat both in software and in society. Because ultimately software and layers of heirarchy in society exists to serve a function. But now those functions are being replaced. Imagine this you used to need a library for common things in your software project. Even if you just need one function but because it was easier to just import a libra…

> The way I see it is AI collapses hierarchy Right. Because the owners of capital will let you have access to the largest models, without which you can't compete with them. I think that there is a high probability of increased inequality, just like the how the added productivity in the past led to large gains for the capital holders, and next to no gains for the other 90%.

Why do they even need to do that? It could be all open and you still can’t compete. The models could be all completely open weight forever and you still can’t compete with capital.

How are you going to pay for the models or the electricity or the hardware? How are you going to compete against a swarm of ai agents that were spun up 6 months before you with 100x the capital whatever small amount of capital you scraped together doing one of the last few human jobs? Not with your human intelligence, which is now useless compared to machine intelligence. Maybe with luck, but at that point we’re all just at the casino.

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