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Pion, an agent designed to run any company autonomously

andonlabs.com

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Re: Pion, an agent designed to run any company autonomously

#191

Post by AceJohnny2 »

ninalanyon wrote: post #118
lowbloodsugar wrote: post #88

I don't know about this particular effort, but AIs running business is straight out of SciFi novels and short stories - usually dystopian futures that extrapolate current US trends. I for one am curious about such efforts. I don't see any reason to believe they won't eventually succeed. Plenty of businesses are run by utterly incompetent narcissistic asshats and yet turn a profit, so the bar seems pretty low.

Charles Stross' Accelerando https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerando > Had AI agents running businesses for the principal character Manfred Macx over twenty years ago. The first part of the book sounded pretty convincing then although I thought it would take a long time to happen. It sounds even more convincing now and much closer.

For a while I named by smartphone "Exocortex" as a tongue-in-cheek recognition of the cognition I offloaded to it...

It's not so funny anymore.

Re: Pion, an agent designed to run any company autonomously

#192

Post by mchusma »

There was surprisingly little information on how they actually do this, but we run our business with a large number of, what we call "AI employees" in addition to regular employees, and they act in interesting ways. We've been building out orchestration tools to handle this, and we'll probably do a write-up or blog post on it soon. May even open source some of it.

The preview is that the problem with most agents (and this includes frameworks like Grokbot and Openclaw and Hermes) is that for many of them, they're black boxes. They say they learn or improve, but it's a black box in what they do. Getting agents to reliably do things is hard, and getting agents to build out software tools to help themselves improve and do better over time is also hard.

Our approach at a high level is pretty simple: every single AI employee is a standalone GitHub repo that shares some characteristics, but we direct them to build as much software as possible to make their goal as easy and reliable to manage as possible. Then we have a shared communication layer for bots across the company to interact with humans and AI. We have decided to organize these like departments similar to the way you might hire out humans. I'm not 100% sure if that's the best approach, but I will say it's been easier for people to understand because they're more mentally easily able to traverse the bot org chart if it somewhat reflects a traditional business org chart.

Each of these AI employees has specific sets of goals and KPIs, instructions that they manage the business with manager bots. We have layers of management, which we actually have found helpful. We also run different bots with different models and harnesses, and some using different models and harnesses to check the work before anything can get done, along with lots and lots of testing.

Every single time, actions have a massive amount of tests based off of previous failures to prevent failures in the future. Sorry for rambling. I do think this is a very interesting space. I didn't see anything interesting in Pion that was public on this website, but I do anticipate that more companies will be "AI and software first," as in the substrate of the company is basically a software application powered by autonomous agents, with humans as a fallback.

Re: Pion, an agent designed to run any company autonomously

#193

Post by rgbrgb »

interesting. the less "research lab" version i've seen of this is https://polsia.com

comparatively, I really appreciate the transparency here. clearly it's a little too early for this (quickly glanced at the P&L's, correct me if I"m wrong), but someone has to run the experiment and figure out when it's ready for prime time.

Re: Pion, an agent designed to run any company autonomously

#194

Post by trencedamp »

idopmstuff wrote: post #155

I am in the process of attempting to have AI run my business. I'm actually making very good progress, but it's happening in pieces - I document some task and have it take over, or I give it something to handle while staying in the loop and providing feedback until it's in good shape. At this point it's handling large swathes of my operations, marketing and finance. The experience of getting it there makes me pretty s…

> I am somewhat surprised to see some of the errors current models make given their intelligence

They have no intelligence. These are very very very refined prediction engines.

> A common set is having Claude take some product photos and turn them into lifestyle ones using ChatGPT via Claude in Chrome. It's a pretty well-honed workflow at this point, but it'll still return images where the product is obviously not correct and seemingly not notice them.

Obvious to you or I, or someone with actual intelligence. But things like this slip by a frontier model in the same way AI from a few years ago would generate an image with seven fingers. They do not count. They do not understand. They do not consider.

No matter how good these models appear to be at intelligent tasks, it's foolish to give them "a company" to run, because they cannot understand when they've made a mistake the way even the least competent human can.

Re: Pion, an agent designed to run any company autonomously

#195

Post by j2kun »

wartywhoa23 wrote: post #190
idopmstuff wrote: post #155

I am in the process of attempting to have AI run my business. I'm actually making very good progress, but it's happening in pieces - I document some task and have it take over, or I give it something to handle while staying in the loop and providing feedback until it's in good shape. At this point it's handling large swathes of my operations, marketing and finance. The experience of getting it there makes me pretty s…

What is your target audience and what do you sell them?

From their blog [1]

"I acquire e-commerce brands that sell on Amazon"

Honestly it sounds like the OP is part of the machine that makes Amazon such a trashy marketplace these days.

[1]: https://theautomatedoperator.substack.com/p/15-ways-im-using...

Re: Pion, an agent designed to run any company autonomously

#197

Post by grey-area »

walrus01 wrote: post #137
switchbak wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

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?

That’s a great book.

Re: Pion, an agent designed to run any company autonomously

#198

Post by tantalor »

bfeynman wrote: post #156

I wish people could read through the puffery more easily - this company does nothing except prompt frontier models and act as if they are discovering or inventing capabilities. Their previous announcement completely misappropriated the concept of autonomy with human in the loop regardless. The harness they alleged to have created here is a commodity and as byproduct of more capable and frontier models, there is not r…

> does nothing except prompt frontier models

Describes most if not all "software dev" in 2026.

Re: Pion, an agent designed to run any company autonomously

#199

Post by dofm »

ryandrake wrote: post #108
mcmcmc wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Re: Pion, an agent designed to run any company autonomously

#200

Post by dools »

PierceJoy wrote: post #97
LargeWu wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's massive negativity because our bullshit detectors are going off. First of all, I don't think it can do what it claims to do. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, I don't think it should.

People’s bullshit detectors have gone off on the launch of basically every single billion dollar tech company. That’s the downside of being early. No one believes it will work. If everyone believed it, you’re late. I’m sure I could find a comment such this, basically verbatim, on the launch post of every successful startup to come out of YC.

Yes and an infinitesimal number of launches turn into billion dollar companies. The bullshit detectors are usually right.
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