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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

#341

Post by SoftTalker »

mchusma wrote: post #229
orourke wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is fascinating. What is the split between human and AI labor? What kinds of tasks are the bots doing? How much autonomy do they have to make decisions (i.e. spending money, issuing refunds, touch cloud infra, etc)? I'd love to learn more about how you do this.

I hope to post something within a few weeks. But our philosophy is generally if it can be done deterministically with software (eg run payroll on autopilot via an api to gusto) then do that. If it can be done by an ai agent, do it with that but add as much software as possible to make it reliable at that thing. And the ai agents are all tuned to escalate to humans as needed. Then there is also just things that are co…

Another downside is that if the agent goes rogue on the payroll you'll have a lot of angry humans and possibly major legal problems also.

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

#342

Post by Naru41 »

My definition of AGI is a computer that can support itself, just turn it on, and it'll earn enough money to pay the server's electricity bills, hire people to maintain and expand its servers, and even improve its own algorithms.

I'd love to see someone try to run one that can meet 100% of the world's demand for remote works.

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

#343

Post by fallinditch »

LastTrain wrote: post #280
razster wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh my friend, it can. We have ours running and using unique skills it learns from online. You allow it to update skills and see what works - from there it just keeps building better and better skill sets.

It can create more shit than humans could ever consume I’m sure, but then why? What new ventures/opportunities is it opening for most humans?

Great point, the shit is going to get more pervasive for sure.

But also, there is the enablement of new fields of original and creative endeavor: I think we can already see this in some of the brilliant and useful apps being made, often by solo 'teams'.

I don't want to play down the harmful effects AI, but the flip side is that the opportunities for original ideas are many and varied.

Paul Graham wrote about taste being the moat https://paulgraham.com/taste.html

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

#344

Post by petra »

Nevin1901 wrote: post #132

Correct me if I'm wrong but a human will be able to cut through the noise with quirky advertising, new/novel distribution methods, etc. Most of the bottleneck in business isn't building the things or sourcing, it's mostly advertising/sales. These specifically require doing something unique or interesting. Sure, maybe LLMs can help with fulfillment or operations, but distribution still remains the hard part.

>> Most of the bottleneck in business isn't building the things or sourcing, it's mostly advertising/sales.

That may also change with llms - they can help the buyers compare every product available, and find the best.

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

#345

Post by done_lurking »

lukan wrote: post #248
nouveaux wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Silly and pointless criticism. Why do the semantics of the word intelligence matter? It matters because, we're still sorting out what intelligence means for an AI agent. As you pointed out, language evolves over time. The question remains whether or not attributing intelligence to the current iteration of models is correct. This is not settled and I don't see why it's wrong to bring it up.

Language is indeed evolving. Being good in chess was (and still is) associated with being intelligent. But if a computer does it, it is just a calculator (and it is). Then go, the great game for intelligence, too complex for calculators to have a chance against intelligent humans. Until it was solved. And then text, the original Turing test solved, AI capable enough to fool humans. And now already replacing humans in…

Go isn't solved.

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

#346

Post by taybin »

Naru41 wrote: post #342

My definition of AGI is a computer that can support itself, just turn it on, and it'll earn enough money to pay the server's electricity bills, hire people to maintain and expand its servers, and even improve its own algorithms. I'd love to see someone try to run one that can meet 100% of the world's demand for remote works.

How’s that going to work when everyone turns one on and they’re all driving the profit margin to almost zero?

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

#347

Post by bdamm »

taybin wrote: post #346
Naru41 wrote: post #342

My definition of AGI is a computer that can support itself, just turn it on, and it'll earn enough money to pay the server's electricity bills, hire people to maintain and expand its servers, and even improve its own algorithms. I'd love to see someone try to run one that can meet 100% of the world's demand for remote works.

How’s that going to work when everyone turns one on and they’re all driving the profit margin to almost zero?

Well, by "computer" we're of course talking about colocated equipment with real capital costs. The data center operators are the equivalent of the people selling shovels to the gold rush prospectors.

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

#348

Post by halfcat »

idopmstuff wrote: post #225
Denzel wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cool that he's writing about this publicly, but for someone that's so business-minded I find it odd that he never renders any of these AI experiments in terms of ROI. Hard to find any signal in those posts on whether it's profitable to automate these processes with AI vs. alternatives.

That's a fair criticism for some of it, but in a lot of cases I try to automate things that don't have alternatives because they're unique to me (e.g. all the brands I own in my fund have one bank account but need to be tracked separately for investor payback purposes, so I have a Claude skill that takes all of my transactions and assigns them to the various Google Sheets ledgers I have). In other cases I'm doing stu…

> unique to me

Ah, so it’s ”No Silver Bullet” (1986) [1] all over again.

Thinking out loud here...

AI mainly helps reduce accidental complexity. It can help one understand essential complexity, but essential complexity must still be paid.

You describe doing the essential, irreducible part. And that’s specific to your needs, depends on the problem you’ve chosen, understanding reality of your domain, evaluating tradeoffs, and being accountable for the outcome.

Right?

[1] https://cekrem.github.io/posts/there-is-still-no-silver-bull...

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

#349

Post by esikich »

owebmaster wrote: post #269
tantalor wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really think it can't?

I'm sure it can't. A competent marketer can make good use of it but vibecoders just create slop nobody wants to read.

You're describing most people. Most people (99.9%) can't come up with novel ideas either. They just follow the latest trend. Art, marketing, music, etc. If you've spent any time in the creative spaces, you'll realize most people don't really have much talent. Skill, sure, but that only gets you as far as someone else's latest idea.

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

#350

Post by gbraad »

Expect the 6AM layoff email to get rid of all meatbags, sent by the agent.

J/K, scary as several studies have indicated they werent able to keep a vending machine profitable. Anyway, ...

I do think a large amounf of tasks can be automated, though i believe supervision remains necessary for most. Especially when process can be externally influenced by injection. People can be influenced, but are (slightly) more judgemental

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