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

Pion, an agent designed to run any company autonomously

andonlabs.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

581–590 of 647 posts

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

#581

Post by datsci_est_2015 »

jbs789 wrote: post #502

If you have an agent that can run a business, then… why not… run a business? Why does YC bother financing startups led by founders, if the AI can just do it? (This startup proudly remarks that it’s backed by YC)

If you have an agent that can run a business, why would I pay you instead of running my own agent that provides the service your business provides?

The only niche where that doesn’t work is capital investments. I can’t have an agent that provides me housing, but your agent can run your slumlord business.

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

#582

Post by datsci_est_2015 »

jackdawed wrote: post #568
jbs789 wrote: post #502

If you have an agent that can run a business, then… why not… run a business? Why does YC bother financing startups led by founders, if the AI can just do it? (This startup proudly remarks that it’s backed by YC)

I own a bookstore and about 90% of back office work is automated by software and AI. Probably most fulfilling project I've worked on in the past few years after taking a long break from tech.

The last 10% is probably the most important. It sounds like you have agents doing all the tasks that SaaS would’ve provided in the past. Most people wouldn’t have shelled out for that SaaS though because the subscriptions would eat their margin. You probably still (occasionally) need things like legal counsel that would be foolish to use LLM output for.

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

#583

Post by sothatsit »

hypfer wrote: post #460
sothatsit wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone I have talked to who uses coding agents at all now uses them to write almost all their code. The two people I know who don’t use coding agents work in government, and in a data science company working with government. I’d say if you work at a tech company and agents aren’t writing the majority of your code, that is weird. But if you work at a traditional company that doesn’t have Claude or Codex subscription…

My (arguably not very directly communicated, true) actual point is that "weird" is a term that is not really suited for tool choices like this. "Weird" is a social concept. It's an artifact that has its roots in social cohesion and friction induced by individual nodes to glue the group together. Software development otoh is an engineering discipline (or.. it should be). And Engineering does not use the local social c…

Maybe "unusual" or "uncommon" would be better terms here.

I definitely wouldn't put it at 99% of developers, but I'd say it is the norm among developers I know that agents are their primary mode of writing code now (still using IDEs and GitHub to review changes).

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

#585

Post by Gracana »

victorpudeyev wrote: post #213

It's not a business of selling/repairing vending machines. It's operations of a single vending machine. Correct me if I'm wrong: the vending machine (soda, snacks) has long been automated, with no AI in sight. And the vending machine does not adjust prices. What matters is that (1) the vending machine sees some foot traffic, and (2) nobody sets it on fire. So what was the point of the exercise again?

[dead]

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

#586

Post by nijave »

nullbio wrote: post #400

Meanwhile, I can't even get Astra to consistently re-use the same font-size across all of my HTML page headings+subheadings. There's just no world where this actually results in a stable, respected business. It will be death by a thousand bad impressions, mistakes and oversights. Yeah, you can automate everything. That doesn't mean it's being done well. That's not to say this might not be something feasible in 2-3 ye…

I think it's possible to get an LLM to run your business but I think it's still prohibitively expensive to spend the time and money getting guardrails, skills, knowledge, context setup.

Getting it to work reliably is quite the feat. AI coding is a much lower bar when there's (ideally) still a human expert that can set it straight when it goes awry.

I also think some of these debates get hung up on what's possible and ignore what's feasible and practical.

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

#587

Post by nananana9 »

nouveaux wrote: post #240
idopmstuff wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They have no intelligence. These are very very very refined prediction engines. Silly and pointless criticism. Why do the semantics of the word intelligence matter? Also, you need to understand that language evolves over time, and people often use a word to describe a thing that is newly discovered or invented that's similar to the word being used, because it's a helpful way of describing it that the listener will…

> 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.

That's all the more reason to stop talking about it and actually discuss concrete capabilities or lack thereof.

We're all well aware that we have different thresholds for what we consider intelligence, and that these thresholds are constantly changing.

Even if we agree that "LLMs are AI!!!" or "LLMs are not AI!!!" in this thread, all we've established is that this particular set of commentors share a similar enough definition at this point in time.

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

#588

Post by catlifeonmars »

aurareturn wrote: post #405
nullbio wrote: post #400

Meanwhile, I can't even get Astra to consistently re-use the same font-size across all of my HTML page headings+subheadings. There's just no world where this actually results in a stable, respected business. It will be death by a thousand bad impressions, mistakes and oversights. Yeah, you can automate everything. That doesn't mean it's being done well. That's not to say this might not be something feasible in 2-3 ye…

People said Devin, the AI coding agent, was garbage in 2024. Now it's weird if an agent isn't writing 99% of your code. So you're right to be skeptical as of September 2026. But September 2028? It might just be weird to run companies without AI management.

I guess that makes me weird :)

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

#589

Post by mancerayder »

discreteevent wrote: post #517
hypfer wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now it's weird if an agent isn't writing 99% of your code. It is? Are you sure that this is a representative reading that applies to more than just a tiny bubble?

People are using AI to write code. But HN is the wrong place to try to figure out how much they are using it. This site is full of bots and shills and has become a wasteland since AI. You can tell by the way they make short super confident (even ridiculous) statements in order to try to bully the insecure into buying into the hype. It matches exactly the patterns you used to see with crypto. Even the more subtle comm…

How do you know these are bots and not Redditors? There's an HN sub on Reddit, and one of the hallmarks of Reddit are the 'mic drop' big pivotal one liner comments that get upvoted or cause lots of replies or engagement.

But I do feel, to reply to you, that crypto was a lot more critically received on HN than AI is right now. We're too busy debating humanity's end rather than if this crap actually works.

For those of us who actually work with technology (not product managers, executives or salespeople, this stuff doesn't work well at scale. It might in a research department at Google or a hedge fund, less so in the messy corporate world.

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

#590

Post by econ »

suddenlybananas wrote: post #533
_zoltan_ wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it is a waste of time right now not to use AI to write code. It's the same category of "artisan code" like "artisan cheese": you can do it if you have a ton of free time as a hobby but other than a hobby? Not worth it.

Not the best metaphor, artisan cheese is something highly sought after. Go to France, there's a lot better cheese than Kraft singles.

We need enough slop to create that market.

If you already had a hand crafted codebase, a ton of miles on it, no real issue for a long time and customers who value some metric of quality then it might be worth crafting things by hand — if only for the bragging.

Post reply on HN