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Domain expertise has always been the real moat

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Re: Domain expertise has always been the real moat

#111

Post by skeptic_ai »

consumer451 wrote: post #71
azuanrb wrote: post #47

I recently reviewed an app built mostly with vibe coding. The owner said it was almost ready to launch and just needed a quick check. After looking through it, the database design was a mess. Some features worked, some didn’t. I explained the missing pieces and why things were breaking. Like OP said, he’s the domain expert. I used billions of tokens last month alone. The tools are getting better fast. But giving AI t…

> I used billions of tokens last month alone. I use Claude Code (Opus 4.6 at max effort) all day long, and I genuinely don't understand how this is possible. Is that usage paying off? This is very likely due to my lack of understanding, but... how?

Don’t forget context. Basically I have 2 billion input and 1 million output. Every prompt you do, sends back the whole thing again and again. Let’s say you have 500k context used, you send 10 messages is 5 million. 100 messages 50 million. Use 5 threats is 250 million.

Re: Domain expertise has always been the real moat

#112

Post by awesome_dude »

toastmaster11 wrote: post #62

How much pontificating needs to be done before people acknowledge nobody has any idea what to do with AI on an individual level? First being good developer and learning how to use AI was sufficient, next it was being able to design architecture, then it was “taste” that made all the difference and now being an expert in the domain is the only thing that matters really. Until AI is basically in a stable, predictable,…

So far AI has been a (genuinely) massive improvement for...

Search

It's reading my requests more clearly than (for example) Google's search input ever did, and it's got (some) understanding of how close the result (or fragments of results) are to what I want.

I can ask it about things I know about, and it can answer with strategies I hadn't thought of.

HOWEVER - I still need to understand the results AND AI can overreach - it can say (figuratively) "Oh you are searching for Event handling, therefore I will write a orchestration saga" - which, if I am not across, can get us both in trouble.

Further, we KNOW that AI has no (real) understanding of the responses - it's just token adjacency - and it fails basic logic tests

Current AI is just awesome natural language processing, but it's still got a ways to go to where I would say "It can replace people"

Edit: LLMs demonstrate (almost perfectly) the difference between correlation and causality. LLMs identify correlative patterns, but the job still needs (us) to make the causative judgments.

Re: Domain expertise has always been the real moat

#113

Post by yieldcrv »

Jubijub wrote: post #58
yieldcrv wrote: post #16

I disagree because we're buying up companies and training models, creating skills and agentic workflows on individual domain expert's 30 years of notes and prior projects The only moat is that there is so much more work for domain experts since they and many of the bureaucratic processes in between aren't the bottleneck anymore I think it's important to be clear on what's really happening. Companies were accomplishin…

But that’s not true though. You still have to convince humans. You still have to deal with what people in power feel (clients, leads,etc) This still adds wall time. I saw 0 serious analysis confirming 5x productivity gains. In the coding part? Maybe, and that’s not even certain. But pure coding is only one order of making software, or solving problems with software

and 0 analysts were saying agentic workflows actually worked 6 months ago, they were completely disillusioned and yet here we are

if you’re actually building these things, you know they and the CEOs they’re hearing from are all 6 months behind. the executive’s frantic pivot to shove “AI” down everyone’s throat didn’t pan out in one quarter and had nothing to do with the actual concept at all

that, and every industry is different. I wouldn’t listen to analysts, I’m in an industry that even Anthropic thinks wont be touched by AI (even though they can read ours and everyone else’s sessions)

all public discourse is just flat wrong, and just like every week this year, you’re just going to wake up seeing a new AI capability headline that makes you question your role in society. So play devil’s advocate all you want, the silver lining is that there’s more work to do than ever before and more of it can be tackled at once

Re: Domain expertise has always been the real moat

#114

Post by awesome_dude »

spkm wrote: post #107
toastmaster11 wrote: post #62

How much pontificating needs to be done before people acknowledge nobody has any idea what to do with AI on an individual level? First being good developer and learning how to use AI was sufficient, next it was being able to design architecture, then it was “taste” that made all the difference and now being an expert in the domain is the only thing that matters really. Until AI is basically in a stable, predictable,…

Remember the OOP Hype 20 years ago? I'm still cleaning shit up from then in our codebase when everyone used patterns after skimming through the GoF book without even knowing why .... My prediction is in 20 years I will clean up the shit that was co-authored by Claude ... https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@JeremiahFieldhaven/116654345...

OOP and GoF are not the same thing - conflating the two has been the biggest mistake everyone has made (detractors and proponents alike)

Re: Domain expertise has always been the real moat

#115

Post by Swizec »

toastmaster11 wrote: post #62

How much pontificating needs to be done before people acknowledge nobody has any idea what to do with AI on an individual level? First being good developer and learning how to use AI was sufficient, next it was being able to design architecture, then it was “taste” that made all the difference and now being an expert in the domain is the only thing that matters really. Until AI is basically in a stable, predictable,…

> Until AI is basically in a stable, predictable, state of improvement or stagnation, these takes will continue to be pointless and most likely completely wrong.

Little thing to keep in mind about AI: a technology is only called AI while it doesn’t work yet. Once it works reliable, we give it a proper name and something else becomes AI.

Re: Domain expertise has always been the real moat

#116

Post by 2fff »

maccard wrote: post #104
gerdesj wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LLMs are an additional tool to add to your arsenal. They are not omnipotent and need care, just like any other tool. My best effort, so far, at an analogy is a modern drill driver compared to a screw driver/brace and bit/etc: You can get some remarkable results in a very short time compared to the "old school" gear. You can get some "amazing" anecdotes eg "I screwed down an entire floor at 16" x 1" c/c within an hour…

But a modern drill absolutely 100% removes the need for a brace and bit. An LLM doesn't replace any existing tools.

I think we will see very limited human displacement - it'll be in narrow places where it makes sense. Much of it will just be augmentation.

Re: Domain expertise has always been the real moat

#117

Post by bigfatkitten »

saulpw wrote: post #49
asdff wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is kind of funny though how all this hand wringing on performance, graphics, quality quality quality, has just resulted in basically same stuff as what I was doing with my computer in 2000 but with enormous resource use in comparison. Still playing games, still same old discussion forums/social media/whatever on the internet, same email and office suite, same chat, same media players, same everything. I can't even…

I mostly agree with you, but you couldn't have have meaningful live videochat between continents in 2000.

CU-SeeMe worked pretty well in 1995 if you had access to a half decent Internet connection, which admittedly most people didn’t.

For well funded organisations, ISDN video conferencing facilities were reasonably common.

Re: Domain expertise has always been the real moat

#118

Post by spkm »

awesome_dude wrote: post #114
spkm wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember the OOP Hype 20 years ago? I'm still cleaning shit up from then in our codebase when everyone used patterns after skimming through the GoF book without even knowing why .... My prediction is in 20 years I will clean up the shit that was co-authored by Claude ... https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@JeremiahFieldhaven/116654345...

OOP and GoF are not the same thing - conflating the two has been the biggest mistake everyone has made (detractors and proponents alike)

I know, but they didn't.

Re: Domain expertise has always been the real moat

#119

Post by ethanwillis »

saulpw wrote: post #49
asdff wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is kind of funny though how all this hand wringing on performance, graphics, quality quality quality, has just resulted in basically same stuff as what I was doing with my computer in 2000 but with enormous resource use in comparison. Still playing games, still same old discussion forums/social media/whatever on the internet, same email and office suite, same chat, same media players, same everything. I can't even…

I mostly agree with you, but you couldn't have have meaningful live videochat between continents in 2000.

Maybe not between continents but we had meaningful live video chat in 1968

Re: Domain expertise has always been the real moat

#120

Post by ifh-hn »

This sort of thing has Microsoft Access vibes about it. All AI is enabling is domain experts to spin up their own software systems with no understanding of how the systems should be put together.

Sure it lowers the bar, and some people will design decent things, but mostly these things will become mission critical and broken at the same time.

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