Are there any projects working on models for business management? I feel for skilled technical people the benefit would be from off-loading a lot of the management side and let them focus on the hard problems.
AI is ushering in a “tiny team” era
181–189 of 189 posts
Re: AI is ushering in a “tiny team” era
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
My point was that > You really haven't, since they can't just generate tokens at the rate and consistency of an LLM Is wrong. It's not because they can't generate tokens at the rate and consistency of an LLM It's because trying to offload your work onto your coworkers this way would make you a huge jerk
Exactly. You're literally making my point while trying to argue against me. Whether it's because humans can't handle the pace or because it would make you a jerk to try: either way, you just agreed that humans can't/shouldn't handle unlimited questioning. That's precisely why LLMs are valuable for deep exploratory thinking, so when we engage teammates, we're bringing higher-quality, focused questions instead of raw e…
> That's precisely why LLMs are valuable for deep exploratory thinking, so when we engage teammates, we're bringing higher-quality, focused questions instead of raw exploration.
This isn't really new though. We used to use search engines and language docs and stack overflow for this
Before that people used mailing lists and reference texts
LLMs don't really get me to answers faster than Google did with SO previously imo
And it still relies on some human having asked and answered the question before, so the LLM could be trained on it
Re: AI is ushering in a “tiny team” era
#183I'm working on a bunch of different projects trying out new stuff all the time for the past six months. Every time I do something I add another layer of AI automation/enhancement to my personal dev setup with the goal of trying to see how much I can extend my own ability to produce while delivering high quality projects. I definitely wouldn't say I'm 10x of what I could do before across the board but a solid 2-3x ave…
At some point you'll lose that edge because you stop being able to differentiate yourself. If you can x10 with agents, others can too. AI will let you reach the "higher" low hanging fruits.
Same thing as before, some people will x100 with agents while most will at maximum x10.
Re: AI is ushering in a “tiny team” era
#184One area of business that I'm struggling in is how boring it is talking to an LLM, I enjoy standing at a whiteboard thinking through ideas, but more and more I see push for "talk to the llm, ask the llm, the llm will know" - The LLM will know, but I'd rather talk to a human about it. Also in pure business, it takes me too long to unlock nuances that an experienced human just knows, I have to do a lot of "yeah but" wo…
It's not quite the same but since the dawn of smartphones, I've hated it when you ask a question, as a discussion starter or to get people's views, and some jerk reads off the wikipedia answer as if that's some insight I didn't know was available to me, and basically ruins the discussion. I know talking to an llm is not exactly parallel, but it's a similar idea, it's like talking to the guy with wikipedia instead of…
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Re: AI is ushering in a “tiny team” era
#185One area of business that I'm struggling in is how boring it is talking to an LLM, I enjoy standing at a whiteboard thinking through ideas, but more and more I see push for "talk to the llm, ask the llm, the llm will know" - The LLM will know, but I'd rather talk to a human about it. Also in pure business, it takes me too long to unlock nuances that an experienced human just knows, I have to do a lot of "yeah but" wo…
Thinking things through is desirable. But in many discussions both sides basically "vibe-out" what they think the objective truth is. If it's a fact that can be looked up, just get your phone and don't stall the discussion with guessing games.
Re: AI is ushering in a “tiny team” era
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly. You're literally making my point while trying to argue against me. Whether it's because humans can't handle the pace or because it would make you a jerk to try: either way, you just agreed that humans can't/shouldn't handle unlimited questioning. That's precisely why LLMs are valuable for deep exploratory thinking, so when we engage teammates, we're bringing higher-quality, focused questions instead of raw e…
> That's precisely why LLMs are valuable for deep exploratory thinking, so when we engage teammates, we're bringing higher-quality, focused questions instead of raw exploration. This isn't really new though. We used to use search engines and language docs and stack overflow for this Before that people used mailing lists and reference texts LLMs don't really get me to answers faster than Google did with SO previously…
No offense, if this is your response, then I don't think you have any experience to qualify you to have this discussion, you clearly do not have basic experience in using LLMs.
To make my point, let me know when Stack Overflow has a post specifically about the nuances of your private codebase.
Or when Google can help you reason through why your specific API design choices might conflict with a new feature you're considering. Or when a mailing list can walk through the implications of refactoring your particular data model given your team's constraints and timeline.
LLMs aren't just faster search: they're interactive reasoning partners that can engage with your specific context, constraints, and mental models. They can help you think through problems that have never been asked before because they're unique to your situation. That's the 'deep exploratory thinking' I'm talking about.
The fact that you're comparing this to Stack Overflow tells me you're thinking about LLMs as glorified search engines rather than reasoning tools. Which explains why you think teammates can provide the same value: because you're not actually using the technology for what it's uniquely good at.
Re: AI is ushering in a “tiny team” era
#187I'm working on a bunch of different projects trying out new stuff all the time for the past six months. Every time I do something I add another layer of AI automation/enhancement to my personal dev setup with the goal of trying to see how much I can extend my own ability to produce while delivering high quality projects. I definitely wouldn't say I'm 10x of what I could do before across the board but a solid 2-3x ave…
At some point you'll lose that edge because you stop being able to differentiate yourself. If you can x10 with agents, others can too. AI will let you reach the "higher" low hanging fruits.
Using agents is the new skill. AI will always be chasing a tail where some are 10-100x more efficient at using the tool chain as others.
Re: AI is ushering in a “tiny team” era
#188Re: AI is ushering in a “tiny team” era
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
You describe three potential undesirable outcomes: - consolidation, such that there are only a few different choices of soup - a race to the bottom in quality - poisoning These are all possibilities under our current system, and we have mechanisms (laws and market competition) which limit the extent to which they occur. What is it about extreme automation technology that you think will increase these prevalence of th…
Automation returns more power (abstract) to the owning class, which will make inequality more severe over time, which then results in said owning class having enough power to change legislation and market dynamics to their own desires. So, in turn - more poisoning, less quality, and more consolidation. A lot of people think wealth inequality isn't a big deal, but I disagree. The more proportion of money a select few…
> Automation returns more power (abstract) to the owning class
This is a decent point, but you're describing the world we already live in, no? I mean, we already have significant automation, significant wealth inequality, significant ability for control of money to affect legislation and culture.
But we (in the US at least) generally have abundant access to food which is safe to eat.
> Corruption thrives off of wealth inequality. Without it, it cannot exist.
Corruption can exist without wealth inequality.
Consider a city where teachers and politicians earn the exact same salary (and the same ability to build wealth over time). You might think this eliminates the potential for corruption, but imagine a scenario where politicians heavily rely on teachers' unions for their election campaigns. In this case, politicians might make decisions that benefit the unions (e.g. no performance standards, lifetime tenure, long holidays, keeping underenrolled schools open) in exchange for their support, even if those decisions don't optimize for student achievement (or whatever else taxpayers want schools to promote).