21–30 of 63 posts
99% of the people who were building SaaS probably arent skilled enough to launch rockets or fight climate change with science.
Now if youre talking about kids still in school, who have yet to decide on what to major, then yes perhaps most of them will forgo learning how to build software and pursue hard tech fields instead
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As with all disruptive technologies. Uber was 10x better than taxis when it was being pumped full of VC cash, now it's better enough that it's my go-to choice, but not by a 2x margin. AirBnB was 10x better than hotels when it was being pumped full of cash, hadn't realised that people might trash places, and chancers hadn't filled the platform with crap properties, now it's a wash and only another option alongside hot…
This won’t age well. Let’s come back in a few years.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As with all disruptive technologies. Uber was 10x better than taxis when it was being pumped full of VC cash, now it's better enough that it's my go-to choice, but not by a 2x margin. AirBnB was 10x better than hotels when it was being pumped full of cash, hadn't realised that people might trash places, and chancers hadn't filled the platform with crap properties, now it's a wash and only another option alongside hot…
This won’t age well. Let’s come back in a few years.
Personally, I think AI is in the hope cycle right now. It's new (in an industry that sees very few new things.) I can see it being a useful tool in our belt in the coming years.
But equally, I don't think it'll replace (most of) us. I think we'll use it to be more productive.
Your target market will also matter. We're B2B, and companies don't buy "software" from us, they buy solutions to problems. And that very much includes the ability to talk to a human and have them solve the problem. (The human might use AI to solve the problem)
The point is, this is a large complex future space, and I believe the statement above will age well. AI will move the needle, but at the moment it's future capabilities and effects are also largely speculation.
Or maybe I'm just jaded having seen this cycle a lot, where most fall short, some disappear, amd a few stick around.
Let's assume that AI is human level (it's not, but humour me). Let's assume that businesses can buy an off-the-shelf black box of AI that will run whatever business IT process they want to run. Customer data goes in, actions for humans to perform come out. It's basically an automated call centre full of humans. Now something goes wrong. A customer isn't getting what they ordered. What do you do about it? Do you just…
I was hired as a CTO for a start-up that had a shitty solution (bad performance, bad practices - such as storing passwords in plaintext and customer service would just copy the password and log in the customer's account manually).
They had a custom back-end where they were basically handcuffed to a couple of flows. They couldn't see the full state of the system. Not even a fraction of it. Everyone hated it to the point where most were using whiteboards to work.
My first move was to normalize the database and throw in an off the shelf back-end where they got access to the full state of the system (with some aspects of course conveniently configured out).
Then, based on their own whiteboard flows and how they were using the new all you can eat back-end, we implemented a number of flows that mapped to how they actually worked. This is on top of being able to manually pull any switch. From what I could tell, they loved it, both the freedom and the ease.
It was truly satisfying to see those empty whiteboards.
Let's assume that AI is human level (it's not, but humour me). Let's assume that businesses can buy an off-the-shelf black box of AI that will run whatever business IT process they want to run. Customer data goes in, actions for humans to perform come out. It's basically an automated call centre full of humans. Now something goes wrong. A customer isn't getting what they ordered. What do you do about it? Do you just…
> Do you just drop the customer? Well that's lost revenue, or an easy win for another company Works for Google. Lots of their stuff has non-existent support even today. At the end of the day it might cost more to acquire the customer than not.
Ok, they drop customers too, and even as a customer its gard to talk to a human. And that in itself is a huge barrier to entry to some possible customers.
Personally we use Google for ads. We pay them money, but don't get to talk to a human. They'd drop us if we behave in a way the algorithm doesn't like. They get away with this because there are very few alternatives.
But we don't use GCP. We use AWS, and talk to a human a couple times a year. And issues get fixed.
So yes, it works for Google, but only really in the space where they have a somewhat-monopoly.
In other spaces like Gmail or Google+, they happily drop users all the time because those are users, not customers.
My experience tells me that the world of atoms requires a perfectly level playing field in order to support reliable businesses. The world of atoms is inherently stochastic with many unexpected events. We cannot plan for the future if the government intervenes in the markets. It's hard enough to plan for 'natural' events. We shouldn't also have to worry about the thousands of ways in which the government could destro…
But business realities mean that just cannot exist, it actually doesn't survive first contact with business logic let alone all the auth* issues. An atomic level of interoperability will hit this issue immediately.
If they are seeing AI as a sort of fuzzy connector between components, it is a non-starter from my perspective. Even if you had squishy brains doing the work, it wouldn't pan out.
“ We are regularly building and launching rockets into space. We are fighting climate change with science and industry” 99% of the people who were building SaaS probably arent skilled enough to launch rockets or fight climate change with science. Now if youre talking about kids still in school, who have yet to decide on what to major, then yes perhaps most of them will forgo learning how to build software and pursue…
Software is eating the world, but according to [0] there's only 27 million of us in the whole world. We need all the tools we can get to amplify our efforts. Further, I find that AI makes it much easier to dabble outside my wheelhouse and to interface with other technical people much quicker and better. Where I used to have to read endlessly to understand the context of unknown-to-me technology, now I can get that in…
Yes, the AI let's you ask questions and get answers. It's a more interactive approach, and it helps to clarify thinking, but having a solid foundation will always lead to better understanding.
As someone who has always worked in a small company, and as someone who has by necessity had to learn many different parts of IT, up and down the IT stack, it's always been possible.
Equally I work with businesses, the vast majority of whom are less than 10 people - and those small businesses produce code every day which is used all over the place. Turns out, if you knew a domain really well, could code, and don't have 3 layers of management, good things can get done really quickly.
Let's assume that AI is human level (it's not, but humour me). Let's assume that businesses can buy an off-the-shelf black box of AI that will run whatever business IT process they want to run. Customer data goes in, actions for humans to perform come out. It's basically an automated call centre full of humans. Now something goes wrong. A customer isn't getting what they ordered. What do you do about it? Do you just…
> Let's assume that AI is human level (it's not, but humour me) OK > Now something goes wrong. A customer isn't getting what they ordered. What do you do about it? What do you do when something goes wrong with a human? Do that. End of story.
Yea but business needs are constantly evolving, most of the time one step ahead of the accurate understanding of what needs to be done. We get paid, in theory, to build that, but main expense is not actually building, it's finding what needs to be done and then maintaining it. No ai can address that imho
If you don’t think an AI could do that then I think you need more imagination and to follow the OOMs