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AI agents are starting to eat SaaS

martinalderson.com

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Re: AI agents are starting to eat SaaS

#31

Post by _pdp_ »

I often give the follow analogy which I think is a good proxy to what is going on.

Spreadsheets! They are everywhere. In fact, they are so abundant these days that that many are spawned for a quick job and immediately discarded. In fact, the cost of having these spreadsheets is practically zero so in many cases one may find themselves having hundreds if not thousands of them sitting around with no indication to ever being deleted. Spreadsheets are also personal and annoying especially when forced upon you (since you did not make it yourself). Spreadsheets are also programming for non-programmers.

These new vibe-coded tools are essentially the new spreadsheets. They are useful,... for 5 minutes. They are also easily forgettable. They are also personal (for the person who made them) and hated (by everyone else). I have no doubt in my mind that organisation will start using more and more of these new types of software to automate repetitive tasks, improve existing processes and so on but ultimately, apart from perhaps just a few, none will replace existing, purpose-built systems.

Ultimately you can make your own pretty dashboard that nobody else will see or use because when the cost of production is so low your users will want to create their own version because they would think they could do better.

After all, how hard is to prompt harder then the previous person?

Also, do you really think that SaaS companies are not deploying AI themselves? It is practically an arms race: the non-expert plus some AI vs 10 specialist developers plus their AIs doing this all day long.

Who is going to have the upper-hand?

Re: AI agents are starting to eat SaaS

#32

Post by gaigalas »

Oarch wrote: post #9

Earlier this year I thought that rare proprietary knowledge and IP was a safe haven from AI, since LLMs can only scrub public data. Then it dawned on me how many companies are deeply integrating Copilot into their everyday workflows. It's the perfect Trojan Horse.

What kind of rare proprietary knowledge?

Re: AI agents are starting to eat SaaS

#33

Post by NikolaNovak »

I get and agree with a lot of skepticism (and I get where ad-hominem attacks come from:). I have AI shoved my throat at work and at home 24x7 and most of it not for my benefit, and the writer doesn't out as much rigor into writing as might be beneficial.

At the same time, to the core theme of the article - do any of us think a small sassy SaaS like Bingo card creator could take off now? :-)

https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/selling_s...

Re: AI agents are starting to eat SaaS

#34

Post by mc32 »

sotrusting wrote: post #27
findjashua wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

providers' ToS explicitly states whether or not any data provided is used for training purposes. the usual that i've seen is that while they retain the right to use the data on free tiers, it's almost never the case for paid tiers

Right, so totally cool to ignore the law but our TOS is a binding contract.

Yes, they can be sued for breach of contract. And it’s not a regular ToS but a signed MSA and other legally binding documents.

Re: AI agents are starting to eat SaaS

#35

Post by blazespin »

There is a significant risk of uncertainty in all of this, the most damaging aspect really. If AI improves, and it is threatening to, then growth in SaaS may decline to a point where investing in it needs to be reconsidered.

The problem is, nobody knows how much and how fast AI will improve or how much it will cost if it does.

That uncertainty alone is very problematic and I think is being underestimated in terms of its impact on everything it can potentially touch.

For now though, I've seen a wall form in benchmarks like swe-rebench and swebench pro. Greenfield is expanding, but maintenance is still a problem.

I think AI needs to get much better at maintenance before serious companies can choose build over buy for anything but the most trivial apps.

Re: AI agents are starting to eat SaaS

#36

Post by tick_tock_tick »

leptons wrote: post #18
Aurornis wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using an LLM on data does not ingest that data into the training corpus. LLMs don’t “learn” from the information they operate on, contrary to what a lot of people assume. None of the mainstream paid services ingest operating data into their training sets. You will find a lot of conspiracy theories claiming that companies are saying one thing but secretly stealing your data, of course.

> LLMs don’t “learn” from the information they operate on, contrary to what a lot of people assume. Nothing is really preventing this though. AI companies have already proven they will ignore copyright and any other legal nuisance so they can train models.

I mean is it really ignoring copyright when copyright doesn't limit them in anyway on training?

Re: AI agents are starting to eat SaaS

#37

Post by Retric »

Aurornis wrote: post #16
Oarch wrote: post #9

Earlier this year I thought that rare proprietary knowledge and IP was a safe haven from AI, since LLMs can only scrub public data. Then it dawned on me how many companies are deeply integrating Copilot into their everyday workflows. It's the perfect Trojan Horse.

Using an LLM on data does not ingest that data into the training corpus. LLMs don’t “learn” from the information they operate on, contrary to what a lot of people assume. None of the mainstream paid services ingest operating data into their training sets. You will find a lot of conspiracy theories claiming that companies are saying one thing but secretly stealing your data, of course.

Companies have already shifting from not using customer data to giving them an option to opt out ex:

“How can I control whether my data is used for model training?

If you are logged into Copilot with a Microsoft Account or other third-party authentication, you can control whether your conversations are used for training the generative AI models used in Copilot. Opting out will exclude your past, present, and future conversations from being used for training these AI models, unless you choose to opt back in. If you opt out, that change will be reflected throughout our systems within 30 days.” https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/privacy-faq-for-mi...

At this point suggesting it has never and will her happen is wildly optimistic.

Re: AI agents are starting to eat SaaS

#38

Post by protocolture »

sotrusting wrote: post #27
findjashua wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

providers' ToS explicitly states whether or not any data provided is used for training purposes. the usual that i've seen is that while they retain the right to use the data on free tiers, it's almost never the case for paid tiers

Right, so totally cool to ignore the law but our TOS is a binding contract.

Where are they ignoring the law?

Re: AI agents are starting to eat SaaS

#40

Post by [deleted] »

Aurornis wrote: post #16
Oarch wrote: post #9

Earlier this year I thought that rare proprietary knowledge and IP was a safe haven from AI, since LLMs can only scrub public data. Then it dawned on me how many companies are deeply integrating Copilot into their everyday workflows. It's the perfect Trojan Horse.

Using an LLM on data does not ingest that data into the training corpus. LLMs don’t “learn” from the information they operate on, contrary to what a lot of people assume. None of the mainstream paid services ingest operating data into their training sets. You will find a lot of conspiracy theories claiming that companies are saying one thing but secretly stealing your data, of course.

[deleted]
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