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Back To Atoms: Why we can stop building SaaS and build the future instead.

carllippert.com

41–50 of 63 posts

Re: Back To Atoms: Why we can stop building SaaS and build the future instead.

#41
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

You can reason with a human. You can’t with an AI. And if you got rid of all your human tools because AI, how do you put a human back in the loop?

We assumed it was human level in this thought experiment. I don’t see why you wouldn’t be able to reason with a human level AGI

Re: Back To Atoms: Why we can stop building SaaS and build the future instead.

#42
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

This is a decision that companies can take, and some do (although I'd somewhat contest the google example, I've had good experiences before working here, and I'm biased of course). I think the issue will come when companies start dropping customers that don't fit certain templates. They'll be accused of using racist or sexist AI, or something like that, and it'll be hard to defend against that because AI is a black b…

> They'll be accused of using racist or sexist AI

I don’t see how that would be relevant from the companies perspective. Companies get accused of this and much worse all the time and it almost never has any real effect, happy to be corrected

Re: Back To Atoms: Why we can stop building SaaS and build the future instead.

#43

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, you don't want to do that. Are those the only or even main reasons you don't want to "just drop the customer"? I hope not. Is offering a good service at an attractive price, one that delivers on its promises not even a thing any more?

The comment says that to support their main point

Re: Back To Atoms: Why we can stop building SaaS and build the future instead.

#44

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…

It's turtles all the way down. C++ compiles to C which compiles to Assembly... AI will own the next layer... dynamically generating SQL and code to access existing systems.

Or maybe just delegate us the work. Maybe we are the assembly of AI and we don't know it yet.

Re: Back To Atoms: Why we can stop building SaaS and build the future instead.

#45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can reason with a human. You can’t with an AI. And if you got rid of all your human tools because AI, how do you put a human back in the loop?

We assumed it was human level in this thought experiment. I don’t see why you wouldn’t be able to reason with a human level AGI

Are there any consequences for an AGI?

Re: Back To Atoms: Why we can stop building SaaS and build the future instead.

#46

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 completely agree. I do not believe that AI is a disruptive technology like computers and the internet was. It will at best be a + 25 % efficiency for business processes - which is awesome and I am all for it. But it is not a game changer that will fundamentally change how things are done.

25% efficiency gain, but you have to burn the planet to do it.

Is it worth it?

Re: Back To Atoms: Why we can stop building SaaS and build the future instead.

#47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's turtles all the way down. C++ compiles to C which compiles to Assembly... AI will own the next layer... dynamically generating SQL and code to access existing systems.

Or maybe just delegate us the work. Maybe we are the assembly of AI and we don't know it yet.

[deleted]

Re: Back To Atoms: Why we can stop building SaaS and build the future instead.

#48

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 … Now something goes wrong. A customer isn't getting what they ordered. What do you do about it?

Seems like you’re also assuming some AI-inherent problem which is left unexplained.

If it’s a human level AI you tell it to solve the issue with the company’s philosophy in mind and wonder why off the shelf human level AI doesn’t have that in its “system prompt” or whatever term it will be.

This whole problem is blown out of something that every AI-phobe seems to assume but keeps secret, which is a common trope at this point.

Re: Back To Atoms: Why we can stop building SaaS and build the future instead.

#49
imo most of the software play is going to be an infra play where the max of value is being provided/captured by the big tech

there will def be some opportunities for mid-tier software(not necessarily saas) companies where they end up leveraging either some niche distribution or some neat packaging.

another ray of hope is - distribution takes time, there is a long cycle of adoption for any new tech. currently we are in "the chasm" and some of us(us being software builders) will end up benefitting from a long adoption curves. but i have my doubts if it's a vc backed thing as it will be a slow cycle.

Re: Back To Atoms: Why we can stop building SaaS and build the future instead.

#50

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 see this argument all the time, and they always miss one key thing.

The comparison is made is 'Can AI take over X, and do as good as a job as someone who's good at X'. But I think the reality is that these products aren't coming after the ones that are doing 'great work'.

There's tons of mediocre software being written and in many cases mediocre is kind of good enough. I think it's going to empower people who _aren't_ thoughtful and they'll be more productive than ever.

So my prediction is that companies will start trusting this black box, because it's cheap and fast. I also think a quality crisis in many fields is inevitable. We're already seeing this a bunch in very obvious ways, but its way more scary when the models are better and the errors are subtle.

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