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Codex for almost everything

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Re: Codex for almost everything

#461

Post by donnisnoni »

andoando wrote: post #129
cjbarber wrote: post #14

My current expectation is that the Cowork/Codex set of "professional agents" for non-technical users will be one of the most important and fastest growing product categories of all time, so far. i.e. agents for knowledge workers who are not software engineers A few thoughts and questions: 1. I expect that this set of products will be extremely disruptive to many software businesses. It's like when a new VP joins a co…

Totally agree, AI interfaces will become the norm. Even all the websites, desktop/mobile apps will become obsolete.

AI won't kill apps, it will just change who 'clicks' the buttons. Even the most powerful AI needs a source of truth and a structured environment to pull data from. A world without websites is a world where AI has nothing to read and nowhere to execute. We aren’t deleting the UI. We’re just building the backends that feed the agents.

Re: Codex for almost everything

#462

Post by vanillameow »

throw_m239339 wrote: post #400

All of you are ironically completely oblivious to the fact that you're training your own replacement by using these tools, you're even paying for it. Eventually, the companies you work for will just "hire" Anthropic or OpenAI agents in your place and you'll be out of job, no matter your seniority. Mark my words.

I mean, sentiment in this thread (and the neighboring Opus 4.7 one) are overwhelmingly negative this time around. That comment prob would have made more sense around 4.5/4.6.

That said, until models produce verifiably correct work (which is a difficult, if not impossible, bar to clear), I sorta doubt it. Not because humans intrinsically produce better or smarter work (arguably, many humans across many domains already don't vs current models), but because office politics and pushing blame around are a delicate game in corporations.

It's one thing for a product lead to make wild promises and then shift blame to the black box developer team (and vice versa shift blame to the customers when talking to the devs) but once you are the only dude operating the slot machine product generator 5000 the dynamic will noticeably shift, and someone will want someone to be responsible if another DB admin key leaks in production. This sorta diffuses itself when you have 3 layers of organization below you, but again, doesn't really work with a black box code generator.

Re: Codex for almost everything

#463

Post by cbovis »

cultofmetatron wrote: post #176
daviding wrote: post #10

There seems a fair enthusiasm in the UI of these to hide code from coders. Like the prompt interaction is the true source and the actual code is some sort of annoying intermediate runtime inconvenience to cover up. I get that productivity can be improved with a lot of this for non developers, just not sure using 'code' as the term is the right one or not.

> There seems a fair enthusiasm in the UI of these to hide code from coders. Like the prompt interaction is the true source and the actual code is some sort of annoying intermediate runtime inconvenience to cover up. I've finally started getting into AI with a coding harness but I've take the opposite approach. usually I have the structure of my code in my mind already and talk to the prompt like I'm pairing with it.…

This is the way.

The funny thing is my expectation was that adoption of AI coding would kill the joy of getting into a flow state but I've actually found myself starting to slip into an alternate type of flow state.

Instead of hammering out code manually over an hour the new flow state is a back and forth with the LLM on something that's clear in my mind. It's a collaborative state where I'm ultimately not writing much code manually but I'm still bouncing between technical thoughts, designing architecture, reviewing code, switching direction etc.

Re: Codex for almost everything

#464

Post by bob1029 »

louiereederson wrote: post #56
cjbarber wrote: post #14

My current expectation is that the Cowork/Codex set of "professional agents" for non-technical users will be one of the most important and fastest growing product categories of all time, so far. i.e. agents for knowledge workers who are not software engineers A few thoughts and questions: 1. I expect that this set of products will be extremely disruptive to many software businesses. It's like when a new VP joins a co…

Maybe but the product category is not necessarily a monolith in the same way that Claude Code is. These general purpose tools will have to action across a heterogeneous set of enterprise systems/tools. A runtime environment must be developed to do that but where that of the agent ends and that of the enterprise systems begins is a totally open question.

> A runtime environment must be developed to do that but where that of the agent ends and that of the enterprise systems begins is a totally open question.

I think something like SQL w/ row-level security might be the answer to the problem. You often want to constrain how the model can touch the data based upon current tool use or conversation context. Not just globally. If an agent provides a tenant id as a required parameter to a tool call, we can include this in that specific sql session and the server will guarantee all rules are followed accordingly. This works for pretty much anything. Not just tenant ids.

SQL can work as a bidirectional interface while also enforcing complex connection level policies. I would go out of band on a few things like CRUD around raw files on disk, but these are still synchronized with the sql store and constrained by what it will allow.

The safety of this is difficult to argue with compared to raw shell access. The hard part is normalizing the data and setting up adapters to load & extract as needed.

Re: Codex for almost everything

#465

Post by suddenlybananas »

roel_v wrote: post #457
troupo wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What are you using today? In my experience LLMs are already pretty good at this. LLMS are good at "find me a two week vacation two months from now"? Or at "do my taxes"? > how to use Cowork. Yes, and I taught my mom how to use Apple Books, and have to re-teach her every time Apple breaks the interface. Ask your non-tech friends what they do with and how they feel about Cowork in a few weeks. > I think where our vie…

"LLMS are good at "find me a two week vacation two months from now"?" Of course they are. I gave one a similar prompt a few weeks ago, albeit quite a bit more verbose (actually I just dictated it, train of thought, with couple of 'eh actually, forget what I just said about x, do y instead") and although I wasn't brave enough to give it my credit card and finalize the bookings, it would have paid for the bookings I ha…

>although I wasn't brave enough to give it my credit card and finalize the bookings

So it's not trustworthy enough for you, someone clearly interested in the hype of LLMs.

Re: Codex for almost everything

#467

Post by TeMPOraL »

jbstack wrote: post #454
TeMPOraL wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want. If I get 10X more productive, I can unilaterally increase my compensation 10X by doing my stuff in 1 unit of time instead of 10 it took, and splitting the remaining 9 units of time into, say, 4 units of time doing more work, securing my position and setting myself up for promotion, and 5 units of time doing whatever the fuck I want . Not all compensation shows up in a bank account - working less, or under les…

You want it, but then you closed by explaining exactly why you shouldn't want it. Plus, the new baseline isn't neutral (as in, everyone is the same again). If humans can now do 10x the work as before, the employer doesn't need the same number of humans to carry out its work. So the new baseline is actually "let's keep 1 employee and fire the other 9", unless the business can find a way to suddenly expand 10x so that…

> So the new baseline is actually "let's keep 1 employee and fire the other 9", unless the business can find a way to suddenly expand 10x so that it needs 10x as much work done.

If they have any surplus of money (or loans) they'll try, so those 9 employees may end up becoming team leads or middle management, trying to start new initiatives to get the 10x expansion (and 100x improvement).

The market isn't anywhere near efficient enough to directly translate productivity improvements into labor reductions. Thankfully, because everything that's nice and hopeful and human lives within the market inefficiency; a fully efficient market would be a hell worse than any writer or preacher ever imagined.

Re: Codex for almost everything

#468

Post by grey-area »

jampekka wrote: post #283
flux3125 wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Code quality and IDEs aren't going anywhere, especially in complex enterprise systems. AI has improved a lot, but we're still far from a "forget about code" world.

> Code quality and IDEs aren't going anywhere, especially in complex enterprise systems. Was code quality ever there in complex enterprise systems?

Yes it was there (not in all of course, but in some), in fact that is where the concept came from - it's necessary when maintaining large systems to keep the code consistent and clear.

Re: Codex for almost everything

#470

Post by intended »

King-Aaron wrote: post #458
yes_man wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If everyone becomes 10x more productive it won’t mean the companies cash flow 10x’s. Where value is loose there is competition, so in theory everyone should win. Unless nobody else can compete to capture that loose 10x value, in which case congratulations, you are now a unicorn. Of course in reality in the short term what happens is companies lay off people to increase margins. Times will be tough for workers, and eq…

Tasks have value because they take effort to complete. If you remove the effort from those tasks, they will have no value. 10x the value of 0 is 0

Eh, I’d say the premiums drop, and that there is a residual value that is still left. So maybe 0.1 or 0.2 instead of 0.
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