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Codex for almost everything

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Re: Codex for almost everything

#541

Post by fragmede »

adammarples wrote: post #471
culopatin wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think this will continue growing if we stop struggling and posting our findings on forums?

I don't think so, because Anthropic now has your question, the steps it tried, and the solution that finally worked, all in text form, already on their servers thanks to your claude session. Claude usage is itself a goldmine of training data.

Ish. If I have it generate code for me that doesn't work and I don't tell it why it's garbage and don't share my cleaned up results on github after, it doesn't know how or why the code that was output was bad, or even that it was.

Re: Codex for almost everything

#542

Post by DrScientist »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #445
nonameiguess wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does this obviate the need for software? In order for what you asked to be possible, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Figma all still need to exist and you need licenses for them. If you can figure out the next step and say "Claude, go find me buyers and sell shit for me without using any pre-existing software," have at it. It can't be social media, I guess, since social media is software and Claude is supposed to ge…

> How does this obviate the need for software? It doesn't obviate the need for software, but it greatly devalues software products , as they become reduced to tool calls for LLMs. This is good for users, because software products are defined by boundaries - borders drawn around the code to focus and package functionality, yes, but also to limit interoperability and create a sales channel (UX being the perfect marketi…

> I mean, that's what I'd do if I could afford to hire a person to operate those tools for me. That, again, is the best mental model for LLMs - they're little people on a chip, cheaper to employ than actual people.

Sounds like more of a threat to people than software then.

I get the point that if an agent could generate a presentation by directly writing to some open format with a free viewer then PowerPoint would be out of the picture.

However the tool has to be pretty close to 100% for that to work. If I have a presentation that's 90% there it's probably going to be a lot easier to finish it off manually in Powerpoint than try different variants of prompts. In which case I'll still need that Powerpoint license.

Re: Codex for almost everything

#543

Post by voncheese »

bob1029 wrote: post #51
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…

> 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 agree this is going to be big. I threw a prototype of a domain-specific agent into the proverbial hornets' nest recently and it has altered the narrative about what might be possible. The part that makes this powerful is…

>UI/UX development is often the most expensive part of software engineering.

I disagree with this as a blanket statement. At least in the tech world (i.e. tech companies that build technology products), UI/UX is often less expensive than the platform and infrastructure parts of the technology products, certainly at any tech that runs at scale.

Re: Codex for almost everything

#545

Post by jorl17 »

magicalhippo wrote: post #460
jorl17 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very much agree. Everyday people can now do much more than they could, because they can build programs. The idea that code is something sacred and only devs can somehow do it is dying, and I personally love it, as I am watching it enable so many of my friends and family who have no idea how to code. Today, when we think of someone "using the computer" we gravitate towards people using apps, installing them, writing d…

> Everyday people can now do much more than they could, because they can build programs. Indeed. Just spoke to a buddy, he's got some electronics knowledge, he's been code-curious but never gotten past very simple bash scripts and Excel sheets (vlookup etc to drive calculations). He got himself a Claude subscription and has now implemented a non-trivial Arduino project, involving multiple CAN-bus modules and an inter…

Exactly the kind of thing I've been seeing too. And often with people who know even less.

You spoke of an Arduino, and I have a friend with zero coding knowledge who built a fun project with an ESP32 and a tiny camera to detect when they are "not looking at the computer".

But, sure, people keep saying we're delusional when we say that this is where the world is headed: people building things, so often without even knowing they are doing anything "different" than what they were doing before, when they simply clicked buttons and "things just happened in the computer".

Re: Codex for almost everything

#546

Post by driverdan »

elictronic wrote: post #441
avaer wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> for normie agents to take off in the way that you expect, you're going to have to grant them with full access At this point it's a foregone conclusion this is what users will choose. It'll be like (lack of) privacy on the internet caused by the ad industrial complex, but much worse and much more invasive. The threats are real, but it's just a product opportunity to these companies. OpenAI and friends will sell the…

2-3 news stories of people having bank accounts cleared and the product is dead on arrival.

You'd think so but all the evidence so far points to the contrary. Most people seem perfectly happy to trade security and privacy for convenience.

Re: Codex for almost everything

#547

Post by ryandrake »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #444
ryandrake wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, in general we are going to find that ultimately most employee end users don't want it. Assuming it actually makes you more productive. I mean, who the hell wants to be 10X more productive without a commensurate 10X compensation increase? You're just giving away that value to your employer. On the other hand, entrepreneurs and managers are going to want it for their employees (and force it on them) for the ab…

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…

Good point. My rant assumed that "10x productivity" meant 10x output in 1x time, rather than 1x output in 0.1x time. Only one of those are actually objectionable.

Re: Codex for almost everything

#548

Post by joshysmith »

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…

I still think we're several "my agent sent an inappropriate email to all my contacts" away from people figuring out proper security controls for these things

Re: Codex for almost everything

#549

Post by drnick1 »

nonameiguess wrote: post #265
MrsPeaches wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is me! I’m semi-normie (MechEng with a bit of Matlab now working as a ceo). I spend most of my day in Claude code but outputs are word docs, presentations, excel sheets, research etc. I recently got it to plan a social media campaign and produce a ppt with key messaging and content calendar for the next year, then draft posts in Figma for the first 5 weeks of the campaign and then used a social media aggregator…

How does this obviate the need for software? In order for what you asked to be possible, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Figma all still need to exist and you need licenses for them. If you can figure out the next step and say "Claude, go find me buyers and sell shit for me without using any pre-existing software," have at it. It can't be social media, I guess, since social media is software and Claude is supposed to ge…

> In order for what you asked to be possible, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Figma all still need to exist and you need licenses for them.

Or not. Besides, the better AI models can effortlessly generate Latex/Beamer, a far superior solution for typesetting and presentations. Anything than can be done in Excel can be done in Python. Those proprietary tools are a thing of the past, no one should use them anymore.

Re: Codex for almost everything

#550

Post by overgard »

frde_me wrote: post #517
overgard wrote: post #365

Maybe I lack imagination, but I just can't figure out what I'd use this for. I'm finding AI helpful in writing code (especially verbose Unreal Engine C++ code) as a companion to my designs, but, I really don't want it using my computer. I dunno, I guess the other use case would be summarizing slack or discord but otherwise this seems to me like a solution in search of a problem.

Going on an old legacy website, downloading reports, summarizing them, and then doing things based on those Or basically any app without MCP capabilities I ask the AI daily to summarize information across surfaces, and it's painful when I have to go screenshot things myself in a bunch of places because those apps were not made to extract information out of them, and are complete black boxes with a UI on top

Feels like a lot of summarizing, which is just something I rarely need. YMMV depending on your job of course.
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