| ▲ | fmbb 13 hours ago |
| I don’t think we can expect all workers at all companies to just adopt a new way of working. That’s not how competition works. If agentic AI is a good idea and if it increases productivity we should expect to see some startup blowing everyone out of the water. I think we should be seeing it now if it makes you say ten times more productive. A lot of startups have had a year of agentic AI now to help them beat their competitors. |
|
| ▲ | ej88 13 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| We're already seeing eye-watering, blistering growth from the new hot applied AI startups and labs Imo the wave of top down 'AI mandates' from incumbent companies is a direct result of the competitive pressure, although it probably wont work as well as the execs think it will that being said even Dario claims a 5-20% speedup from coding agents, 10x productivity only exists in microcosm prototypes, or if someone was so unskilled oneshotting a localhost web app is a 10x for them |
| |
| ▲ | bwestergard 12 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | "eye-watering, blistering growth from the new hot applied AI startups and labs" Could you give us a few examples? | | |
| ▲ | simonw 12 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Claude Cowork was apparently built in less than two weeks using Claude Code, and appears to be getting significant usage already. | | |
| ▲ | sjaiisba 12 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Only a personal anecdote, but the humans I know that have used it are all aware of how buggy it is. It feels like it was made in 2 weeks. Which gets back to the outsourcing argument: it’s always been cheap to make buggy code. If we were able to solve this, outsourcing would have been ubiquitous. Maybe LLMs change the calculus here too? | |
| ▲ | bwestergard 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | That's certainly a good example of a tool developed quickly thanks to AI assistance. But coding assistance tools must themselves be evaluated by what they produce. We won't see significant economic growth through using AI tools to build other AI tools recursively unless the there are companies using these tools to make enough money to justify the whole stack. I believe there are teams out there producing software that people are willing to pay for faster than they did before. But if we were on the verge of rapid economic growth, I would expect HN commenters to be able to rattle these off by the dozen. |
| |
| ▲ | ej88 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | claude code 1B+ arr ant 10xing ARR, oai harvey legora sierra decagon 11labs glean(ish) base10(infra) modal(infra) gamma mercor(ish) parloa cognition regulated industries giving these companies 7/8-fig contracts less than 2 years from incorporation |
| |
| ▲ | sjaiisba 13 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | AI has been a lifesaver for my low performing coworkers. They’re still heavily reliant on reviews, but their output is up. One of the lowest output guys I ever worked with is a massive LinkedIn LLM promoter. Not sure how long it’ll last though. With the time I spend on reviews I could have done it myself, so if they don’t start learning… | | |
| ▲ | HWR_14 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | > With the time I spend on reviews I could have done it myself, so if they don’t start learning… Then? Your job is still to review their code. If they are your coworker, you can not fire them. | | |
|
|
|
| ▲ | simonw 13 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| OpenClaw went from first commit in late November to Super Bowl commercial (it's meant to be the tech behind that AI.com vaporware thing) in February. (Whether you think OpenClaw is good software is kind of beside the point.) |
| |
| ▲ | qudat 29 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | OpenClaw is not going to be a thing in 6 months. The core idea might exist but that codebase is built on a house of cards and is being replicated in 10% of the code. I don’t think anyone is arguing against code agents being good at prototypes, which is a great feat, but most SWE work is built on maintaining code over time. | |
| ▲ | fmbb 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | It’s very much not beside the point. Productivity is measured in how much value you get out from the hours your workers put in. | | |
| ▲ | falcor84 12 hours ago | parent [-] | | But that only gets you to a philosophical argument about what "value" is. Many would argue that being able to get your thing into a Super Bowl commercial is extremely valuable. I definitely have never built anything that did. It's very much imperfect, but the only consistently agreed upon and useful definition of "value" we have in the West is monetary value, and in that sense, we have at least a few major examples of AI generating value rapidly. | | |
| ▲ | fmbb 9 hours ago | parent [-] | | OK but that also means VR was a success, and web 3, and NFTs. | | |
| ▲ | falcor84 9 hours ago | parent [-] | | Well, yes, these were definitely a success for some. And I personally still believe that VR will be a success in the longer-term. In any case, I agree with the grandparent post about the distinction between being successful and good. |
|
|
|
|
