What are those agents doing? I am out of the loop. Bitcoin mining? Blogging? Reddit bots?

drewnick 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I have deepseek agents doing email responses, with real tools (think running quotes, gathering info, scheduling things) and running business processes that used to be done by $35/hr administrative type people. And the capabilities are expanding every day as I learn how to build scaffolding around the model.

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esperent 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> I have deepseek agents doing email responses

So, spam?

	▲	abustamam 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Not all communications done by a non-human is necessarily spam.
	▲	eru an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Spam is unsolicited, unwanted email. If someone is asking you for a quote, and your tool replies, it's not spam. It might be slop for all I know (or might not be!), but it's not spam. Similarly for arranging meetings with parties that you already have a relationship with.

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ducktoysleftout 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I am a tech lead for a useful but non-essential PaaS my company subscribes to. Their product manager occasionally sends me clearly AI-authored emails. I ignore them. I am a believer in the usefulness of AI, but nothing says I don’t care more clearly than sending me slop.

I can’t overstate how bad of an idea I think using an AI for customer interaction is.

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abustamam 2 hours ago | parent [-]

I think it depends on the industry. In my company (insurtech) a large percentage of our sales come from AI engagements (phone and text). The customers know they're talking to an AI and they can elect to talk to a human at any time but many times they don't.

But yeah, send me a non solicited AI slop email or worse, political ad, and you dont get the dignity of me saying stop to unsubscribe. Straight to spam for you.

	▲	Kyo91 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		People have been trained to "press or say" a number while going through an AI voice menu on phones for over a decade. So a chatbot looks great by comparison in that context.

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Mistletoe 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I’m lost when I read these sort of comment chains. Free Gemini works just fine for me. Maybe it’s because I don’t use it for programming? How many programmers really exist out there? Surely it can’t support the weight of investment that exists in AI already. It’s just such a small pool of the human race.

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internetter 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

First, they come for the programmers, and next the mathematicians. Then it will be the biologists, lawyers and doctors. Humanities will stake it out a little bit longer because AI isn’t human, but AI companies would be dammed if they don’t try. Eventually, with advancements in robotics, stabs at increasingly more physical sciences will also be attempted. Eventually, AI will have its hand in the pie of all knowledge work, if it is possible. Not to mention all the roles like tech support and customer service. Once they have gotten as far as they think they can go, they will try to turn up the prices. However, they might struggle to do so as models are becoming a commodity. This is why they are arguing for regulation and stating that only they can tame these beasts.

	▲	abustamam 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I think as long as we have open weighted models there will always be competition. Sure Anthropic could raise their prices but it wont take long for someone else to undercut them. The quality may not be as good but people would probably prefer to pay 1% of the cost for 75% of the quality.
	▲	eru 40 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		There's plenty of competition. Of course, Anthropic can raise their own prices, but people will just switch. They've done that in the past, when other companies had better offers. > First, they come for the programmers, and next the mathematicians. Then it will be the biologists, lawyers and doctors. [...] Eventually, with advancements in robotics, stabs at increasingly more physical sciences will also be attempted. Eventually, AI will have its hand in the pie of all knowledge work, if it is possible. You seem to think raising productivity is a bad thing? > Humanities will stake it out a little bit longer because AI isn’t human, [...] This is really silly. Many languages other than English don't use related words to describe 'humans' and 'humanities'. Will it be easier in those languages? Should we rename mathematics to 'humathematics' or so, to make it harder for AI to take over?

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ac29 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> How many programmers really exist out there? Surely it can’t support the weight of investment that exists in AI already. It’s just such a small pool of the human race

I dont consider myself a programmer but use LLMs almost exclusively for coding.

The number of people able to create useful software today is much much larger than it used to be and arguably a minority of these people are/were "programmers"

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pimeys 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Work for my company. Research, code, analysis.