[nyeah]

That's possible, sure. But I think the answer is more likely in the numbers, not in just qualitatively saying AI isn't worth anything. Like if I pay $30k for an ounce of gold, I got value. Gold is worth something. But that amount of gold wasn't worth what I spent.

EDIT: In fact, parent comment has a link to some numbers.

[EDIT: Most] people don't want to go through the numbers. Ok. But there's a history here. When people don't want to see the numbers, certain kinds of things tend to happen.

[oudlys]

I've posted numbers that indicate that productivity is becoming decoupled from value delivery. If you follow the link in my comment it reviews a pretty robust study of 4000 teams over 2 years. There is no product throughput increase.

[d33d]

Yep.

Code acceleration is great, but.... something precedes that. Vision and strategy re. expansion of offerings and businesses. Once a firm reaches maturity in what it offers and is only touching the edges - this code acceleration is literally useless when you factor in all of the trade-offs.

This is a good thing - it means fat and slow incumbents are sitting ducks to be out-witted by creative and imaginative founders, which is healthy for a well-functioning economy.

Now the economics of existing frontier models are not sustainable - its looking like a mix of the airline (supersonic vs subsonic) and EV industry with China in the background providing decent offerings at much lower prices.

[oudlys]

I think its worse than that.

I admit that if a small team or an individual uses an LLM, it's likely they can create value faster.

I think as soon as you don't own the responsibility for the defects you generate with an LLM, their use starts to destroy value. Regardless of product maturity.

This is what I think the data says.

https://unessays.substack.com/p/talk-is-cheap

[nyeah]

Yeah this part scares me a little. I imagine it scares everyone who is more than a couple of years out of school. I hear that "the solution to LLM tech debt is more LLM." That might be true, but it might not be.

[oudlys]

It scares me too.

I actually think this is precisely the reason LLMs can't be the basis for a technological revolution. Because it's only one way.

Like, if you have a compiler, and it has a bug. You can discover if that bug is influencing your code execution and patch it. You can go both up and down the stack.

With LLMs, there is no way to patch it's translation function. You have to rely on it to forward process.

I don't think there is any way to avoid us understanding our tech stacks.

[d33d]

You're not really getting it.

If you are producing something that delivers a far better experience, irrespective of what's under the hood (see Claude Code et al), you will decimate an incumbent who is trying to use LLMs in the context of incrementally improving a mature product.

LLMs are suited for the development of revolutionary innovation, not incremental.

[oudlys]

I think we mostly agree.

I think I just disagree about the power of the LLM to deliver revolutionary innovation. That's something you do. Not the machine.

And, pretty soon on your journey to scale, the LLM becomes a hinderance rather than a help.

[nyeah]

Interesting data, thanks.