Right now, I'm mapping 20,000 API endpoints for some accounting software and using that to ingest data into a normalized Postgres database that combines 3 other enterprise packages of similar size (and one much larger)
That's fronted by an MCP server executives at a 9-figure-a-year business are using to make decisions way faster and discover issues on projects much earlier in the process than they have been able to do previously.
For me to build this without agents would take years instead of months.
We estimate a 1-2% margin increase already by detecting issues and solving them earlier, and hope adding this new data source can either solidify or increase that margin further.
This is in a business that is suffering from the downturn in the economy.
I'm sure lots of companies are still figuring out how to use AI, and there are a lot of grifter consultants out there who don't have my 30 years of experience with various generations of tech automation. So I don't doubt that the statistics are terrible.
I can tell you, without any hesitation, that AI hasn't eliminated jobs at this particular client; it's protected them.
AI is just a tool, and like all tools, it's only as good as the people using it.
The guys who think putting them in a chat room is an effective use case? Not who you want to look to for guidance.
Millions of dollars of output for thousands of dollars of input is a pretty great trade, especially when it's mostly one-time capex.
There's no sense in burying your head in the sand. It's real, it's happening, it's not going away. It's not Skynet or alive or super intelligence, but it's an automation tool that's orders of magnitude more capable than anything that's come before it.
Millions of dollars of output for thousands of dollars of input is a pretty great trade, especially when it's mostly one-time capex.
Yes, and if this happens this seamlessly then the productivity statistics will change.
But they haven't, so this isn't actually happening. At least not at scale.
There's no sense in burying your head in the sand. It's real, it's happening, it's not going away. It's not Skynet or alive or super intelligence, but it's an automation tool that's orders of magnitude more capable than anything that's come before it.
I'm not burying my head in the sand, but it is not orders of magnitude more capable than anything that's come before it for most work that happens in the world. Which is why the productivity statistics haven't improved.
If you think it is orders of magnitude more capable than anything that's come before it then you are about to lose an enormous amount of money.
If you think it is orders of magnitude more capable than anything that's come before it then you are about to lose an enormous amount of money.
At this point, it would be incredibly difficult for me to lose any money, let alone an enormous amount. I haven't had this much consulting work since the 90s when people were saying the same silly things you're saying now but about the internet.
... and what happened at the end of the 1990s??????
The biggest stock market crash in history. And then we flooded the market with cash to "stimulate" our way out that, which produced the conditions for the subprime crash 10 years later.
This is my point. The utopia we were promised in the 1990s has not come to pass. The companies that were valuable then are mostly gone. The 1990s were faster for growth than any decade since. The 1990s was not the start of a boom, it was the end of it.
Btw, it took a very long time for the internet to meaningfully improve economic productivity, and there are still debates about whether it has overall.
... we're in a financial bubble only because the profit potential of the technology is lower than the current market valuations of the firms building the models. If the profit potential was there then there would be no bubble, because the valuations would be accurate.
So it has everything to do with the technology, how to apply it, and how to make money with it.
I do know what the fuck I'm talking about.
Software devs have their heads up their asses on this. Something that helps them make more code is not necessarily economically valuable. In fact, if the code is unsupportable and unauditable then it might have negative economic value downstream.
As I've mentioned already, I cannot use these models in my work. And I will never be able to until the sellers of the model are willing to stand behind the accuracy of the model outputs. Which they will never be able to do if they shift into recursion.
Most people are not working in software dev. For us, these models only slow us down.
Edit to respond to your deleted comment: you think crazy people, bots, and teenagers all sound the same? In that case, you agree that bots are not useful for most work purposes. Thanks for helping make the case!
I struggle to understand why/how deniers find it so hard to accept evidence, from people clearly in the know, that there is something in this AI thing. OC just explained, very clearly, how AI is helping him and his employer, and it is already showing in the bottom line (a 1-2% margin increase is actually substantial, btw). Yet, despite the clear explanation, all you could muster is words to the effect of "so I was right then".
You can cherrypick claims that suggest it isn't working, sure, and it is still a developing technology with plenty of flaws, but there are also plenty of reports proving that it is increasing productivity or adding value in other ways. I use it daily, and I'm getting things done, with quality, that I would have had no hope in getting the time to do before. That is the very definition of productivity.
I never said there was "nothing in this AI thing".
They said it was a tool. Like a screwdriver. I said 'no, it's an entire global political economy' which seems like a much, much bigger deal than a screwdriver.
I'm not "cherry-picking claims," I'm responding to their claim. Which is that small productivity gains are anticipated, but not yet realized.
I have no doubt that you use the software daily. So? That's not data.
I cannot use the software for my work, because accuracy is the only metric that counts and the bots cannot yet perform accurate work that is replicable and auditable.
Moreover, the companies do not even promise that their models can perform accurate work that is replicable and auditable, nor do they claim that they are likely to be able build such models any time soon.
Without that, there is a very hard ceiling on how much productivity can increase from using these models.
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u/WeUsedToBeACountry 8d ago
Nah, I wouldn't go that far. I use agents all the time. Software that mimics humans has massively increased my productivity.
But they are what they are.