I can only talk about software developers, but there it’s fucking pants on head to fire developers. It only makes sense if you don’t have any competitors.
More than 50% of software projects fail either because they run over time or over budgetl, but for obvious reason both. So you get this tool that increase your output, let’s say 10x. Does that mean that you can fire 9/10 developers? What does your competitors do? If they retain their developers they can smoke your company in months.
The quality doesn’t matter. Look at a product like netsuite which dominates corporate accounting. It’s a total piece of shit. And overpriced one at that. But it has oracle in the name, so an executive can choose it with little thought and not take any blame because it was a “reasonable” choice that “everyone” uses. Much of corporate life is monkey see monkey do. Rarely does innovation happen because trying something different is a huge risk to some middle manager or execute that is just trying to make it to the next promotion or bonus.
The reason a lot of these enterprises are looking to offload developers is because they see AI as accelerating their workforce. These businesses are doing the same thing as they were before, but with AI, which means they don’t have enough workload to justify having that many people on anymore (as long as they are using AI workloads). If one developer with AI can do the work of 3 to 10 developers without AI the logic is that they can have their developer headcount and still be ahead.
Not that I agree with what they’re doing, but this is the logic behind it.
I suspect we’ll see these features opened up for US-allied actors against their foreign competitors.
You can guarantee US auto companies are going to be free to reverse engineer software and manufacturing techniques of Chinese companies, for instance.
But you’re not going to be allowed to use Grok or Meta to hack your Tesla or BMW, pull out the OS, clone it as freeware, and offer a substitute unconstrained by subscription fees and gated upgrades.
AI exists to aid capital against you; not aid you against capital.
AI exists to devalue human labour.
I can only talk about software developers, but there it’s fucking pants on head to fire developers. It only makes sense if you don’t have any competitors.
More than 50% of software projects fail either because they run over time or over budgetl, but for obvious reason both. So you get this tool that increase your output, let’s say 10x. Does that mean that you can fire 9/10 developers? What does your competitors do? If they retain their developers they can smoke your company in months.
This assumes 10x the features at 2/3 the quality is a winning bet
The quality doesn’t matter. Look at a product like netsuite which dominates corporate accounting. It’s a total piece of shit. And overpriced one at that. But it has oracle in the name, so an executive can choose it with little thought and not take any blame because it was a “reasonable” choice that “everyone” uses. Much of corporate life is monkey see monkey do. Rarely does innovation happen because trying something different is a huge risk to some middle manager or execute that is just trying to make it to the next promotion or bonus.
Maybe your are right, software that checks all the boxes wins b2b deals even if it is a peice of shit
The reason a lot of these enterprises are looking to offload developers is because they see AI as accelerating their workforce. These businesses are doing the same thing as they were before, but with AI, which means they don’t have enough workload to justify having that many people on anymore (as long as they are using AI workloads). If one developer with AI can do the work of 3 to 10 developers without AI the logic is that they can have their developer headcount and still be ahead.
Not that I agree with what they’re doing, but this is the logic behind it.
I suspect we’ll see these features opened up for US-allied actors against their foreign competitors.
You can guarantee US auto companies are going to be free to reverse engineer software and manufacturing techniques of Chinese companies, for instance.
But you’re not going to be allowed to use Grok or Meta to hack your Tesla or BMW, pull out the OS, clone it as freeware, and offer a substitute unconstrained by subscription fees and gated upgrades.