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ryandrakeyesterday at 6:34 PM2 repliesview on HN

To these kinds of companies, what's even better than a rack of mediocre programmers? AI agents that you can just conjure up and prompt. They take up no facility space, don't require lunch breaks or vacations, obey all commands and direction, and produce a predictable and consistent amount of output per dollar.

This is the earworm the leaders of these companies have allowed into their minds. Like Agent Mulder, they Want To Believe in this so badly...


Replies

overfeedyesterday at 10:16 PM

> This is the earworm the leaders of these companies have allowed into their minds. Like Agent Mulder, they Want To Believe in this so badly...

If you assume they are not idiots and analyze the FOMO incentives via a little game-theory, it becomes clear why.

Assuming the competition has adopted AI, leadership can ignore it, or pursue it. If they adopt it, then they are level with the completion whether AI actually succeeds or fails - they get to keep their executive job.

If leadership ignores AI, and it actually delivers the productivity gains to the competition, they will be fired. If they ignore AI and it's a bust, they gain nothing.

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sanderjdyesterday at 11:11 PM

Yeah but does this work? Are there companies doing this successfully?