How many times do we have to go through this? Humans invent a new technology and think it applies to everything!
Imagine the brain as a complex series of clockwork mechanisms…
Society can be modeled as a complex series of hydraulic tubes…
Companies are really a set of APIs between different departments…
Sure, these are all somewhat useful metaphors in context. But no one has built a working brain out of Lego. Sloshing water around to model an economy didn't produce unending wealth. Most companies aren't shuffling data around SOAP endpoints and winning capitalism.
Everyone seems to think AI is useful for someone else's problem, but not their own. Is a company a series of algorithms? I guess if you squint. Really it is a set of social dynamics,interpersonal relationships, and imperfect decisions.
Given that the AI companies themselves haven't replaced all their marketing departments, accountancy, and CEOs with AI - I guess the rest of us should probably wait.
I don't think the atomic task based view it the right way to draw conclusions about coming business automation. There is more likely thresholds, after which it makes sense to automate entire sections, or business processes. Creating strange hybrid working situations with Automation foisted on people, will create both the overhead of the IT systems, and the inefficiencies of people trying to deal with edgecase accuracy problems and the like, or lack of skill development paths etc.
> AI excels at both discrete task execution and determining how things fit together, and every single one of your company's workflow components becomes ripe for optimization or elimination.
Why? On what basis is this claim made? They're trained to probabilistically complete patterns. Where does the confidence in this ability come from?
When I see a complex socioeconomic phenomenon described as "just" I know for certain that someone is about to spectacularly fail to have read books.
This is value stream mapping. No, business process reengineering. No, systems dynamics. No, a Krebs cycle. No, ...
People could always do these things. It was never a sword that only AI enthusiasts could draw from the stone. By god people, the AI has read books, can't you give it a bash too?
I personally like this article, its concepts, its charts and its graphs...
Observation: There probably is a market for documenting all of a business's processes and workflows (which business owner wouldn't want some really cool charts of all of their business processes?), and that should be able to done quickly and cheaply with Text-to-Image LLM's (NanoBanana, ?, ???). Well, if there's value on the one side, and the ability to deliver under cost and under budget on the other, then that's a value-to-cost asymmetry and subsequently a candidate for a scalable service business...
At best this is limited to the algorithmic component of companies that drives information exchange. Beyond it, companies also are a collection of datasets, finances, property, and physical workers affecting property, although yes, they can in principle be controlled by AI. Another part is the evolution of a company's algorithms.
I actually wrote something very similar to this concept a few days ago about what the next steps of AI in software development might look like: https://gpeake.com/blog/abstraction
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[ 0.99 ms ] story [ 27.0 ms ] threadImagine the brain as a complex series of clockwork mechanisms…
Society can be modeled as a complex series of hydraulic tubes…
Companies are really a set of APIs between different departments…
Sure, these are all somewhat useful metaphors in context. But no one has built a working brain out of Lego. Sloshing water around to model an economy didn't produce unending wealth. Most companies aren't shuffling data around SOAP endpoints and winning capitalism.
Everyone seems to think AI is useful for someone else's problem, but not their own. Is a company a series of algorithms? I guess if you squint. Really it is a set of social dynamics,interpersonal relationships, and imperfect decisions.
Given that the AI companies themselves haven't replaced all their marketing departments, accountancy, and CEOs with AI - I guess the rest of us should probably wait.
Why? On what basis is this claim made? They're trained to probabilistically complete patterns. Where does the confidence in this ability come from?
This is value stream mapping. No, business process reengineering. No, systems dynamics. No, a Krebs cycle. No, ...
People could always do these things. It was never a sword that only AI enthusiasts could draw from the stone. By god people, the AI has read books, can't you give it a bash too?
Observation: There probably is a market for documenting all of a business's processes and workflows (which business owner wouldn't want some really cool charts of all of their business processes?), and that should be able to done quickly and cheaply with Text-to-Image LLM's (NanoBanana, ?, ???). Well, if there's value on the one side, and the ability to deliver under cost and under budget on the other, then that's a value-to-cost asymmetry and subsequently a candidate for a scalable service business...
Related:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_process_re-engineerin...
The internet is just a series of tubes.
Hmm, what about businesses that have done it in 1922? Because that's how old the methodology is:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_process_mapping