← All IntelClip / AI ToolsSoftware hasn't gotten smarter, just cheaper to write
From What's Next After RLHF? — Diogo Almeida, TypeSafe AI · ≈9:43
“All of the SaaS basically has not changed since 2019.”
“Like AI is made for assistance.”
“We're entering the golden age of just-in-time software.”
Garry Tan
“What we're doing is we're just automating the writing of the software.”
What’s in it
- Argues today's AI assistants haven't made software any smarter, just cheaper to build
- Distinguishes real automation (rote, delegable work) from bolt-on chatbot assistance
- Critiques the 'just-in-time software' trend as a cheap-code trap, not real progress
Clip transcript
optimization space do not add to the automation component. And like that leads to what I think the the logical answer of what's next after assistance is real automation. Um to talk about a little bit about the automation and how that would work, I want to talk about software. Um maybe this is a little bit philosophical for you guys, but I think it's when it clicks and hopefully it clicks if I do a good job. It it I I hopefully it'll be like really clear, which is I'm a lover of software. I assume everyone here loves software. Software is like super valuable. See all the SaaS. And kind of like the craziest part of software in my opinion is that all of the SaaS basically has not changed since 2019. Like SaaS is not really changed in the LLM era, except sometimes a chatbot is like latched on, which is like kind of insane if you think about like the progress made in AI, but is actually very predictable when you think that AI is assistance native, right? Like AI is made for assistance. What can you do in SaaS? Just provide an assistant on the side. And this is not what early AI pioneers used to think would happen. Like when you see like the early wording in opening eyes uh charter, it's about like doing like tons of work, not about like making profit or anything like that. And we used to think that software would get a lot smarter, not just cheaper to write, which is kind of the direction we're going down right now. And I actually really like this phrasing from Garry Tan. Um I think he means this as a compliment to what's going on right now. We're entering the golden age of just-in-time software, but I actually think that this is like a like a double-edged sword. Like I don't just want just-in-time software, which is cool. I I love cloud code, to be clear, just like I love ChatGPT. I would keep using it. But like what I want is smarter software. Why can't like B2B Why can't software just be more expressive? Like why are the like the building blocks of software actually still the same? And um I think this is a question that the whole AI industry should ask itself. And basically every time you're thinking about we want to do automation, it is not about like, you know, an amalgamation of like automating a person's work. It's about like, "Hey, there's this extremely rote work. It's so simple that we can like communicate to someone else that this thing should be done." And ideally it's like it it's so basic that it could be done repeatedly for basically free. Um or it could be done by computers. And that's really not happening right now. What we're doing is we're just automating the writing of the software. But then it its expressibility is the same. And that's That to me is like tragic in the state of the world.
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