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Comment by nonrandomstring | Hacker News Reader

> Sam Altman when he says there may someday be a billion-dollar company run by one person who is able to highly leverage future AI agents to automate most traditional roles at a company.

Altman is nearly right, but Warren Bennis had it better;

The factory of the future will have only two employees, a man and a dog. The man will be there to feed the dog. The dog will be there to keep the man from touching the equipment.

It's not that companies will "leverage AI" but that AI will leverage humans. Companies are already "AIs", but that will become more and more apparent as time goes by.

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We build cybernetic systems called companies with the goal of creating/increasing profit. As we get better and better at making these systems, humans play less of a role and the roles we do play become ever more formulaic.

I wonder when we will hit a turning point when over 50% of people in America would say “yes” to the question “is my boss a computer?”

For instance if you work at MacDonalds, you probably have a shift supervisor, but the beeping monitor showing customer orders and wait times is the real head honcho. Piss off your boss and you’ll get a talking to. Piss off the computer and you’re out (quantifiably!)

Interesting observation about McDonald's.

I work as a doordasher and have never once spoken to or interacted with anyone who works at the company.Well that's not quite true, I had an order with issues once that went to a CS rep in the Philippines who I chatted with via messaging.

For all intents and purposes my "boss" is a computer.

Reminds me of "Manna" by Marshall Brain[0]. It's a short story about a fast-food restaurant where the manager is a computer that directs employees through an earpiece, with the power to hire and fire.

[0] https://marshallbrain.com/manna1

> We build cybernetic systems called companies with the goal of creating/increasing profit.

Except CEOs such as Google's are incentivized to maximize their own payouts. It just happens that during their tenure, this happens to be aligned with shareholder value.

Yeah, neither of those things is going to happen in our lifetimes. Regardless of what Altman says.

Play the game "Flateye" [0,1]and come back to us on that :)

[0] https://flateye-game.com/

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HdYFdcfdXk

Try flat eye at managing a factory, and come back to tell me how it went.

A game as a reference, seriously? No idea which film I recently heard the term, but amateur hour doesn't even come close to decribe that...

Did you just actually take me giving you a joke game as a "reference" seriously? I'm not sure what worries me the most now.

Unfortunately, I cannot tell anymore sometimes...

As a joke, it is right down my alley! So please, take my apology.

We're cool hef.

At least I assume it's a joke. Maybe the jokes on me, but the review seemed to paint it that way.

"in our lifetimes" is a very wide range here. There are probably both teenagers and octogenarians on HN. Did you mean your statement to apply also to the teenagers?

When it comes to fuly automated factories owned by AI-powered one-person unicorns, that would include said teenagers children if not grand children.

AI-powered billion dollar valuated over-hyped start-ups, well, those risk happening this decade.

Lol I agree with you. I think ambitious ideas about automated factories are made by people who have never worked in a manufacturing, much less automated industry.

This is a total fantasy. The amount of hype around these "guess the next word" games is so far beyond ridiculous at this stage I just don't know what to say.

It is a ridiculous fantasy, yes indeed. But the danger with AI is not what it's actually capable of, it's what people think (hope and fear) it's capable of, and how that cultural effect impacts real life.

Absolutely right. As I also put some past comment, forget cutting edge ML/DL/AI etc even basic tools from last couple of decades like timesheet/hours management, ticketing/issue management can totally control >90% of tech workforce and possibly even more non-technical workforce. The future I see AI deciding what minimum level of sustenance, if any, to be provided to humans based on their usefulness to prevailing economic systems.

Most people already run in a tight loop routine all their life. The great learning for them with futuristic AI could just be realizing this plain old fact.

> The future I see AI deciding what minimum level of sustenance, if any, to be provided to humans based on their usefulness to prevailing economic systems.

For this you believe you need to look to the future?

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