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A lot of business automation doesn't need AGI, doesn't want to pay for AGI if they don't have to, and would be better off using a classifier than something increasingly unreliable with a mind of it's own.

There are many automation pipelines that use LLMs because there was no choice, but the multi-way classification that Jev provides is exactly what they need, and is going to be way faster and cheaper, as well as having the benefit of calibrated probabilities and structured output that can be relied on.

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I would assume that they would fold this type of classification into their responses API next to existing ancillary tooling that they already ship. I think OpenAI positions themselves as being wholly focused on AGI - but I think their business model leans towards lock-in via superior tooling (Codex, ChatGPT, etc.). This feels like an easy win for them without muddying the larger vision.
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Why release an image model, or a video model, or custom agents if AGI will just make them all obsolete?

Why build codex if AGI will replace SWEs?

Why build excel integrations if AGI will replace spreadsheets?

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The short answer is: they need to make money now to fund continued improvements towards AGI. This is extremely obvious and these "well if they had AGI..." arguments are clearly in bad faith.

You have to run a legitimate business and make money. After the "takeoff," anything is fair game. It could result in value accruing to capital (lab shareholders) and everyone else is screwed, it could result in the status quo being maintained but people do way more and GDP goes up by a lot, it could result in a post scarcity society etc. Theres a reason why its called the singularity - you can't see past the event horizon.

In any case it is optimal for OpenAI to create good products that generate revenue NOW vs going for some straight shot pie in the sky model that is "AGI." SSI is attempting to do this and I suspect they are about as close as anyone else is, and I'd honestly assume they are likely further away than OpenAI or Anthropic at the moment. But one of these classes of companies has actual revenue that is arguably good for the economy, the other is just a glorified research lab that has produced nothing of value.

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AGI is like water, and these surfaces are the plumbing. Agents and the internet's existing APIs are how AGI will actually be delivered in the short term.

But you're completely right: our current APIs were optimized for humans, and some like Excel date from the 80s. So in the long term, agents will highly likely create their own interfaces optimized for when no human is in the loop.

Which is exactly why companies stick with current APIs for now. Fable 5.1 already emits alien-like reasoning traces, and the recent OpenAI agent swarm accident just proved this.

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the point of this article perplexes me. the implication is we should all just take our Quietus. you decide.
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I didn’t realise they were competing. If anything Jev seems complimentary to LLMs.
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ASI isn't here yet. It could benefit people in the interim and help make the ASI.
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The people that buy into "AGI is here" and the people that understand what Jev is and how useful it would be to hook it up to an LLM are two separate circles, so there's no "defeat" being admitted.
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There's a big difference between what AGI can accomplish and what it will accomplish. We must also ask why OpenAI wants to summon their God, and how they would want the average person's life to change if it comes. I think they will try to clone Jev just to add another revenue stream.
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without getting too far into it i would just like to note that i am in both these circles
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It's just another tool. Luna exists for a reason: it's the right tool for the job. If they release AGI and it costs $1 and 5 seconds to decide "is the customer asking for a refund", then that's a terrible use case for AGI if another tool can do it with 95% accuracy for $0.002 and 50ms.
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> If they release AGI and it costs $1 and 5 seconds to decide "is the customer asking for a refund", then that's a terrible use case for AGI

Is it? If AGI is here then by the time I test and deploy that the AGI will be most likely cheaper and smarter because it improved itself (for example by implementing it's own Jev for stupid prompts like this), so why invest into a more complex solutions?

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I don’t think that was a great example since there’s only so many refunds a customer is going to ask for. And it’s saving time that otherwise maybe would have to go through a human. The rate is low enough that a more expensive model makes more sense.

Though for tasks where you are trying to search through billions of documents, social media posts, etc. and extract certain information, where each individual post is of low value and only the data in aggregate is valuable, then that’s where you’d want something cheaper and faster.

Such as if you want to look at all posts on X in the last few months and find how many have a negative or positive sentiment about the economy (or are unrelated).

Of course you could use a special-purpose model for this, but the whole point of something like Jev is to ask whatever questions you want without having to train something new.

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    > so why invest into a more complex solutions
Not sure what's more complex about one REST API call versus another REST API call...
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Because AGI will also handle whatever is happening after your "is the customer asking for a refund?" question. Replacing whoever is doing that refund.
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Well sure, in the future you may also be able to ask AGI to "please just run my life", while you stay in bed.

In the meantime, today, in the real world, there are businesses wanting to automate well-defined business flows, who don't want some stroppy AGI with a mind of it's own to instead decide to hack into something, or reward hack and make the customer happy by just wire transferring $1M of company money into their account.

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Why would it need to? There is a deterministic flow here for the actions that are allowed. AGI isn't needed for this at all if you can map out the flow and use a classifier to decide which route to follow.
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