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0 pointsoverfeed3d ago0 comments

> 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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m4x3d ago

If AI turns out to be a bust, ignoring it could become a significant win. One possible outcome of AI adoption is that existing code bases are degraded, and existing programmer capability is allowed to atrophy. In that situation, companies that adopt AI lose out relative to companies that eschew it.

untrust3d ago

What if the outcome is the competition burns their money on LLM usage for little to no gain? If you're an exec and you jumped into LLMs as well then you also lose any advantage you would have had by saving your money or hiring a few more humans.

overfeedOP3d ago

> What if the outcome is the competition burns their money on LLM usage for little to no gain?

The company does better than the money-burning competition, but the executives personally gain nothing; there are no bonuses just because the competition took a misstep.

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