The Greenhouse and the Lens: Two Modes of Agentic AI Work(www.brethorsting.com)
8 pointsby aaronbrethorst7 hours ago3 comments
  • toplinesoftsys38 minutes ago
    There is a third mode that requires combination of greenhouse and lens modes, and I did not see AI that is every remotely good working at that third mode. Unfortunately, many real applications are actually require the third mode, and I suspect this is one of key reasons why adoption of AI is so low.
  • afry14 hours ago
    > These tools came about because the cost of trying things out has dropped to nearly zero.

    What an obscenely disconnected and privileged notion. "Nearly zero" still currently equates to thousands of dollars of subscription expense per year that normal, workaday people can't afford.

    Not to mention the fact that even at this untenable "introductory" level of expense, you're really burning hundreds of thousands of dollars of tokens to do, what was that again?

    "Just let the LLM run wild for a while and see what come out the other end?"

    "Generate ten solutions to one targeted problem and throw nine of them away because this garbage technology still can't get it right on even the 9th try?"

    No wonder the rich bastards of the world love this stuff so much. It encourages so much wanton, indiscriminate, pointless waste in its users.

    • lubujacksonan hour ago
      Let's assume advances in harnesses, models and efficiency continue to rapidly improve. Let's say we only run on solar power.

      The concept of "waste" completely shifts. Like in 1990, I had to decide if dow loading an image was worth it, because it would take 5 minutes or more. Now, it isn't even a remote concern, even though images are clearly "wasting" bandwidth sending a 12mb image to my tiny phone screen.

      It is much more interesting to think about the cultural impact of that shift. You can be concerned about the impact of AI on various fronts, but worrying about "waste" is tilting at windmills.

    • godwinson__4-84 hours ago
      > What an obscenely disconnected and privileged notion. "Nearly zero" still currently equates to thousands of dollars of subscription expense per year that normal, workaday people can't afford.

      You seem disconnected from the very public pricing tiers? Hate to break it to you buddy but these tools are mainstream for regular consumers. And very few people (outside of enterprise) are paying thousands of dollars per year. Not to mention all the things happening with increasingly capable oss models.

      You seem very angry, in a very misdirected way. The fact you can't seem to grasp the reality of what these things are costing the average consumer suggests this misdirection is rather severe. Hope you are able to channel your resentment into a more reasonable set of grievances, or at least, ones more resembling reality. While I am sympathetic to your general notions, the basic inaccuracy makes it extremely hard to take you seriously.

      • planckscnst2 hours ago
        $100/month * 12 months is 1200/year. Yeah, normal working people even in the USA don't have that extra money to spend. And let's be realistic: anyone doing the "greenhouse" method probably has both Anthropic and OpenAI $200/month subscriptions, otherwise, this is going to use up your tokens pretty fast. So $4800/year to have this as a normal practice that you do.

        The median household income in the US is $64000/year.

        • ai_critican hour ago
          That's a cable subscription, or a carton of cigarettes, or a couple of bar tabs, or a tank of gas.
  • cadamsdotcom4 hours ago
    Sometimes you have a goal & clarity about what you want; others you're just exploring.

    Just as non-assisted work: an undisciplined mind will wander. But when there's also an assistant, you're prone to having the wandering done for you.