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Lessons learnedExperience excerpt · English

I started by trying to think about ways of running a vending machine company autonomously using a …

… I started by trying to think about ways of running a vending machine company autonomously using a finite state machine + agents. It turns out most of "automating" a vending machine company doesn't need LLM agents at all, and simply buying machines with reliable telemetry + a database + automated inventory could get you much further than replacing every or even some components with an LLM. The LLM could replace the person on the phone texting the laborers who refill and service the machines, perhaps autonomously order refills (but hey so can a cronjob). The troubling thought I had is that AI does not displace the technicians, or the vending machines. It replaces the manager. The human manager is the component that is unnecessary. …

Original discussionATMs didn't kill bank Teller jobs, but the iPhone did583 source comments · at import
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> The troubling thought I had is that AI does not displace the technicians, or the vending machines. It replaces the manager. This is really why ai will have a more profound impact on the society: it is fundamentally changing the hierarchy of conpetence we have gotten so accustomed to.

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Maybe there are a lot of bad managers (almost certainly there are) but I feel like a lot of the talk about what a manager doesn’t address the true role of a manager, the whole point of a manager is to address uncertainty, and look to the future. The manager shouldn’t have any “tasks” per say, but in the vending machine example, they’re the one that keeps an eye on their suppliers, negotiates, changes suppliers if one fails, decides how much inventory to store in a warehouse. But like, I as a manager try and delegate the coordination role yes. Unlike an IC, loosely speaking the more ‘tasks’ I’m doing as a manager, the more I consider myself to be failing at the job.

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