I think the role of llm’s is once you have a rich enough understanding of what you want - you can speed run to build it. And then perhaps re-build to cover the issues created by the llm.
Problem for model producers is - the revenues they get from this mode of work is tiny relative to what they need.
I’m a former PM who’s now a founder and all the engineers I worked with loved me.
I can tell you right now most pm’s are absolutely useless and glorified project managers who don’t know how to think and get in the way - and don’t know how to enable engineers to be more productive.
Considering that that’s been a running complaint for like 50 years, it doesn’t seem like project management is going to get better on its own at this point. So, yes, an LLM does represent a productivity boost in that area.
The problem is that organizations are inefficient in such a way that extra output from white collar workers doesn't translate to improved org-wide performance in a positively correlated, linear fashion.
When the org is misaligned, mismanaged, has poor customer feedback loops, bad product market fit, too much bureaucracy, etc etc no amount of AI slop is going to make a meaningful impact on its bottom line. In fact, it will likely do the opposite through combination of exponentially increasing complexity, combined with worker force deskilling, layoffs, and rising token prices. Real bottleneck is and always has been communication & alignment.
It might make the employees _happier_ in the interim though, which, I believe, is what we're predominantly seeing during this AI mania. People fed up with the bullshit jobs of rewriting the same service for the 5th time in 2 years or creating TPS reports weekly just for their manager to throw them directly in the trash are absolutely giddy that they no longer have to do this manually. I think we need to question the economic value of these jobs in the first place, though.
I've worked at big tech prior to LLMs becoming a thing, and consistently saw projects of 20-50 people carried by 2-3 individuals that actually understood what needed to be done. I don't think this ratio will be any better with genAI, and I also don't think that tokenmaxxing has any meaningful correlation with impact. Bullshit jobs (and questionable personal projects) just get done faster now. Yay, I guess.
In the long run these highly inefficient firms are going to get destroyed by people who have a vision and can do what 100+ firms are doing and package it together as one solution that is far superior on dimensions that matter to firms.
If only it was that simple. The reason these inefficient companies continue to exist is due to regulatory capture and monopolistic behavior. Competing with them doesn't just require better efficiency.
The idea that PM tickets are now much improved because they paste their unbaked wrong "idea of what the ticket is" into ChatGPT to expand into a 500 word behemoth is hilarious.
At least when the PM still wrote it you could outright tell it was bullshit and made no sense. Now that is just obfuscated.
Not sure what your point is, LLMs don't have to be all that great to still show a productivity boost and especially if the organization is inefficient, then even more so.
Problem for model producers is - the revenues they get from this mode of work is tiny relative to what they need.