There are a number of things to worry about in this Semafor article about interviewing the CEO of an AI company.
While Semafor seems most interested in Replit's shift from making a tool for coders to becoming a professional services company, replacing coders including their own, what the CEO says about his company and the industry, in general, is fearsome. The biggest problem seems to be that much like Web2.0, whose billionaires are fucking us over, the AI revolution is being led by children with no ethics who'll happily go down any path that'll bring them riches — including painting themselves into corners. Making things worse, they've fired anyone pointing out the problematic path they're headed down.
Replit had been building its own models and had been hoping that its proprietary data — which includes every aspect of the coding process, from conception to deployment — might give it an advantage. Suddenly, that was no longer the case.
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That acceleration has implications not just for Replit, but for every industry. Writing code was the first thing that so-called generative AI models like OpenAI's GPT could do well, and they offer a glimpse into what other sectors of the economy will look like as AI capabilities increase.
And the massive improvement is a double-edged sword for Replit. Agent is a runaway success. At the same time, Replit has dropped the idea of developing a proprietary model — and the Anthropic one that made it possible is available to competing startups, of which there are a growing number.
"Just the fact that we're able to get here without using our data poses a lot of questions for the industry," Masad said. "As long as we keep the rate of innovation and the rate of progress, and we keep deepening that, I think we can continue to be ahead. But the business question is, 'what is the durable moat?'"
Semafor
Previously:
• What are the real risks we humans could face from a rogue AI superintelligence?
• Keep A.I. weird!
• MIT's AI risk database exposes 700+ ways AI could ruin your life
