Veelox

An agent found a SQL optimization that at least a month of eng effort hadn't found.

Agents accelerated rollout of a data model change by at least 2 months of eng effort.

Those unblocked a $100k/month infra downsizing. That 2 months pays for my team's AI spend for the year.

I for one feel a black banner would be appropriate for his contributions to the soul of this place.

The business had problems that needed solved. I talked with folks and gathered data to be sure what the problem was and what a solution looked like. I then pointed an agent at the proper part of the system with a goal. It gathered data, came up with a plan, created a MR with my name. I submitted the MR, got it approved, made sure it worked in production.

I didn't 100% think through every decision in the implementation but I am 100% responsible for ensuring the problem was solved. What tool I used to solve the problem doesn't diminish my work.

As a counterpoint, I have enjoyed that last several months greatly. I have been able to solve real, long standing, issues quickly and efficiently.

Not sure what to recommend for you though.

That is helpful. Thank you :)

You give a very precise measure of redundancy in the skills. Can you give a bit more detail in how you decided you needed to audit them and how you went about it? Was it fully agent driven? Mostly human?

I can't explain how the bunch of atoms inside my skull interact to produce me. If I can't explain that, I don't have a good grounding to explain why a bunch of atoms in a data center can't make something like me. That's my point.

Can you explain how a vector database cannot be a real intelligence but a bunch of synapses can be?

I think you are joking but it would be poetic if the cause is someone or some company's agents run amok

> $6.6 billion will end world hunger

My understanding is that the only places that are starving is places like Gaza and South Sudan which are poor and actively under attack. Do you have a source for how we can spend <$10b and solve world hunger?

My explanation for the lack of shared experience is very language dependent quality. I work in Go and it's gotten really really good. I have to pick the right abstraction and it can be overly verbose at times but it can make in 5 minutes what would have taken me an hour.

Ahh, so it was a customer pain point of higher latency so they were happy to see latency go down and throughput go up. Good to hear.

Great write up, cheers to the people involved.

Thanks for offering. In the graph labeled "Prod customer throughput: (higher is better)" eyeballing it within a week you are seeing ~2k qps peak increase over the previous week.

Operationally, how do you handle landing that large of a perf improvement? If my data store changed that much in a week it could break something.

Where have you worked? I have been at a lot of places and I have never seen people consistently checking in 2 PR/day every day.

>mandatory ... college level

I'm curious what your experience is with the world that makes you think every citizen is capable of completing college level classes. People with an IQ of 85 or less are like 15% of population and I think most of them with have a very hard time with high level logic.

A few thoughts. One is that not all of christendom subscribes to the view that it was literally one man, some take a less literal view. Second, a vast majority of human suffering is down stream of human decisions. Yes it is possible for an omnipotent being to stop all suffering but I would argue it would remove all moral decision making from humans which is important.

This general consensus is part of why Trump gets support for his recent trade and defense comments and actions. Also, from an economic perspective the US has been successful and has poured that success into different buckets than Europe would prefer but that's fine, let the US be the US and let Europe be Europe.

Numbers for anyone curious US gdp per capita ~$82.7k EU gdp per capita ~$41.1k

That is awesome. Thank you.

The US government spent $6.1 TRILLION dollars in 2023. I don't think raising taxes is the solution to the government offering a more competitive wage.

Dilution happens when the majority of share holders agree to a issue more equity. Again, this is a fully agreed to and is part of the standard rights of share holders. Early employee are given documents that explain this and sign. Can you explain this is illegal taking of property?

When did the stealing happen? There was mutual agreed exchange between parties over and over again.

I don't see a world 50 years from now where writing SQL isn't needed.

When the decision is 9-0 and involves Trump it's highly unlikely they created their own meaning.

Our material wealth in the US is way way higher than it was in 1900 but people aren't happier. I don't think I agree that well of people would stop being happy. Unless you want to define well off in relative instead of absolute terms.

Just because it's widely accepted doesn't mean it's correct.

Paywall link Paywall link Makes a slight case but mostly just assumes inequality is bad.

I think it's a big stretch to point to all of those and say wealth inequality is the main reason all of those happen. For example, people were starving around the French revolution. With Germany I believe it was just as much (if not more) general depression and national embarrassment rather than wealth inequality. With Arab Spring you can point to poor leadership as opposed to innate wealth inequality. I'm not convinced wealth inequality is the underlying reason.

Your making a pretty broad claim with no evidence. Can you provide some evidence?

Thanks for taking the time to have a thoughtful reply.

I think pointing to wealth inequality as the reason there is increasing disconnection is a stretch. Yes it's a factor but I don't think it's the chief one.

Do you have a pointer to a resource that covers some of the more broad and subtle issues with wealth inequality?

> it's clearly horrible for society.

Would you be willing to articulate why wealth inequality is bad for society? I am fairly certain that wealth inequality globally is higher than it was in 2000. At the same time, well the poorest globally are doing much much better on average.

In my mindset as long as the median is improving and the poorest are improving, the ratio of rich to poor isn't important and isn't clearing a bad thing if the inequality is increasing. You seem to think otherwise, why?