Well, that’s surprisingly close to what happened in the past. The issue is that “Agents” (humanity/AI irrelevant here) aren’t really something that is exploitable in a consistent manner.
You can automate small jobs, but LLM-based* agents are behind the curve.
Taking transaction fees is easier than doing a job.
Agents already exist, have been autonomous for 10+ years. Currency arbitrage, sentiment based stock market analysis down to micro seconds, capital intensive ticket scalping, dynamic hardware reconfiguration for crypto mining… all exist as fully autonomous compute based money makers. LLMs can’t compete with the incumbents, so it has to compete with random people on the Internet, and since LLM aren’t consistent enough to be profitable, (insanity irrelevant, re: Pepsi Vending Machine) they just get turned off.
See also: Mechanical Turk (really anything Amazon 2014ish) Ticketmaster vs Taylor Swift, Verilog Impl Bitcoin, Jane Street, Bitcoin Transaction fees, Fivver Transaction fees, Credit card transaction fees, LinkedIn trying to suck blood from a stone, eBay transaction fees, Apple Store transaction fees, Valve sale transaction fees, toll roads…
Well, that’s surprisingly close to what happened in the past. The issue is that “Agents” (humanity/AI irrelevant here) aren’t really something that is exploitable in a consistent manner.
Agents already exist, have been autonomous for 10+ years. Currency arbitrage, sentiment based stock market analysis down to micro seconds, capital intensive ticket scalping, dynamic hardware reconfiguration for crypto mining… all exist as fully autonomous compute based money makers. LLMs can’t compete with the incumbents, so it has to compete with random people on the Internet, and since LLM aren’t consistent enough to be profitable, (insanity irrelevant, re: Pepsi Vending Machine) they just get turned off.
See also: Mechanical Turk (really anything Amazon 2014ish) Ticketmaster vs Taylor Swift, Verilog Impl Bitcoin, Jane Street, Bitcoin Transaction fees, Fivver Transaction fees, Credit card transaction fees, LinkedIn trying to suck blood from a stone, eBay transaction fees, Apple Store transaction fees, Valve sale transaction fees, toll roads…