Prediction Not checkable as stated
Taylor: The craft of software engineering will completely change by 2027
“The actual craft of software engineering that we're doing right now I think it's literally a fact that it'll be completely different two years from now.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Taylor: The craft of software engineering will be completely different by 2027
“And if I look at the actual craft of software engineering that we're doing right now I think it's literally a fact that it'll be completely different two years from now.”
Insight
Taylor: Generating AI code in human-designed programming languages is a local maximum
“It feels like a local maximum in a really obvious way to me, which is you have a bunch of code written by people written in programming languages that were designed to make it easy for people to tell a computer what to do.”
Insight
Taylor: Treating software engineers as machine operators will make development more robust
“I have a strong suspicion that if we designed these systems with the role of a software engineer in mind being an operator of a machine rather than the author of the code, we could make the process Much more robust and much more productive.”
Insight
Taylor: Pre-training a fourth-best foundation model offers highly questionable ROI
“If you're pre-training a foundation model that's the fourth best that's gonna cost you a lot of money, and the return on that investment is, is probably fairly questionable, because why use your fourth best large language model versus a frontier model or an op…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Taylor: AI model market will consolidate into a few massive capex players
“I think we have probably have too many people building models right now. There's already been some consolidation actually of companies being folded into Amazon and Microsoft and others. But I do think it will play out a bit like the cloud infrastructure busine…”
Insight
Taylor: Pre-training startups have pharma-like costs without the pharma business model
“I would have a hard time personally, like, funding a startup that says, I'm gonna do pre-training, you know, it's, ah, it's, I don't really know, like, what's your differentiation in this marketplace, and I think a lot of those companies you're already seeing,…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Taylor: ChatGPT will be the primary delivery mechanism for AGI
“Is I do think that, It will be the delivery mechanism for AGI when it's produced, and not just because of the many researchers at OpenAI, but because of the amazing, like, utility it's become from individuals.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Taylor: AI will shift intellectual power from deep specialists to cross-domain generalists
“I have a completely personal theory that it will benefit deep generalists in a lot of ways, too, because your ability to understand a fair amount in a lot of domains, and leveraging AI knowing where to prompt the AI to go explore and bringing together those do…”
Opinion
Taylor: Software Value Lies in Closed-Loop AI Systems, Not Chat Interfaces
“What I'm excited about in the software industry is not necessarily a large language model with a prompt and a response being
The product of AI, but actually end to end closed loose systems that use large language models as pieces of infrastructure.
And I actua…”
Opinion
Taylor: Nvidia may not be a 20-year AI bet as infrastructure shifts
“Nvidia will probably benefit from all of the investments in AI. I'm not sure I would do that over a 20 year period, just assuming that the infrastructure will shift.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Taylor: Software engineering supply is not close to being solved by AI
“At some point, we will be we will no longer be supply constrained in software, but we're not anywhere close to it right now, and you're taking something that has always been the scarce resource, which is software engineers, and you're making it not scarce, and…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Taylor: AI agents will rapidly erode legacy seat-based software pricing models
“AI, I think, will change the landscape of software to be tools of productivity that, to agents that actually accomplish tasks, and I think it will Help some companies who, for whom that's a amplifies their existing value proposition and it will really hurt oth…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Bret Taylor: Personal AI agents will take a while to become robust
“I think it might be a really hard product to build because when you think about all the different services and people you interact with every day, it's kind of everything. So it's not, it has to generalize a lot to be useful to you. And because of the Personal…”
Insight
Taylor: Bureaucracy and inaccurate internal storytelling cause companies to die
“The combination of, Bureaucracy and inaccurate storytelling I think is the reason why companies sort of die”
Opinion
Taylor: Companies relying solely on one person's judgment cannot scale
“Companies that are like solely executing through the judgment of individual probably aren't going to be able to scale to be truly great companies.”
Insight
Taylor: AI leaders who ignore first principles will likely fail strategically
“If you're responding to the facts in front of you and not thinking from first principles about why we're at this point and where it will probably be 12 months from now, the likelihood that you'll make the right strategic decision is almost zero.”
Disclosure
Taylor: Sierra charges customers for AI outcomes, not per-seat software licenses
“Our pricing model is really unique and comes from first principles thinking rather than having our customers pay a license for the privilege of using our platform. We only charge our customers for the outcomes meaning if the AI agent they've built for their cu…”
Opinion
Taylor: 80% of acquirers and acquired teams disagree on success metrics
“If you went to most of the, like, larger acquisitions in the Valley, and you, two weeks after it was closed, interviewed the management team of the acquiring company and the acquired company, and you asked them, like, what does success look like two years from…”
Opinion
Taylor: Acquired Founders Do Not Take Enough Accountability for Post-Merger Success
“And I think founders don't take on enough accountability towards making these acquisitions successful as I think they should.”
Insight
Bret Taylor: Great company cultures empower founders to fix small details directly
“I believe in cultures where, you know, founders have license to go in and all the way to a small decision and fix it. The infamous question mark emails from Jeff Bezos, you know, that type of thing. That's the right way to run a company.”
Disclosure
Taylor: Sierra charges strictly for outcomes rather than software license fees
“Rather than having our customers pay a license for the privilege of using our platform, we only charge our customers for the outcomes.
meaning if the AI agent they've built for their customers solves the problem, there's like a, usually a pre-negotiated rate…”
Insight
Taylor: AI can recursively solve most problems in AI development
“I do think it can be turtles all the way down. You can use AI to solve most problems in AI.”
Opinion
Taylor: AI marks a software shift as significant as the GUI
“I think we should recognize that we're in this brand new era as significant as the GUI. You know, it's like a completely new era of software development.”
Bret Taylor