Canal Mania and the Philosopher's Stone
summary
Claims that the AI revolution has barely begun and that what’s missing is an OS for intelligence, not just bigger models. Sanity prototypes a team-of-agents system called Myriad that briefly gave some engineers 10x output but cost $4,000–$10,000/day and produced noisy agent “meetings.” A later persona redesign cuts costs by >90% while keeping output, yet delegation still sometimes stalls overnight. The talk argues for a missing compiler for AI intelligence—abstractions for intent, checkpoints, coordination and verification.
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chapters (11)
- 0:00Has the AI Revolution Barely Begun?
- 1:42Why Powerful AI Systems Still Fail
- 3:14What Alchemy Teaches Us About Building Artificial Intelligence
- 6:20The Four Phases of an AI Revolution
- 7:53What Canal Mania Can Teach Us About Today’s AI Boom
- 11:28Building a New Operating System for AI-Powered Work
- 12:28Why AI Agents Are Not Digital Employees
- 15:32The Real Cost of Scaling AI Agent Workforces
- 18:04How to Delegate Work Effectively to AI Agents
- 19:08Where Is the Compiler for AI Intelligence?
- 23:22Building the Operating System for Intelligence
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