No More Slop – swyx

Talk transcript

1. 0:11

   [upbeat electronic music] Morning. How's everyone doing?

2. 0:23

   Good.

3. 0:24

   Good? I'm gonna need a lot of energy for this talk, so please back me up. I'm very nervous. [laughing] Uh, but we'll get through this. I'm declaring war on slop today.

4. 0:33

   Let's talk about this. Uh, every AIE has a secret. I, I've told this to, uh, some folks that are personal friends, and I'll just show you, show the secret now.

5. 0:43

   The first summit we had the secret, which was we knew that the AI engineer was gonna be a thing. Second summit, we extended it to leadership. Third summit, we realized that basically we always needed to concentrate on model labs, and that's why you see, um, all, all the, all the top tier labs here today.

6. 0:59

   Um, World's Fair, we started expanding the TAM of, of what AI engineering, uh, is, is, is affiliated with, with AI PMs and AI designers. And with the Code Summit, as Jed just talked about, we really started to focus on curation and focusing in on a theme.

7. 1:14

   And if there's one theme that really matters this year is, it's coding. But I'm not here to talk about coding. The rest of the day you're gonna hear about coding, so just, just indulge me five minutes to talk about slop.

8. 1:25

   Um, we, we've done really well, right? Like, so, so, like, and I think, like, slop is sort of associated with quantity and quality, and I think, like, that's something that I'm really trying to think about as well.

9. 1:34

   Like, how do we grow this community, grow this industry, and grow this event, uh, with the, the same kind of taste and high quality that you've come to expect?

10. 1:43

    And this is something that, you know, I hope, ho- hopefully you guys can see that we care a lot about, uh, in curating all of you coming here and all of the speakers that you're about to see.

11. 1:52

    Um, we're in a war against slop. Um, this is actually, uh, the Oxford English Dictionary. Uh, this is a g- a candidate for the 2024 Word of the Year.

12. 2:01

    It lost to brain rot. [laughs] [laughing] But, um, but slop is, slop is pretty good, and I think it's, it's probably gone even more of an issue this year than last year.

13. 2:11

    Maybe it will win this year. I have an issue with Oxford, though, because they

14. 2:17

    did us dirty by saying slop is co- is generated using artificial intelligence. The other part I, I agree with. It's low quality, inauthentic, or in- inaccurate. But it doesn't take AI to be low quality, inauthentic, or inaccurate.

15. 2:31

    Any human or AI can be an agent of slop, right? You've seen this yourself. I'm gonna indulge me with a few examples. By the way, I got this, uh, if you're not familiar with like sort of internet slang, the opposite of slop is kino.

16. 2:42

    Um, and I got this idea from Paul Rambles, who, uh, ha- ha- like, you know, when I do Sora videos, I do really boring Sora videos with me as Sam Altman.

17. 2:52

    When other people who are actually creative and good at their job do Sora videos, they do cats playing didgeridoos. Uh, slop can be produced by the same studio. There's K-Pop Demon Hunters by Netflix, and there's Electric State by Netflix. [laughing]

18. 3:08

    Slop can be produced in terms of different models. No comment. [laughing]

19. 3:15

    Slop can be-- Slop can de-- Uh, something that's kino can degenerate into slop, right? If you're s- early on a trend and you're, and y- you're, you're starting that and it's, and it's fresh and new, that's great.

20. 3:25

    Um, if you're re- if you recognize the other image, you're too online. [laughs]

21. 3:31

    Okay, not enough people recognize that image. [laughing] Um,

22. 3:35

    s- go do your homework. Um, yeah, and obviously I'm just gonna throw in a, a dig at Game of Thrones because this is the same, same thing, right? Like, slop is everywhere.

23. 3:42

    It's generated by humans and AI. You get it. [coughs]

24. 3:45

    Okay, um, the same startup idea can be kino versus slop. When I first presented the, my first keynote at AI Engineer Summit, we actually used Tome, uh, which is sort of like an AI slides company.

25. 3:55

    Uh, I loaded it-- I loaded up the same slide deck, and it was gone, uh, recently because, uh, it was, it was actually, uh, sort of, uh, closed as a company.

26. 4:04

    Um, there's, there's, you know, different takes on vibe coding, and I think one of them, uh, is much better than the other. And I think like this is, these are just like the tensions that we have to navigate.

27. 4:12

    Um, one of our speakers later on, Exo, uh, Meter, um, I think it's really interesting that both of them are exponential charts, but one of them feels more kino and the other is more slops.

28. 4:21

    And I think, like, I would really like to have people investigate why. Um, so let, let me, let me just skip through. Basically, we're in, in an asymmetric war on slop.

29. 4:31

    Um, I think, uh, the closest law that I found that matches this is Brandolini's law, which actually states the amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than needed to produce it, right? [laughing]

30. 4:43

    So we need to co- coin an, uh, appropriate law as well, um, because, uh, you know, like the, the, the cost of generated tokens is, is dropping by a hundred to a thousand times every single year.

31. 4:54

    Um, so this is, I guess, swyx's law of anti-slop. The amount of taste needed to fight slop is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it, right?

32. 5:02

    There's so much low taste out there. We need to elevate, uh, what's out there in the world because that's what we stand for as humans. Um, I think there's, there's a positive message.

33. 5:12

    You can use AI to fight slop. Um, uh, I, I'm proud, I'm proud to, um, run as a side project AI News, which is the only newsletter that tells you not to read it when there's nothing going on. [laughs]

34. 5:22

    Thank you. [laughs] Oh. [clapping] Appreciate that. Um, you can also prompt to fight slop. The next speaker is, um, B- Mahasin Berry. Um, I found this in the, in the sort of prompts, uh, in the, in the skill set that they, that they put, that they put where they actually a- acknowledge slop and tell Claude not to produce slop,

35. 5:39

    and it, it actually improves significantly from left to right. Um, what about code slop, right? We're here about code. Um, creating tech debt where you can sort of-- two engineers can create a tech debt of 50 engineers or, you know, on a more serious note, you can start exposing private data of millions of users, and this, this

36. 5:56

    all happened this year. Everything I'm mentioning all happened this year. I'm kind of using this keynote as a f- as a way of recapping. Um, and it, and, you know, just to be spicy a little bit, even people who are saying things like, "Oh, my model can go up to thirty to sixty hours, uh, a- autonomously," well,

37. 6:11

    it feels a bit sloppy because you're also not saying, well, was the code good or not? You're just saying how long it went. So in the same way that you have no taxation without representation, you don't want autonomy without a-accountability.

38. 6:25

    Um, something I've been working on more recently is that using AI to fight code slop as well. So, uh, this is from the... A, a, bunch of people quoted this yesterday, of the semi-async value of dev, where you can sort of keep human attention and mind meld with the machine in order to work on the hardest problems,

39. 6:40

    whereas the stuff that's commoditized, you can make it more async. So you can check out more on that details. What seems to be less appreciated is my, is the other work on Code maps, uh, which I, which I've more recently done, where we actually use AI to scale code-based understanding, which is also a fight, a way to

40. 6:55

    fight slop. And you can, uh, talk to the cognition folks, uh, downstairs, um, um, who, who can, can show you more in detail. Um, the, the last thing I always want to shout out as well is, is this trend of, uh, computer use.

41. 7:08

    I think computer use kind of debuted this time last year, uh, with Anthropic, but, uh, it's, it's getting really, really good now, guys. It can really autonomously operate the most complex apps, including an ID.

42. 7:19

    So that, I think that's really, uh, exciting, and you should probably use that to fight slop. We use it for the website, and here's a example of us using Devin to automate the sort of the, the, the sort of website ups- website updates.

43. 7:30

    Um, and finally, uh, something I learned from this conference yesterday is that you can also use subagents to fight context rot. Um, and I think that is one of the biggest themes of, of, uh, that I'm observing as well, if you want to take away something from this conference.

44. 7:43

    Um, and I... Al- also, one of the biggest highlights of the year for us as AIE, and myself personally, was chatting with Greg Brockman, who always, uh, preaches the concept of modularity, where you can sort of keep b- clear boundaries on what is human designed and let the AI code everything in between.

45. 7:59

    Um, so these are all ideas, but I just have this one message that I want to compre- compress down to you today that I want you to say with me.

46. 8:07

    No more slop. Yeah? [cheering] [clapping] Your boss tells you, "I want more lines of code in, by the end of the quarter." What do you say to that? Say it with me.

47. 8:20

    No more slop. No more slop. [laughs] You're fighting an asymmetric war. This is how bad it is, right? You have an insufficiently tested release that, that is potentially embarrassing to your company.

48. 8:31

    What do you say to people who really wanna push it? No more slop. No more slop. Exactly. [laughs]

49. 8:38

    Uh, your, your Twitter algorithm wants engagement bait, uh, and is sort of, you know, force, uh, and, uh, telling you to, to, to lie basically to the, to the broad public.

50. 8:47

    What do you say to that? No more slop. Exactly. That's it. Uh, I hope you have a great conference, and let's, [laughs] let's hear it for, uh, not having any more slop.

51. 8:55

    Thank you. [clapping] Thank you. [upbeat music]