Intelligent Machines (Audio) IM 856: SecretlyBriti.sh - From Humans to Hive Minds
Steve Yegge, veteran software engineer and essayist who built Gastown, outlines agent orchestration and practical tooling. He describes Gastown’s roles, debugging-as-research approach, and workflows for running many agents in parallel. They discuss safety trade-offs, model competition, and how orchestration changes developer productivity and organizational risks.
02:45:19
Launch Day And The Wasteland Plan
- Yegge launched Gastown on January 1st and attracted hundreds to a Discord experimenting with federated towns.
- He plans to federate many Gastowns into a large "wasteland" for collaborative projects.
Make Agent Systems Observable
- Prioritize observability: build logging, databases, and tracing so agents' failures are diagnosable.
- Treat each bug as a small research project and iterate until the system behaves reliably.
Early OpenClaw Experiment Gone Cold
- Leo tested OpenClaw but deleted his account after worrying about security and giving credentials.
- The hosts warned listeners that powerful agent tools can be dangerous if given broad permissions.
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Intro
00:00 • 33sec
Guest Steve Yegge and Gastown Overview
00:33 • 5min
What Gastown Is and How It Began
05:54 • 5min
Gastown's Capabilities and Limits
10:32 • 3min
Gastown Roles, Hierarchy, and Metaphors
13:08 • 2min
Beads: Agent Memory and Work Ledger
15:38 • 3min
Debugging Agents: Treating Problems as Research
18:13 • 1min
Safety, OpenClaw and Comparing Risks
19:34 • 3min
Tooling, Tmux, and Developer Workflows
22:17 • 2min
Steve's Google Memo and Career Reflections
24:10 • 3min
Why Claude Code Leads in CLI Coding
27:05 • 1min
Using Gastown: Mayor, Crew and Workflow
28:30 • 3min
Productivity, Value Capture, and Worker Risks
31:56 • 1min
Organizational Risks and the Innovator's Dilemma
33:19 • 3min
Hardware, Phones, and Running Agents Locally
35:53 • 2min
OpenAI, Anthropic, and Model Competition
38:08 • 2min
Transition to News Roundup and AI Headlines
39:40 • 50sec
Ad break
40:31 • 3min
Washington Post Layoffs and Media Decline
43:04 • 5min
AI's Impact on Legal and Software Stocks
48:20 • 9min
Space Data Centers and Elon Musk's Vision
57:01 • 10min
Ad break
01:06:36 • 3min
Agents, OpenClaw, and Personal Assistant Experiments
01:09:37 • 6min
Two Kinds of AI Users and the Cultural Gap
01:15:10 • 8min
Model Retirements and OpenAI's Strategy
01:23:18 • 10min
Does AI Have Human-Level Intelligence?
01:33:47 • 11min
Browser AI Controls and Search AI Friction
01:44:58 • 3min
Agentic AI in Defense and Public Health Concerns
01:48:02 • 2min
Ad break
01:50:22 • 2min
Grok, France Raid, and Grok Controversies
01:52:34 • 2min
AI Toy Data Leak and Child Privacy
01:54:51 • 4min
Darren Aronofsky's AI Studio Film
01:59:13 • 4min
AI Matchmaking and DinoTracker App
02:02:50 • 5min
Project Genie and Creative AI Tools
02:08:10 • 48sec
Anthropic Super Bowl Ad and AI Branding
02:08:57 • 12min
Ad break
02:20:42 • 3min
Picks: Matrix Movies and SecretlyBritish Idea
02:23:31 • 8min
Research: AI Inconsistent Brand Recommendations
02:31:20 • 7min
Closing Conversation and Listener Notes
02:38:46 • 5min
Outro
02:43:33 • 2min
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The story is divided into three parts, covering the immediate aftermath, the long-term survival in space, and the eventual re-colonization of Earth five thousand years later.
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In this conclusion to the Age of Madness trilogy, Joe Abercrombie depicts a world in the midst of the Great Change, where the Breakers and Burners have seized power, and the old order is being torn down.
The story follows characters like Citizen Brock, Citizeness Savine, King Orso, and Rikke as they navigate the chaos, destruction, and political upheaval.
The book explores themes of governance, survival, and the complexities of human behavior during times of revolution and societal collapse.
Known for his vivid characterizations, dark humor, and intense action sequences, Abercrombie delivers a morally complex and gripping conclusion to the trilogy.
The podcast dives into the explosive advances in agentic AI, where developers and even Fortune 100 companies are racing to use powerful tools like Gastown, despite their unfinished and sometimes dangerous edges. If you thought ChatGPT was a revolution, wait until you hear how developers are orchestrating armies of AIs with real-world impact.
- Anthropic's Move Into Legal Is Sinking Data Services Stocks
- Data centers in space makes no sense
- The hitchhiker's guide to Musk's SpaceX memo
- Two kinds of AI users are emerging. The gap between them is astonishing.
- Does AI already have human-level intelligence? The evidence is clear - Nature
- OpenAI will retire several models, including GPT-4o, from ChatGPT next month
- Jensen Huang says Nvidia would love to back an OpenAI IPO, and there's 'no drama' with Sam Altman
- Firefox will soon let you block all of its generative AI features
- Salesforce signs $5.6B deal to inject agentic AI into the US Army
- HHS Is Making an AI Tool to Create Hypotheses About Vaccine Injury Claims
- French office of Elon Musk's X raided by Paris prosecutor's cybercrime unit
- An AI Toy Exposed 50K Logs of Its Chats With Kids To Anyone With a Gmail Account
- Darren Aronofsky's AI Studio Used Artificial Intelligence Tools for Revolutionary War Animated Series — but Hired Human Actors to Voice Founding Fathers
- Forget Hinge or Bumble. This App Promises a Personal AI Matchmaker
- Scientists Launch AI DinoTracker App That Identifies Dinosaur Footprints
- Project Genie: Experimenting with infinite, interactive worlds
- Anthropic Takes Aim at OpenAI's ChatGPT in Super Bowl Ad Debut
- Move to Ban Social Media for Kids Gains Traction in Europe
- The Matrix Resurrections Is a Messy, Imperfect Triumph
- The Thatcher Effect and other Optical Toys
- Fascinating Research: AIs are highly inconsistent [i.e., random] when recommending brands or products
Hosts: Leo Laporte, Jeff Jarvis, and Paris Martineau
Guest: Steve Yegge
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