Timothy Lee: AI agent demos of innovation are easy; economically useful ones are hard
binarybits · x · 2026-09-16
binarybits (Timothy Lee) debates what counts as "actually innovative": he wouldn't be surprised by an AI agent demoing innovation on a trivial physical system, but would be surprised if it were sophisticated enough to be economically useful — creating something customers will actually pay for is far harder than something that merely looks innovative to an amateur.
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