korrents

← People and their mental models

Steve Yegge's mental models

2 claims Steve Yegge made fit 2 mental models. Most often: Bottlenecks, Exponential growth. Everything they said here.

Models we see in what they say

Our reading: their claim applies the idea without naming it. The claim is theirs; filing it here is ours.

Bottlenecks

A system moves only as fast as its narrowest point; speed up anything else and nothing changes.

Used by 88 others

AI's business results are lagging because organisations have a low tolerance for non-determinism, not because the models are not good enough.

  1. Steve Yegge Software engineer of four decades who spent years at Amazon and Google My my feeling is that probably people have a low tolerance for non-determinism. And these things are fundamentally non-deterministic. So, they can't just go replace customer call center software because they they could be wrong. From IDEs to AI Agents with Steve Yeggeyoutube.com · 11 Mar 2026 · 0:55:33 into the videoAll korrents from this video
    Their wordsMy my feeling is that probably people have a low tolerance for non-determinism. And these things are fundamentally non-deterministic. So, they can't just go replace customer call center software because they they could be wrong.

    Where this was said

    Watch from 0:55:33 plays here

    ↗From IDEs to AI Agents with Steve Yeggeyoutube.com

    11 Mar 2026 · video · 1h 32m · spoken · machine transcript

Exponential growth

Growth that doubles looks like nothing for a long time and then like everything; intuition is linear and gets it wrong.

Used by 12 others

The scaling curve really is S-shaped, but there are at least two cycles left in it, which means models sixteen times smarter and all knowledge work subsumed.

  1. Steve Yegge Software engineer of four decades who spent years at Amazon and Google But, I can tell you that there are at least two more cycles left in this, and that means they will be at least 16 times smarter than they are today, and that is going to cause all of knowledge work to be subsumed by this stuff. From IDEs to AI Agents with Steve Yeggeyoutube.com · 11 Mar 2026 · 1:06:57 into the videoAll korrents from this video
    Their wordsBut, I can tell you that there are at least two more cycles left in this, and that means they will be at least 16 times smarter than they are today, and that is going to cause all of knowledge work to be subsumed by this stuff.

    Where this was said

    Watch from 1:06:57 plays here

    ↗From IDEs to AI Agents with Steve Yeggeyoutube.com

    11 Mar 2026 · video · 1h 32m · spoken · machine transcript