Humans do it too :)

Getty / Futurism

A funny but wise site discussing the foibles of AI also resonates to humans when it comes to companies not understanding process and the lessons of The Mythical Man Month as Brooks's immortal statement, "Adding more people to a late project makes it later." rings true no matter the situation. This is ironclad as the communication complexities needed to get the new hires up to speed outweigh the additional men added to complete the job.

As a former consultant dealing with large and small companies alike, first hand experience of people endlessly talking about something they have not solved due to the lack of understanding said process, something I actually did, would create an extremely long and boring post able to put one to sleep in a nanosecond but I digress. The Futurism piece, with a connect to an awesome website, Humero.AI, does the job for me. :)

Perhaps unsurprisingly, as detailed in a recent piece for Wired and documented in the recently launched second season of Ratliff’s podcast “Shell Game,” it didn’t take long for the walls to come down as AI agents raced to organize an offsite gathering in his absence — and without his permission.

Ratliff’s entertaining chronicling of HurumoAI demonstrates that AI agents still have a long way to go until they can replace human workers wholesale. That’s despite industry leaders often promising that agentic AI is the future, taking care of virtually all human tasks within the next couple of years.

Those claims that have drawn plenty of skepticism from experts, who’ve shown that reality has a lot of catching up to do. Case in point, Carnegie Mellon University researchers recently released a paper showing that even the best–performing AI agents failed to complete real-world office tasks 70 percent of the time. 

Ratliff’s fictional startup was tasked with creating a “procrastination engine,” called Sloth Surf, a tongue-in-cheek web app that takes care of wasting time on the internet on the user’s behalf, giving them time to do their actual work instead.

But despite the firm’s employees immediately jumping into action, coming up with plans for development, user testing, and marketing materials, there was one glaring problem: “It was all made up,” as Ratliff wrote.

It gets better. 

Dollar cash rising from startup concept box. 3D illustration Getty

The art of not knowing process and The Mythical Man Month is akin to Man bites dog, IMHO. :)

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently revealed that he believes the first $1 billion solo startup will be built by one person with a laptop, an internet connection, and an army of AI agents. I have experienced GPT-5, and I now believe that this milestone will arrive significantly earlier than most people project, likely by 2028.

The image of the billionaire founder is about to be rewritten. No sprawling teams. No Ivy League pedigrees. No nine-figure venture war chests. The next mega empire will be operated behind a kitchen table and directed by an individual strong builder with an army of AI agents, no-code automation and the capacity to disseminate concepts around the world in real-time. The silos that required separate teams dedicated to research, marketing, sales, and customer support are being replaced by programs that operate 24/7 in the cloud.

The word assume applies.