Not sure I follow. But, the first paragraph is interesting.
You are saying, employees stick around if they are given easy tickets, and companies care about passing along easy tickets so warm bodies do not churn.
Indeed. The whole AI game is predicated on the fact that they can deliver work equivalent to humans in some cases. If that is never going to be the case, then this whole agentic stuff goes belly-up.
The alternative scenario is they get better and do some work really well. That is an interesting territory to focus on.
How do you verify AWS charges? By inspecting logs? There goes the arbiter.
I get the binary part. The biggest difference is the subjective component of outcome? However, a tech provider - especially Agent provider - has to bring down the subjective to a quantitative metric when selling. If that cannot be done, I am not sure what we are going to be buying from Agent builders/providers?
Interesting. Let's take the case of infra spend on AWS. Amazon says you invoked serverless calls 100k times and you are charged for it. How are you trusting them?
Understood. So, a better way is to keep him on a retainer? Or let Amazon or Cheaper store do a cost-plus model?
I think that is the core of the argument. It is the risk-sharing between buyer and seller. If sold on outcomes, seller carries all risk. If sold on work-put-in, buyer carries all risk.
Add to that, in some scenarios, outcomes themselves are fuzzy.
The price will be what you are willing to pay. No justification required, excepting for fairness (info asymmetry and what else?). It is written by me. Unfunded bootstrapped !!call it dire straits.
This is actually what I thought. Although, AI agent developers can capture 1:10 of value delivered - assuming AI agents deliver - but with competiton among Agent builders, the value capture will go down. That is one possibility
I think what you described would be a good definition of outcome. But, Who bills customers that way if you think about software providers? The prevailing models are fixed fee , hourly fee or infra-spend fee.
There is an argument to be made that SaaS tools tap the tool budget whereas AI agents can tap the worker budget of companies.
I'd assume an outcome is a negotiated agreement between buyer and Agent provider.
Think of all the n8n workflows. If we take a simple example of Expense receipt processing workflows, or a lead sourcing workflow, I'd think the outcomes can be counted pretty well. In these cases, successfully entered receipts into ERP or number of Entries captured in salesforce.
I am sure there are cases where outcomes are fuzzy, for instances employer-employee agreement.
But in some cases, for instance, my accounting agent would only get paid if he successfully uploads my tax returns.
Surely not applicable in all cases. But, in cases Where a human is measured on outcomes, the same should be applicable for agents too, I guess
You are saying, employees stick around if they are given easy tickets, and companies care about passing along easy tickets so warm bodies do not churn.
That will be a big claim.