The Highest Loop — swyx
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fva8hFosqyQ
AI Engineer · 7 min · 83 sentences · sentence-level transcript from YouTube's caption track; each line begins at the time shown

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[01:05] In the beginning, there was the token.
[01:10] Then there was the chat.
[01:13] Then we learned to use tools.
[01:17] Then we learned to set goals.
[01:18] I'm skipping a few steps.
[01:22] And these days, we're all about automations.
[01:24] We're all about cron jobs and the loops and the rest of today on this live stream.
[01:31] Uh the uh those of you watching at home, uh we're going to be talking about software factories as well.
[01:38] So there's a lot of loop stacking.
[01:41] Uh I wrote this essay called Loopcraft.
[01:43] Uh I think Joel in the audience did a workshop on it yesterday.
[01:47] Can you still hear me?
[01:47] Are we good?
[01:48] Sorry, I I um had a mic slip.
[01:51] Um and I think this is something that is basically a core skill of AI engineer uh is defining what loops you're working in and figuring out whether that's the right level of extraction and when you're ready going up a loop in order to figure out the next level in productivity and scaling your inference
[02:11] and when you're finding issues going down a loop and going lower level in order to figure out reliability and fixing whatever bugs you you mind.
[02:21] If you want to simplify it, uh I have a I have a better analogy that will be less complicated.
[02:27] Uh it's literally just a stack of wild loops, right?
[02:31] I think all of you in in the audience and programmers will understand this.
[02:35] Uh and effectively, this is what we're here to do today.
[02:38] Um I expect our engineers, our leaders, our researchers, our founders um to all be understanding and recursing as a as a as a sort of human general intelligence all these loops that you guys are capable of of um going up and down.
[02:55] And that is why there's so much content.
[02:59] [laughter]
[03:00] Um I often tell people who who complain about uh the tracks, I'm not going to apologize for good content.
[03:05] uh it's up to you to decide and route yourself uh as to which level you currently working at and which level you're currently blocked on.
[03:13] Um so the thing that's occupying most of my time um recently and what I what I make the human analogy for is what is the human loop?
[03:24] Um and in the beginning there's the heartbeat when you when you're sort of in the womb you you sort of get that heartbeat that is the proof of life.
[03:33] Um then you learn to talk.
[03:36] Then we learn to use tools.
[03:39] Then we start to work.
[03:40] We eat, sleep, code, repeat or prompt.
[03:44] Um and then we start working in teams.
[03:47] We start working in small groups and families.
[03:49] We we've uh promoted the concept of tiny teams before and I think that is increasingly important with uh everybody.
[03:56] Um, and I think the interesting thing to think about is like the broader human projects as a whole.
[04:03] Like where are we all going?
[04:04] You know, extend out from your personal context, your family, your country, your company, whatever.
[04:12] Um, to the broader project of the human civilization and what we're building uh with collective intelligence.
[04:17] Uh, I think it's very interesting to uh consider that.
[04:21] So, um, I I think that's a little bit what I want to leave you with today.
[04:25] like the things that you're doing with coding are definitely crossing over to human life.
[04:29] Um the message of my last keynote at AI engineer was that the you know it's very much like agents that you see are working in one domain are definitely generalizing this year.
[04:39] Um this is the year that we are adding vertical tracks like you know AI in healthcare, AI in finance, AI in GTM uh we have a four deployed engineering track this uh today which I'm very excited about.
[04:52] Um all of this is meant to see how AI is just diffusing finally beyond coding.
[04:58] Okay.
[04:59] Um last world fair I gave you all an update on the stress curves uh of the of the organizers.
[05:06] Uh just to give you an idea this is um the first world uh first AI engineer in 2023.
[05:11] Uh this is sort of the the sales curves basically of like how people bought.
[05:15] Basically it was kind of linear.
[05:17] Then we had the first world fair 2024.
[05:20] uh about 2,000 people.
[05:22] 2025 uh was uh I think I maybe skipped uh skipped a few lines, but we're we're basically at 6,000.
[05:30] Um and if you sort of calculate uh sorry, we we we we aimed for 6,000.
[05:34] We actually crossed and going went to 7,000 today.
[05:37] Um and uh basically I asked you all to buy your tickets earlier.
[05:40] You did not.
[05:42] Um uh if you measure the Jenny coefficient, uh it has gone up and not down.
[05:47] That's the wrong direction.
[05:48] Um so if you
[05:49] [laughter]
[05:49] all if you all can just gather uh you know your yourselves and um you know join us earlier I think that would be great.
[05:56] Anyway um why we want to work at a conference why we why I work on a conference why you all come to a conference is basically the concept of the highest loop.
[06:06] Um I I will submit to you that the highest loop of all is to uh if I can make this slide work.
[06:11] Oh my god I'm gonna refresh.
[06:15] Okay.
[06:16] um uh that the highest loop is where humans come together to figure out what the next loop is, right?
[06:22] The loop that makes loops.
[06:24] Um so we organize a engineer summits all around the world.
[06:27] Uh this year we have summits in New York, summits in Paris, summits in Singapore.
[06:32] Um and you know again Melbourne and I'm forgetting one already Miami.
[06:38] Um and uh we organized this as a partners.
[06:41] We want you to organize it at in your home countries.
[06:43] We're we're hiring a partnerships team uh to do this and this is the highest loop of all which is the world's fair which is the summit of summits.
[06:51] So you're I'm very excited to welcome all of you today.
[06:53] Um I hope that you figure out your generative process for generating loops and propagate it down to your teams to your personal workflows to your lives.
[07:02] Thank you very much and enjoy the show.