AI Buying Software Instead of Salespeople; Teaching Companies To Do Less; Have the Swiss Figured Out Cheaper Housing? and +++ [link blog]
Labor Day weekend reads
Testing AI’s GeoGuesser Genius [Scott Alexander/Astral Codex Ten] — A detailed walkthrough of how good general purpose AI [as of May 2025] is at guessing locations based off a single photo (stripped of geo metadata of course). It’s fun to try and understand how the models reason the answers here.
When Software Buys Software [Jeff Morris Jr/New Internet] — Early examples of what happens when AI models start to recommend certain software infrastructure products in response to general questions, and even more so, what happens when they make their own ‘purchase’ decisions agentically.
“Software won’t be sold over drinks. It’ll be selected, evaluated, and integrated by agents.”
One of the reasons everyone is trying to figure what SEO looks like in AI-world (coined AEO for now, done by companies like ScrunchAI, one of our recent investments).
A ‘Third Way’ Between Buying or Renting? Swiss Co-ops Say They’ve Found It [Thomas Fuller/New York Times] — I’ll just egregiously copy/paste to explain this one
In Switzerland’s member-based cooperative housing, new residents buy shares to gain admission to the building and get one vote in the corporation regardless of how many shares they own. The co-op uses the money to maintain the building, keep rents below market rate and, often, provide communal amenities like child care.
When a resident moves out, their shares are returned at face value. There is no capital gain.
Addition vs Subtraction [Molly Graham/Lessons] — Positing that organizations are inclined to always add more to their plates than subtract. And why that’s a problem. Five tools from Molly to try and get better at subtracting.
Bluesky has the JUICE -> https://bsky.app/profile/hunterwalk.com
Originally published at https://hunterwalk.com on August 31, 2025.
