GPT-3 could only craft coherent text and simple, self-contained functions[1]. Today, GPT-5.2 can vibe-code impressive demoware and profitably run a vending machine [2]. We got here in a couple of years. This explosion of intelligence will continue exponentially[3] until execution is taken for granted and ideas become the moat once more.

Founders with sufficient taste and agency leverage AI to a greater magnitude, parallelize work and operate across new domains with little friction.

But our work model remains fundamentally reactive. Productivity is triggered by external stimuli and sanctioned biochemically. A function of agency and preference selection of the orchestrator, not of the artificial intelligence.

The enterprise of the future will not be defined by a function of volume of quality ideas, founder agency or the median intelligence of LLMs.

We believe that the traditional enterprise will be superseded by the concept of an idea factory producing Aligned Autonomous Products (AAPs) - self-operating products that ideate, process stimuli and iterate whilst remaining responsibly aligned with foundational human values.

The transition from software built reactively, bound by sequential process to proactively built software will be spurred by four key structural developments:

  1. The marginal cost of software development reaching 0.
  2. The marginal cost of intelligence sufficient to solve most software development problems close to reaching 0.
  3. The magnitude and frequency of human intervention in the SDLC reaching 0.
  4. A progressively insufficient degree of alignment between AI and foundational human values.

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The term ‘enterprise’ here is used in its foundational sense - any organized unit (public, private, or non-profit) agnostic of raw mass engaged in economic activity, characterized by its mission, defined boundaries, risk management, and use of resources to achieve goals.

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These enterprises shall operate a portfolio of income-generating AAPs that adapt to the real world whilst relying on the founders to provide only high-level vision guidance.

An AAP is analogous to a bonsai tree (the Contramachine logo is an inverted decision tree in the shape of a Bonsai). The tree has its own intelligence in that it it solves for light, allocates resources, responds to stress on its own terms. The cultivator doesn't override this, he shapes it through selective cuts. Each pruning is a taste decision the tree must integrate. What emerges over decades belongs to neither alone. An artifact of intelligence, constrained by taste.

An AAP is analogous to a bonsai tree (the Contramachine logo is an inverted decision tree in the shape of a Bonsai). The tree has its own intelligence in that it it solves for light, allocates resources, responds to stress on its own terms. The cultivator doesn't override this, he shapes it through selective cuts. Each pruning is a taste decision the tree must integrate. What emerges over decades belongs to neither alone. An artifact of intelligence, constrained by taste.

History of work

Process drives the enterprise, then the enterprise becomes the process