Innovating with Devon: AI in Software Engineering

Scott Wu joins John Collison to talk about Cognition’s AI software engineer, the Moneyball-ification of everything, math competitions with Alexandr Wang in 6th grade, acquiring Windsurf over a weekend, whether coding tools will be replaced by the labs, and why he thinks we already have AGI.

Full transcript on Substack: https://open.substack.com/pub/cheekypint/p/cognition-ceo-scott-wu-on-acquiring

Timestamps

(00:00) Intro

(01:13) Early life and maths competitions

(03:47) Addepar job as a high schooler

(05:43) Where are all the young founders?

(08:45) Moneyball-ification of everything

(11:42) Cognition’s AI software engineer, Devin

(15:46) Essential and accidental complexity

(17:59) How Devin works with enterprises

(19:48) IDE productivity

(21:56) Nihilist computer use argument 

(25:55) Benchmarking Devin 

(27:15) Market structure 

(30:32) Agent economy

(37:21) Cognition’s team of founders

(39:31) Jevons paradox and software 

(42:00) When will we see AI UIs?

(45:52) “I think we have AGI”

(47:03) Windsurf deal

(52:37) M&A in AI

(54:21) Cognition’s culture 

(55:48) Learning as a CEO

(57:12) Scott’s information diet