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I greatly enjoy AI startup press release bingo. - .ai domain name - No mention of how they use or define AI - "AI + Humans" - Banner picture from scien

by otras 8y ago

I greatly enjoy AI startup press release bingo. - .ai domain name - No mention of how they use or define AI - "AI + Humans" - Banner picture from science fiction film (Prometheus) (Disclaimer: I used to work at an AI startup and am generally interested in how companies market themselves)

dunpeal 8y ago
Yup, we should term this "the .ai bubble".
- corodra 8y ago
  Wouldn't this technically be like the 4th ai bubble? I remember reading these bubbles have been happening since the 60s. edit: Okay, I'm slightly wrong. I looked it up due to curiosity. This would qualify as the 3rd major ai bubble, but there have been a few minor ones. Also known as "ai winters": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_winter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_winter AI winter referring to the lack of funding in ai projects instead of collapse in companies.
  - ravenstine 8y ago
    The bad side of me wouldn't mind another AI winter. Today I heard on the radio what was essentially data aggregated and related with SQL joins referred to as "AI". I've never heard another term become as meaningless as AI. Even blockchain is better defined.
    - corodra 8y ago
      Insert old man voice "If I had things my way, making hype about anything would be punishable by death." Not going to lie. If someone ran for president on just that platform alone, where it's illegal to make any overblown promise/hype on tech, the contenders really need to come up with some good arguments for me not to vote for the hype killer. I'm just afraid what's going to be the next hype train. The blockchain hype train was just plain dumb. It's a super niche piece of tech with really limited uses. Still cool for that. But will never revolutionize the world. This AI bandwagon is getting out of hand. People think all AI tech is perfect 100% of the time, all the time. It's more, works 93% of the time, 23% of the time. The next hype tech... scares me what it could be.
      - jf- 8y ago
        This is how I feel as well. Hype takes on a life of it’s own as it becomes fashionable to repeat other people’s talking points about a technology you know nothing about, have never used and have never critically considered. But that’s sort of humans in a nutshell, isn’t it?
        corodra 8y ago
        Do you also think it deals with "belief" of something new and fantastic. I might be reaching on this... and this idea is like a grand total of 2 minutes old in my head. But take crop circles. Over and god damn over, they're proven to be some bored asshole that went out with a board, some rope, and free time to make shit in a field. But every time a new one pops up, "Oh my god... is it aliens!?!?!" Every time in tech. Overblown claims are made and shown to be false or limited in scope. By "smart people" towards "smart people". But we still get "No! This will change the world!". "It might change the way we take dumps on the shitter, but not the world." "IT WILL CHANGE THE WORLD!". Or "Making the world a better place through statistically blockchain distributed interconnected AI designed silicon chips... 2.0" I mean... it's all a religion. Looking at it in another light. Heavy prayer and belief in things you probably shouldn't. Makes tech people more religious than those that are "religious". I might be reaching and ranting at this point.
    - p1esk 8y ago
      I strongly suspect something conceptually similar to SQL joins is going on in a human brain.
yters 8y ago
"The most valuable businesses of the coming decades will be built by entrepreneurs who seek to empower people rather than try to make them obsolete." "When a cheap laptop beats the smartest mathematicians at some tasks, but even a supercomputer with 16,000 CPUs can’t beat a child at others, you can tell that humans and computers are not just more or less powerful than each other – they’re categorically different." "Palantir takes a hybrid approach: the computer would flag the most suspicious transactions on a well designed user interface, and human operators would make the final judgement as to their legitimacy." - Peter Thiel, "Zero to One", Chapter 12 Thiel is going long on these AI+human startups.
- yters 8y ago
  Further discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18381723 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18381723
- dmreedy 8y ago
  This quote, and the kind of thinking that engenders it (and is engendered by it), bother me. Yeah, a cheap laptop can do arithmetic faster than 'the smartest mathematicians'. And the smartest mathematicians can do arithmetic faster than many children. Does that make mathematicians and children 'categorically different things' as well? In some trivial sense, sure, but it doesn't preclude any kind of connection between the two, or require some deep new ontological commitments to model. I'm all for the current practical approach of using 'AI technology' as a human supplemental. But I'd rather not frame it as (what I perceive) as some kind of mystic, dualistic argument. At least not until we know more about both. I also don't really think Peter Thiel is worthy of being the keystone of any kind of argumentum ab auctoritate in this particular field.
  - yters 8y ago
    We can train children to become mathematicians.
    - dmreedy 8y ago
      Yes, that's precisely my point. I've read the rest of what you have to say on this, and it is precisely the kind of mysticism that bothers me. There are no means of disproving it, it reduces to dogma in the end, but it's philosophically disingenuous to assert that because computers and people feel like different things in some cases, they must be, and then to argue backwards from there; it's question-begging in the original sense.
mpeg 8y ago
They also have a VP BlockChain in their team [0], despite no apparent use of blockchain tech anywhere, you can't make this shit up [0]: https://www.engineer.ai/about-us https://www.engineer.ai/about-us
- keithwhor 8y ago
  Juicero is on their list of customers, too. (Same page.)
  - rohan404 8y ago
    I now realize that we clearly we need to fix that page - those logos mentioned are some of the companies that our senior team have come from (hence why it's in the "Our Team" section)! Apologies if it was misleading, I'm getting that updated right away! - Disclaimer, I'm a VP E at Engineer.ai
- rohan404 8y ago
  You're absolutely correct in that we don't currently use blockchain tech anywhere in our stack yet! It's something we're currently exploring as a way to augment our business in order to deal with complex problems like identity management, royalty payouts, and escrowed payments. Additionally, today we can only work with developers in devshops; in the future we want to expand into the freelancer market. Dealing with freelancers at scale is a complicated proposition, as it's been super hit and miss with a well structured workflow to manage them. We're hoping we can solve that problem with a mix of automation and blockchain. - Disclaimer, I am the aforementioned VP Blockchain at Engineer.ai
cauldron 8y ago
I guess that's why US media is hyping how China is surpassing the US in AI.
tixocloud 8y ago
Quite hilarious yet quite frustrating for us at how we are marketing ourselves and having to explain all the nonsense going on out there is not really AI?!
rohan404 8y ago
I'm now seriously considering adding that Prometheus photo to our press kit ;) Jokes aside, my colleague @sachmans has posted a comment above that should hopefully answer your question on how we use AI. As for how we define AI, as an engineer myself, I'm a little annoyed by how it's become an umbrella term for everything from basic statistical models to ANNs. Unfortunately that is the reality of it - and so we've consciously decided to use it as an umbrella term for the various applications of ML/NLP/NNs that we use internally. - Disclaimer, I'm a VP E at Engineer.ai

by otras 8y ago

dunpeal 8y ago

Yup, we should term this "the .ai bubble".

corodra 8y ago
Wouldn't this technically be like the 4th ai bubble? I remember reading these bubbles have been happening since the 60s. edit: Okay, I'm slightly wrong. I looked it up due to curiosity. This would qualify as the 3rd major ai bubble, but there have been a few minor ones. Also known as "ai winters": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_winter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_winter AI winter referring to the lack of funding in ai projects instead of collapse in companies.
- ravenstine 8y ago
  The bad side of me wouldn't mind another AI winter. Today I heard on the radio what was essentially data aggregated and related with SQL joins referred to as "AI". I've never heard another term become as meaningless as AI. Even blockchain is better defined.
  - corodra 8y ago
    Insert old man voice "If I had things my way, making hype about anything would be punishable by death." Not going to lie. If someone ran for president on just that platform alone, where it's illegal to make any overblown promise/hype on tech, the contenders really need to come up with some good arguments for me not to vote for the hype killer. I'm just afraid what's going to be the next hype train. The blockchain hype train was just plain dumb. It's a super niche piece of tech with really limited uses. Still cool for that. But will never revolutionize the world. This AI bandwagon is getting out of hand. People think all AI tech is perfect 100% of the time, all the time. It's more, works 93% of the time, 23% of the time. The next hype tech... scares me what it could be.
    - jf- 8y ago
      This is how I feel as well. Hype takes on a life of it’s own as it becomes fashionable to repeat other people’s talking points about a technology you know nothing about, have never used and have never critically considered. But that’s sort of humans in a nutshell, isn’t it?
      - corodra 8y ago
        Do you also think it deals with "belief" of something new and fantastic. I might be reaching on this... and this idea is like a grand total of 2 minutes old in my head. But take crop circles. Over and god damn over, they're proven to be some bored asshole that went out with a board, some rope, and free time to make shit in a field. But every time a new one pops up, "Oh my god... is it aliens!?!?!" Every time in tech. Overblown claims are made and shown to be false or limited in scope. By "smart people" towards "smart people". But we still get "No! This will change the world!". "It might change the way we take dumps on the shitter, but not the world." "IT WILL CHANGE THE WORLD!". Or "Making the world a better place through statistically blockchain distributed interconnected AI designed silicon chips... 2.0" I mean... it's all a religion. Looking at it in another light. Heavy prayer and belief in things you probably shouldn't. Makes tech people more religious than those that are "religious". I might be reaching and ranting at this point.
  - p1esk 8y ago
    I strongly suspect something conceptually similar to SQL joins is going on in a human brain.

yters 8y ago

"The most valuable businesses of the coming decades will be built by entrepreneurs who seek to empower people rather than try to make them obsolete." "When a cheap laptop beats the smartest mathematicians at some tasks, but even a supercomputer with 16,000 CPUs can’t beat a child at others, you can tell that humans and computers are not just more or less powerful than each other – they’re categorically different." "Palantir takes a hybrid approach: the computer would flag the most suspicious transactions on a well designed user interface, and human operators would make the final judgement as to their legitimacy." - Peter Thiel, "Zero to One", Chapter 12 Thiel is going long on these AI+human startups.

yters 8y ago
Further discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18381723 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18381723
dmreedy 8y ago
This quote, and the kind of thinking that engenders it (and is engendered by it), bother me. Yeah, a cheap laptop can do arithmetic faster than 'the smartest mathematicians'. And the smartest mathematicians can do arithmetic faster than many children. Does that make mathematicians and children 'categorically different things' as well? In some trivial sense, sure, but it doesn't preclude any kind of connection between the two, or require some deep new ontological commitments to model. I'm all for the current practical approach of using 'AI technology' as a human supplemental. But I'd rather not frame it as (what I perceive) as some kind of mystic, dualistic argument. At least not until we know more about both. I also don't really think Peter Thiel is worthy of being the keystone of any kind of argumentum ab auctoritate in this particular field.
- yters 8y ago
  We can train children to become mathematicians.
  - dmreedy 8y ago
    Yes, that's precisely my point. I've read the rest of what you have to say on this, and it is precisely the kind of mysticism that bothers me. There are no means of disproving it, it reduces to dogma in the end, but it's philosophically disingenuous to assert that because computers and people feel like different things in some cases, they must be, and then to argue backwards from there; it's question-begging in the original sense.

mpeg 8y ago

They also have a VP BlockChain in their team [0], despite no apparent use of blockchain tech anywhere, you can't make this shit up [0]: https://www.engineer.ai/about-us https://www.engineer.ai/about-us

keithwhor 8y ago
Juicero is on their list of customers, too. (Same page.)
- rohan404 8y ago
  I now realize that we clearly we need to fix that page - those logos mentioned are some of the companies that our senior team have come from (hence why it's in the "Our Team" section)! Apologies if it was misleading, I'm getting that updated right away! - Disclaimer, I'm a VP E at Engineer.ai
rohan404 8y ago
You're absolutely correct in that we don't currently use blockchain tech anywhere in our stack yet! It's something we're currently exploring as a way to augment our business in order to deal with complex problems like identity management, royalty payouts, and escrowed payments. Additionally, today we can only work with developers in devshops; in the future we want to expand into the freelancer market. Dealing with freelancers at scale is a complicated proposition, as it's been super hit and miss with a well structured workflow to manage them. We're hoping we can solve that problem with a mix of automation and blockchain. - Disclaimer, I am the aforementioned VP Blockchain at Engineer.ai

cauldron 8y ago

I guess that's why US media is hyping how China is surpassing the US in AI.

tixocloud 8y ago

Quite hilarious yet quite frustrating for us at how we are marketing ourselves and having to explain all the nonsense going on out there is not really AI?!

rohan404 8y ago

I'm now seriously considering adding that Prometheus photo to our press kit ;) Jokes aside, my colleague @sachmans has posted a comment above that should hopefully answer your question on how we use AI. As for how we define AI, as an engineer myself, I'm a little annoyed by how it's become an umbrella term for everything from basic statistical models to ANNs. Unfortunately that is the reality of it - and so we've consciously decided to use it as an umbrella term for the various applications of ML/NLP/NNs that we use internally. - Disclaimer, I'm a VP E at Engineer.ai