6 ms·

How to build AI products people want

79 points by nickwritesit 3y ago

hardwaresofton 3y ago
It’s hard to think of anything but AI ideas these days (I happen to write an idea newsletter), but I think some of the older good advice still applies here: The best ideas come from proximity to a given problem, and the network to distribute (and test) a solution. Outside of that all you can do is try to validate fast and build fast. I don’t think it’s just the accuracy problem. In general, if you can figure out a solution to the accuracy problem, the rest of the field will too —- AI is just that hot right now. The stuff that will endure seems to be AI products attached to companies that already have strong relationships with customers. The tech is just too widely available to build a moat that can stand up to a larger company just yet.
hhh 3y ago
Site somewhat hijacks the back button.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago
> As the Head of Product, Conversational Commerce, at Walmart, Aniket led the product market fit journey of Walmart’s AI-powered shopping assistant. From what I read, Walmart’s Text To Shop feature that he led seems to be pretty buggy. https://techcrunch.com/2023/01/26/hands-on-with-walmarts-new-but-buggy-text-to-shop-feature/amp/ https://techcrunch.com/2023/01/26/hands-on-with-walmarts-new...
confoundcofound 3y ago
Business that operate in the physical world, like retail stores and healthcare clinics, stand to gain the greatest strategic advantage in an AI world because their data is the hardest to generate and access.
- brookst 3y ago
  It’s a thought, but I’m not sure I agree. Isn’t this like saying that rural general stores have the greatest strategic advantage in internet commerce because their customers are less likely to have internet and it takes longer to deliver there? It’s a bit of a buffer from disruption, but it’s hardly a strategic advantage. None of the e-commerce giants we know leveraged their position as tiny, remote corner stores to get there.
kozikow 3y ago
AI-enhanced smile seems to be a product in test here.
waboremo 3y ago
It's highlighted in this article briefly, particularly the section about integration: One cannot win the AI product arms race without a core solution to a real problem. This is why most "winners" currently, are either the ones with dominant control over access to AI (those who rent out hardware to use expensive AI, access to easy to use AI - basically google and microsoft for both categories lol). The next winners are those who control access to integral data needed for AI to be useful in that niche. Everyone else is running around with a hammer, desperately looking for a 2x4. Applying it anywhere and everywhere hoping it does something, but I reckon for most of them if they were to do a cost analysis in the next ~5 years they'll have noticed how costly it was and how little it changed for their core solution. The heavy hitters and potential big winners (outside of the above noted gatekeepers) are still yet to come thankfully.
- tempodox 3y ago
  Once the gold rush has hit the newspapers, don't go digging for gold. Sell shovels instead.
- abudabi123 3y ago
  SpaceX has implemented last minute control of rocket launches and they land the booster rocket. Hard to see google and microsoft anywhere close to Tesla, Starlink, Twitter for AI potential even if you deliberately elide to mention SpaceX.
- oceanplexian 3y ago
  I’m playing with the little models at home on a local GPU. So far I’ve fine tuned one and gotten some of the better ones (WizardVicuna) to work as a complete drop-in for a use case I was testing with OpenAI. The surprising thing to me was, at least for my fairly simplistic requirements (Parsing an API and making decisions) it’s actually responding with less latency than the OpenAI API and the same degree of accuracy. I think we are rapidly approaching the proliferation of good, local models. 99% of “AI” does not need a fleet of thousands of A100s.
dsign 3y ago
I can't bother with ideas to productize this generation of AIs. But holly molly, imagine what anybody could do with an army of tireless, cheap, highly competent intellectual workers. It will be the end of the world as we know it.
- mattmaroon 3y ago
  And I feel fine.
uoaei 3y ago
Arms race implies that there's an endgame for the spew of new tools, rather than acknowledging it for the bubble that it is. AI is not crypto(currency) but it has all the same hallmarks of fad and bubble. I wouldn't be surprised if in 12-18 months the high wears off and jokers are left holding the bag on unprofitable companies that are quickly getting eclipsed by power players re-establishing market dominance.
- forgetfreeman 3y ago
  You're gonna get trashed for flying in the face of the hype mill groupthink du jour but you aren't wrong. This pattern has been replicating itself in the tech industry since the run-up to the .com implosion. It's always the same. Some researchers come up with novel tech. Some fledgling attempts are made at seeing if this new tech might solve a few real-world problems, in the process generating some column inches in trade publications and academic journals. Critical mass is reached when awareness of this new tech bubbles up to the faceless horde of griftlords that perpetually turn the crank on the tech industry hype mill. Dumb is aggressively separated from money recursively until eventually the 2nd inflection point is reached, wherein the hype mill is no longer able to drown out the growing realization among late adopters that some (perhaps several) aspects of the situation are firmly rooted in bullshit. Then the bubble around that particular tech hype extravaganza implodes and the search for new grist for the hype mill begins anew.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
gersh 3y ago
Self-driving cars haven't really failed. It looks like Cruise and Waymo are about to get permissions to operate 24/7 in SF. I think the greater issue is that it is difficult to assess time-to-market. You to asses both what is useful, and how long it might take to build. Some things are just gonna need a lot R&D to work. AI-hype makes people underestimate how difficult it is to actually get things to work.
- usaar333 3y ago
  Agreed failed is too strong, but they are doing worse than than their 2016 hype levels would suggest today. https://www.theverge.com/2016/9/18/12944506/lyft-self-driving-car-prediction-2021-john-zimmer https://www.theverge.com/2016/9/18/12944506/lyft-self-drivin... <this was pretty absurd> https://docplayer.net/59662295-The-2017-strategy-digital-auto-report.html https://docplayer.net/59662295-The-2017-strategy-digital-aut... <Projected 4% of new cars in 2020 would be Level 3+ - it's approximately 0% today>
carlosdp 3y ago
> AI Use Case 3: Autonomous Driving > And what about those self-driving cars we had such high hopes for? If Ford shutting down their autonomous driving technology is any indication, you’re still going to have to buckle into the driver’s seat for the foreseeable future. Cruise and Waymo are both operating in major cities with fully autonomous cars driving real consumers around on their own...
- SQueeeeeL 3y ago
  I've seen no evidence that autonomous vehicle operations in cities is anything more than a novelty service
  - dopeboy 3y ago
    You will, once the lack of driver is priced in.
    - hammock 3y ago
      Why wait? Uber succeeded by subsidizing the cost of rides until they had completely crowded out taxis for good
    - TenJack 3y ago
      But will the upfront cost of creating the technology offset this for a long while?
      - golergka 3y ago
        May be not for the companies that have pioneered the technology, but for ones that go in their footsteps. As it often happens with innovation.
      - dopeboy 3y ago
        I think so, because the market is enormous. I can see these (mostly big) companies be patient while they establish market share.
mattmaroon 3y ago
“Roughly every decade, technology makes a giant leap that erases the old rules and wipes out our assumptions. The Internet. Mobile. Video. Blockchain.” You know you’re in the silicon valley echo chamber when you think blockchain is some sea change. So far it’s proven to be of basically no use at all except perhaps convincing your dumbest friends they’re now expert currency traders.
- hammock 3y ago
  > convincing your dumbest friends they’re now expert currency traders. Once you remove the geopolitics (that sovereign currency has), forex trading is just technical analysis which anyone can teach themselves
- nightski 3y ago
  You know you are in the HN echo chamber when we have yet another comment telling us how useless crypto is.
  - notahacker 3y ago
    True. Outside niche forums like HN, blockchain isn't even notable enough for people to brand it useless...
    - rmbyrro 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
  - tempodox 3y ago
    Who says it's useless? It's a godsend for grifters and criminals.
    - jedimind 3y ago
lysecret 3y ago
[flagged]

79 points by nickwritesit 3y ago

It’s hard to think of anything but AI ideas these days (I happen to write an idea newsletter), but I think some of the older good advice still applies here: The best ideas come from proximity to a given problem, and the network to distribute (and test) a solution. Outside of that all you can do is try to validate fast and build fast. I don’t think it’s just the accuracy problem. In general, if you can figure out a solution to the accuracy problem, the rest of the field will too —- AI is just that hot right now. The stuff that will endure seems to be AI products attached to companies that already have strong relationships with customers. The tech is just too widely available to build a moat that can stand up to a larger company just yet.

hhh 3y ago

Site somewhat hijacks the back button.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago

> As the Head of Product, Conversational Commerce, at Walmart, Aniket led the product market fit journey of Walmart’s AI-powered shopping assistant. From what I read, Walmart’s Text To Shop feature that he led seems to be pretty buggy. https://techcrunch.com/2023/01/26/hands-on-with-walmarts-new-but-buggy-text-to-shop-feature/amp/ https://techcrunch.com/2023/01/26/hands-on-with-walmarts-new...

confoundcofound 3y ago

Business that operate in the physical world, like retail stores and healthcare clinics, stand to gain the greatest strategic advantage in an AI world because their data is the hardest to generate and access.

brookst 3y ago
It’s a thought, but I’m not sure I agree. Isn’t this like saying that rural general stores have the greatest strategic advantage in internet commerce because their customers are less likely to have internet and it takes longer to deliver there? It’s a bit of a buffer from disruption, but it’s hardly a strategic advantage. None of the e-commerce giants we know leveraged their position as tiny, remote corner stores to get there.

kozikow 3y ago

AI-enhanced smile seems to be a product in test here.

waboremo 3y ago

It's highlighted in this article briefly, particularly the section about integration: One cannot win the AI product arms race without a core solution to a real problem. This is why most "winners" currently, are either the ones with dominant control over access to AI (those who rent out hardware to use expensive AI, access to easy to use AI - basically google and microsoft for both categories lol). The next winners are those who control access to integral data needed for AI to be useful in that niche. Everyone else is running around with a hammer, desperately looking for a 2x4. Applying it anywhere and everywhere hoping it does something, but I reckon for most of them if they were to do a cost analysis in the next ~5 years they'll have noticed how costly it was and how little it changed for their core solution. The heavy hitters and potential big winners (outside of the above noted gatekeepers) are still yet to come thankfully.

tempodox 3y ago
Once the gold rush has hit the newspapers, don't go digging for gold. Sell shovels instead.
abudabi123 3y ago
SpaceX has implemented last minute control of rocket launches and they land the booster rocket. Hard to see google and microsoft anywhere close to Tesla, Starlink, Twitter for AI potential even if you deliberately elide to mention SpaceX.
oceanplexian 3y ago
I’m playing with the little models at home on a local GPU. So far I’ve fine tuned one and gotten some of the better ones (WizardVicuna) to work as a complete drop-in for a use case I was testing with OpenAI. The surprising thing to me was, at least for my fairly simplistic requirements (Parsing an API and making decisions) it’s actually responding with less latency than the OpenAI API and the same degree of accuracy. I think we are rapidly approaching the proliferation of good, local models. 99% of “AI” does not need a fleet of thousands of A100s.

dsign 3y ago

I can't bother with ideas to productize this generation of AIs. But holly molly, imagine what anybody could do with an army of tireless, cheap, highly competent intellectual workers. It will be the end of the world as we know it.

mattmaroon 3y ago
And I feel fine.

uoaei 3y ago

Arms race implies that there's an endgame for the spew of new tools, rather than acknowledging it for the bubble that it is. AI is not crypto(currency) but it has all the same hallmarks of fad and bubble. I wouldn't be surprised if in 12-18 months the high wears off and jokers are left holding the bag on unprofitable companies that are quickly getting eclipsed by power players re-establishing market dominance.

forgetfreeman 3y ago
You're gonna get trashed for flying in the face of the hype mill groupthink du jour but you aren't wrong. This pattern has been replicating itself in the tech industry since the run-up to the .com implosion. It's always the same. Some researchers come up with novel tech. Some fledgling attempts are made at seeing if this new tech might solve a few real-world problems, in the process generating some column inches in trade publications and academic journals. Critical mass is reached when awareness of this new tech bubbles up to the faceless horde of griftlords that perpetually turn the crank on the tech industry hype mill. Dumb is aggressively separated from money recursively until eventually the 2nd inflection point is reached, wherein the hype mill is no longer able to drown out the growing realization among late adopters that some (perhaps several) aspects of the situation are firmly rooted in bullshit. Then the bubble around that particular tech hype extravaganza implodes and the search for new grist for the hype mill begins anew.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

gersh 3y ago

Self-driving cars haven't really failed. It looks like Cruise and Waymo are about to get permissions to operate 24/7 in SF. I think the greater issue is that it is difficult to assess time-to-market. You to asses both what is useful, and how long it might take to build. Some things are just gonna need a lot R&D to work. AI-hype makes people underestimate how difficult it is to actually get things to work.

usaar333 3y ago
Agreed failed is too strong, but they are doing worse than than their 2016 hype levels would suggest today. https://www.theverge.com/2016/9/18/12944506/lyft-self-driving-car-prediction-2021-john-zimmer https://www.theverge.com/2016/9/18/12944506/lyft-self-drivin... <this was pretty absurd> https://docplayer.net/59662295-The-2017-strategy-digital-auto-report.html https://docplayer.net/59662295-The-2017-strategy-digital-aut... <Projected 4% of new cars in 2020 would be Level 3+ - it's approximately 0% today>

carlosdp 3y ago

> AI Use Case 3: Autonomous Driving > And what about those self-driving cars we had such high hopes for? If Ford shutting down their autonomous driving technology is any indication, you’re still going to have to buckle into the driver’s seat for the foreseeable future. Cruise and Waymo are both operating in major cities with fully autonomous cars driving real consumers around on their own...

SQueeeeeL 3y ago
I've seen no evidence that autonomous vehicle operations in cities is anything more than a novelty service
- dopeboy 3y ago
  You will, once the lack of driver is priced in.
  - hammock 3y ago
    Why wait? Uber succeeded by subsidizing the cost of rides until they had completely crowded out taxis for good
  - TenJack 3y ago
    But will the upfront cost of creating the technology offset this for a long while?
    - golergka 3y ago
      May be not for the companies that have pioneered the technology, but for ones that go in their footsteps. As it often happens with innovation.
    - dopeboy 3y ago
      I think so, because the market is enormous. I can see these (mostly big) companies be patient while they establish market share.

mattmaroon 3y ago

“Roughly every decade, technology makes a giant leap that erases the old rules and wipes out our assumptions. The Internet. Mobile. Video. Blockchain.” You know you’re in the silicon valley echo chamber when you think blockchain is some sea change. So far it’s proven to be of basically no use at all except perhaps convincing your dumbest friends they’re now expert currency traders.

hammock 3y ago
> convincing your dumbest friends they’re now expert currency traders. Once you remove the geopolitics (that sovereign currency has), forex trading is just technical analysis which anyone can teach themselves
nightski 3y ago
You know you are in the HN echo chamber when we have yet another comment telling us how useless crypto is.
- notahacker 3y ago
  True. Outside niche forums like HN, blockchain isn't even notable enough for people to brand it useless...
  - rmbyrro 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
- tempodox 3y ago
  Who says it's useless? It's a godsend for grifters and criminals.
  - jedimind 3y ago

lysecret 3y ago

[flagged]