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> The solution: create your own toolchain No thanks. I have an actual job & customer needs to tend to. I am about 80% of the way through integrating with the O

> The solution: create your own toolchain No thanks. I have an actual job & customer needs to tend to. I am about 80% of the way through integrating with the OAI assistant API. The real secret is to already have a viable business that AI can subsequently improve. Making AI the business is a joke of a model to me. You'd have an easier time pitching javascript frameworks in our shop. Our current application of AI is a 1:1 mapping between an OAI assistant thread and the comment chain for a given GitHub issue. In this context of use, latency is absolutely not a problem. We can spend 10 minutes looking for an answer and it would still feel entirely natural from the perspective of our employees and customers.

deleted 3y ago
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golergka 3y ago
> I am about 80% of the way through integrating with the OAI assistant API. I've been there. Turns out, the last 20% takes x10 the time and effort compared to these first 80%.
- tebbers 3y ago
  Sounds like a normal development project then.
  - golergka 3y ago
    Not really, no. In a normal development project last 20% take just as long. But AI applications are a very special beast.
    - johnnyanmac 3y ago
      If there's anything I would not trust an AI on its polish. It's amazing for prototyping, and has some viability at scaling up an existing operation. But the rough edges (literally in some industries) are the exact reason it's such a controversial tech as of now.
      - golergka 3y ago
        That's exactly my point, yes.
  - pvorb 3y ago
    Just like the old joke: "I'm already 90 percent done, now I'm going for the other 90 percent."
    - morkalork 3y ago
      Before we can finish automating this process, we just have to automate this one other little task inside.
    - romanhn 3y ago
      Zeno's paradox of software development - you can complete 90% of the remaining work, but you can never be fully done.
    - j45 3y ago
      Needs to be a sign
rvz 3y ago
> The real secret is to already have a viable business that AI can subsequently improve. Making AI the business is a joke of a model to me. Precisely. No doubt that the tons of VC fuelled so-called AI startups that are wrapping around the ChatGPT API are already getting themselves disrupted due to the platform risk by OpenAI. They never learn. Even when the possibility of OpenAI competing against their own partners is 99.99% despite denying it a year ago.
- furyofantares 3y ago
  > Precisely. No doubt that the tons of VC fuelled so-called AI startups that are wrapping around the ChatGPT API are already getting themselves disrupted due to the platform risk by OpenAI. Eh - such startups are like a year in with a small headcount I'd think? They're still figuring out what they're gonna build imo. I don't think I'd be sad sinking a year of investment into folks who've been spending a year trying to build things with this stuff even if they are forced to find a new direction due to competition from the platform itself.
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personjerry 3y ago
So the secret to building a viable AI business... is to build a viable business, with AI?
- chasd00 3y ago
  the secret is to already have a viable business and constantly sprinkle in the latest tech. trends to maintain the illusion of being something fresh and new.
  - LtWorf 3y ago
    That's why our bakery uses AI generated blockchains :D
    - cj 3y ago
      My local bakery adopted a new Point of Sale that does a really good job making me feel like I have to tip $2 when buying a donut! No blockchain or AI, but new tech (for them) nonetheless :)
    - DonHopkins 3y ago
      My coffeeshop uses Dall-E to render flattering caricatures of customers in ground chocolate and cinnamon on the foamed milk. ;)
- johnnyanmac 3y ago
  "what problem am I trying to solve?" if you can answer that question and justify AI as an optimization (and all the gray area fallouts that comes with early adoption) then you have a chance at building a viable business with AI. Having a solution and looking for problems to solve (or create) isnt the mentality of an entrepreneur but of a grifter, in my crass cynical opinion. But I can't deny that you ma still make money that way.
  - iinnPP 3y ago
    Having a solution to an unknown problem and working towards finding a problem the solution fills can be rewritten as: Having a problem and looking for a solution. Calling that grifting is strange.
Bjartr 3y ago
I slightly disagree. I think a business can have an AI focus rather than it being mere improvement over an already viable business if, without AI, the business model can't succeed due to excessive costs of scaling to serve enough users to have sufficient revenue. There are some cases like that where adding AI makes that previously non-viable business model viable again.
- lazide 3y ago
  Sounds risky - if you can’t make a big enough improvement, you’re SOL. In their case, they keep making money regardless and just make more and more if they get better?
CobrastanJorji 3y ago
> Making AI the business is a joke of a model to me. I don't think AI businesses are jokes, so long as you're selling a platform or a way to customize AI to some specific need or hardware. AI is a gold rush, and the most reliable way to get rich in a gold rush is to sell shovels. But if you want to make money from actually using AI yourself, then yeah, you've gotta have a business that AI makes better.
wokwokwok 3y ago
Did you read the article or are you responding to what you imagine it says? > a whole toolchain of specialized models, … all of these specialized models are combined with tons of just normal code and logic that creates the end result They are not referring to a toolchain as “write a compiler”. They are referring to it as “fine tune models with specific purposes and glue them together with normal code”. It’s a no-brainer that any startup that doesnt do this is a thin wrapper around the openAI api, has zero moat, and is therefore: A) deeply vulnerable to having any meaningful product copied by others (including openAI) B) lazy AF now that fine tuning is so simple to do. C) will be technically out competed by their competitors because fine tuned models are better. D) therefore, probably doomed. > The most important thing is to not use AI at first. > Explore the problem space using normal programming practices to determine what areas need a specialized model in the first place. > Remember, making “supermodels” is generally not the right approach. This is good advice. > The real secret is to already have a viable business that AI can subsequently improve You realise that what you said, is the equivalent of what they said, which is: use AI to solve problems, rather than slapping it on meaninglessly.
- johnsonjo 3y ago
  I don't really have much beef with your comment as it has pretty substantive points, but I just wanted to remind and let everybody know about a Hacker News guideline outlined on their guidelines under the comments section. Sorry, I just recently re-read the guidelines, so I thought I might point others to it too. I honestly believe there are a lot more people breaking all these guidelines on this site, so the whole thing is a good read for anyone uninformed, and yes there are definitely more egregious breakages of guidelines elsewhere. > Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that". [1] I just mainly brought this one up, because I see it come up often, and because I didn't even notice it was really a violation until I reread the guidelines the other day. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html#comments https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html#comments
  - meiraleal 3y ago
nostromo 3y ago
Just be prepared for OpenAI to pull the rug out from under you at some point... and probably sooner than you realize. This is always the approach in our industry. During the land rush, you offer very affordable, very favorable terms for people building on your stack. When they've wiped out most of the competition and have massive marketshare -- they shift from land-rush mode to rent-seeking mode, and your business is either dead entirely or you now live as a sharecropper.
- j45 3y ago
  It's why being platform independent as possible is critical. Even if it's an app in someone's store. Can't quite run it with just their stuff.
- baxtr 3y ago
  Who cares if you don’t have any paying customers?
- happytiger 3y ago
  If you don’t own the API AND the customer, you don’t own anything: you rent.
elorant 3y ago
Sure, and then you'll wake up one morning and OpenAI will either have eaten your lunch, or quadrupled their prices because they'd have achieved wide adoption.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
lagrange77 3y ago
> Making AI the business is a joke of a model to me. By AI you just mean LLMs, like most people recently, right?

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

golergka 3y ago

> I am about 80% of the way through integrating with the OAI assistant API. I've been there. Turns out, the last 20% takes x10 the time and effort compared to these first 80%.

tebbers 3y ago
Sounds like a normal development project then.
- golergka 3y ago
  Not really, no. In a normal development project last 20% take just as long. But AI applications are a very special beast.
  - johnnyanmac 3y ago
    If there's anything I would not trust an AI on its polish. It's amazing for prototyping, and has some viability at scaling up an existing operation. But the rough edges (literally in some industries) are the exact reason it's such a controversial tech as of now.
    - golergka 3y ago
      That's exactly my point, yes.
- pvorb 3y ago
  Just like the old joke: "I'm already 90 percent done, now I'm going for the other 90 percent."
  - morkalork 3y ago
    Before we can finish automating this process, we just have to automate this one other little task inside.
  - romanhn 3y ago
    Zeno's paradox of software development - you can complete 90% of the remaining work, but you can never be fully done.
  - j45 3y ago
    Needs to be a sign

rvz 3y ago

> The real secret is to already have a viable business that AI can subsequently improve. Making AI the business is a joke of a model to me. Precisely. No doubt that the tons of VC fuelled so-called AI startups that are wrapping around the ChatGPT API are already getting themselves disrupted due to the platform risk by OpenAI. They never learn. Even when the possibility of OpenAI competing against their own partners is 99.99% despite denying it a year ago.

furyofantares 3y ago
> Precisely. No doubt that the tons of VC fuelled so-called AI startups that are wrapping around the ChatGPT API are already getting themselves disrupted due to the platform risk by OpenAI. Eh - such startups are like a year in with a small headcount I'd think? They're still figuring out what they're gonna build imo. I don't think I'd be sad sinking a year of investment into folks who've been spending a year trying to build things with this stuff even if they are forced to find a new direction due to competition from the platform itself.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

personjerry 3y ago

So the secret to building a viable AI business... is to build a viable business, with AI?

chasd00 3y ago
the secret is to already have a viable business and constantly sprinkle in the latest tech. trends to maintain the illusion of being something fresh and new.
- LtWorf 3y ago
  That's why our bakery uses AI generated blockchains :D
  - cj 3y ago
    My local bakery adopted a new Point of Sale that does a really good job making me feel like I have to tip $2 when buying a donut! No blockchain or AI, but new tech (for them) nonetheless :)
  - DonHopkins 3y ago
    My coffeeshop uses Dall-E to render flattering caricatures of customers in ground chocolate and cinnamon on the foamed milk. ;)
johnnyanmac 3y ago
"what problem am I trying to solve?" if you can answer that question and justify AI as an optimization (and all the gray area fallouts that comes with early adoption) then you have a chance at building a viable business with AI. Having a solution and looking for problems to solve (or create) isnt the mentality of an entrepreneur but of a grifter, in my crass cynical opinion. But I can't deny that you ma still make money that way.
- iinnPP 3y ago
  Having a solution to an unknown problem and working towards finding a problem the solution fills can be rewritten as: Having a problem and looking for a solution. Calling that grifting is strange.

Bjartr 3y ago

I slightly disagree. I think a business can have an AI focus rather than it being mere improvement over an already viable business if, without AI, the business model can't succeed due to excessive costs of scaling to serve enough users to have sufficient revenue. There are some cases like that where adding AI makes that previously non-viable business model viable again.

lazide 3y ago
Sounds risky - if you can’t make a big enough improvement, you’re SOL. In their case, they keep making money regardless and just make more and more if they get better?

CobrastanJorji 3y ago

> Making AI the business is a joke of a model to me. I don't think AI businesses are jokes, so long as you're selling a platform or a way to customize AI to some specific need or hardware. AI is a gold rush, and the most reliable way to get rich in a gold rush is to sell shovels. But if you want to make money from actually using AI yourself, then yeah, you've gotta have a business that AI makes better.

wokwokwok 3y ago

Did you read the article or are you responding to what you imagine it says? > a whole toolchain of specialized models, … all of these specialized models are combined with tons of just normal code and logic that creates the end result They are not referring to a toolchain as “write a compiler”. They are referring to it as “fine tune models with specific purposes and glue them together with normal code”. It’s a no-brainer that any startup that doesnt do this is a thin wrapper around the openAI api, has zero moat, and is therefore: A) deeply vulnerable to having any meaningful product copied by others (including openAI) B) lazy AF now that fine tuning is so simple to do. C) will be technically out competed by their competitors because fine tuned models are better. D) therefore, probably doomed. > The most important thing is to not use AI at first. > Explore the problem space using normal programming practices to determine what areas need a specialized model in the first place. > Remember, making “supermodels” is generally not the right approach. This is good advice. > The real secret is to already have a viable business that AI can subsequently improve You realise that what you said, is the equivalent of what they said, which is: use AI to solve problems, rather than slapping it on meaninglessly.

johnsonjo 3y ago
I don't really have much beef with your comment as it has pretty substantive points, but I just wanted to remind and let everybody know about a Hacker News guideline outlined on their guidelines under the comments section. Sorry, I just recently re-read the guidelines, so I thought I might point others to it too. I honestly believe there are a lot more people breaking all these guidelines on this site, so the whole thing is a good read for anyone uninformed, and yes there are definitely more egregious breakages of guidelines elsewhere. > Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that". [1] I just mainly brought this one up, because I see it come up often, and because I didn't even notice it was really a violation until I reread the guidelines the other day. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html#comments https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html#comments
- meiraleal 3y ago

nostromo 3y ago

Just be prepared for OpenAI to pull the rug out from under you at some point... and probably sooner than you realize. This is always the approach in our industry. During the land rush, you offer very affordable, very favorable terms for people building on your stack. When they've wiped out most of the competition and have massive marketshare -- they shift from land-rush mode to rent-seeking mode, and your business is either dead entirely or you now live as a sharecropper.

j45 3y ago
It's why being platform independent as possible is critical. Even if it's an app in someone's store. Can't quite run it with just their stuff.
baxtr 3y ago
Who cares if you don’t have any paying customers?
happytiger 3y ago
If you don’t own the API AND the customer, you don’t own anything: you rent.

elorant 3y ago

Sure, and then you'll wake up one morning and OpenAI will either have eaten your lunch, or quadrupled their prices because they'd have achieved wide adoption.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

lagrange77 3y ago

> Making AI the business is a joke of a model to me. By AI you just mean LLMs, like most people recently, right?