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There's a difference between social networks, where a network effect is needed, and why we don't see clones of platforms like Instagram or Reddit. Many of today

There's a difference between social networks, where a network effect is needed, and why we don't see clones of platforms like Instagram or Reddit. Many of today's 'AI startups' are essentially just a landing page with a few hundred lines of code generated by GPT-4 to connect with the OpenAI API. The key element in these startups is their unique prompt used with the API. Essentially, cloning this type of startup boils down to replicating this prompt.

brigadier132 3y ago
> There's a difference between social networks, where a network effect is needed Ok, but why aren't there a thousand "made in a weekend" clones that at the very least function but have no users? > Many of today's 'AI startups' are essentially just a landing page with a few hundred lines of code generated by GPT-4 to connect with the OpenAI API This is a strawman. Most of the AI startups that have raised significant money are not that.
- lossolo 3y ago
  > Ok, but why aren't there a thousand "made in a weekend" clones that at the very least function but have no users? Because you are using social network to connect/interact with other people? If I'm making a simple AI tool powered by LLM then I don't need other users to make it useful for you. > This is a strawman. Most of the AI startups that have raised significant money are not that. It's not a straw man argument if adding a condition to your statement is necessary to refute it. In fact, having to do so is essentially the definition of a straw man.
- Zak 3y ago
  > Ok, but why aren't there a thousand "made in a weekend" clones that at the very least function but have no users? There are. When Reddit switched from Lisp to Python, a number of Lisp users had negative things to say about that, and made their own clones over short time intervals to show just how superior Lisp is. There are a bunch of open source clones now: https://github.com/topics/reddit-clone https://github.com/topics/reddit-clone Twitter is even more trivial to clone, and this has more results: https://github.com/topics/twitter-clone https://github.com/topics/twitter-clone I'm not going to track down all the attempts to commercialize clones of either that shut down after a month, but they're out there.

brigadier132 3y ago

> There's a difference between social networks, where a network effect is needed Ok, but why aren't there a thousand "made in a weekend" clones that at the very least function but have no users? > Many of today's 'AI startups' are essentially just a landing page with a few hundred lines of code generated by GPT-4 to connect with the OpenAI API This is a strawman. Most of the AI startups that have raised significant money are not that.

lossolo 3y ago
> Ok, but why aren't there a thousand "made in a weekend" clones that at the very least function but have no users? Because you are using social network to connect/interact with other people? If I'm making a simple AI tool powered by LLM then I don't need other users to make it useful for you. > This is a strawman. Most of the AI startups that have raised significant money are not that. It's not a straw man argument if adding a condition to your statement is necessary to refute it. In fact, having to do so is essentially the definition of a straw man.
Zak 3y ago
> Ok, but why aren't there a thousand "made in a weekend" clones that at the very least function but have no users? There are. When Reddit switched from Lisp to Python, a number of Lisp users had negative things to say about that, and made their own clones over short time intervals to show just how superior Lisp is. There are a bunch of open source clones now: https://github.com/topics/reddit-clone https://github.com/topics/reddit-clone Twitter is even more trivial to clone, and this has more results: https://github.com/topics/twitter-clone https://github.com/topics/twitter-clone I'm not going to track down all the attempts to commercialize clones of either that shut down after a month, but they're out there.