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People think these tools are more capable than they are because marketers encourage that misrepresentation. This leads to a huge glut of scam companies that are

by burnte 2y ago

People think these tools are more capable than they are because marketers encourage that misrepresentation. This leads to a huge glut of scam companies that are nothing more than wrappers on OpenAI's GPT tech, or chaining together tools from cloud providers. I had the chance to talk with one of the healthcare startups, they're trying to make a product that competes with Dragon DAX Copilot (which is incredible) by cobbling together some of the tools from Azure, Google Cloud Platform, and AWS. I didn't believe their pitches, and their prices were insane, because they got some seed funding and are building an MVP still, while also trying to get some revenue. They shared with me a document that was confidential because anyone with technical know how could see they had nothing unique, they were only shuttling data between a couple cloud providers to utilize different pre-built technologies. When confronted with this they got rather defensive and moderately offensive, and even tried to end-run around IT by going to providers and filling their heads with nonsense. Right now AI can do 10% of what people promise it can, and it's so new audiences don't have the tools to know who is real and who is a fly by night operator. It's like the beginning of the app store, AI is full of incredibly low effort apps right now and most are garbage. People are rushing in like it's a gold rush, they want some easy money before bigger, more competent products come out. I'd say this is the biggest issue, too many ethically challenged people are spinning up cheap minimum-viable-product apps and slick marketing materials to take some cash off the table before collapsing. The industry is full of snake oil.

anon523543 2y ago
(anonymous coward - does anyone else remember slashdot heyday?) I so agree with this. I'm tasked with creating "AI flow" for our product. Guess what? I'm cobbling together pieces from Gemini, GPT, sprinkling some transformations and trying my best to keep the price down because OMG these things are expensive. But am I creating something new? Am I even creating something useful? I don't think so. It's becoming table-stakes but I have no idea who's going to use this. It's so inconvenient, clunky and is even the low probability it'll respond with hallucinations or misinterpret causes me to shy away from it personally. For my personal life? sure. I wouldn't count on it but it's a great shortcut. For work? I wouldn't trust what that thing says without verifying. Nor would I let it perform actions for me without making sure of what it's about to do.
- lowmagnet 2y ago
  They wanted to add AI to our job requests to "attract talent". They did, and all "talent" meant was 600 "ai" resumes.
rvz 2y ago
It is full of grifters and con-artists screeching around with their AI snake oil when it is just a bunch of APIs wrapped around and funnelled into someone else's GPT. Yet another attempt to beg to foolish VCs for infinite Series A to Z funding rounds and easy money because they have slapped 'AI powered' on if-else-statements with APIs + GPTs and diluting it with their multi-level growth hacking schemes. Another industry originally overseen by researchers that has hijacked and turned into another scam industry.
- spacemadness 2y ago
  I’m happy to see this acknowledged here as HN was swimming with AI startup posts which were nothing but this. Where is the innovation in that? They are hobby ChatGPT projects at best.
crackalamoo 2y ago
It seems that YC is funding a lot of these companies despite all that. I've been wondering why, because I agree with you about the current capabilities of AI. Is it * they expect AI to drastically improve, making these GPT-based products much more useful? e.g. almost fully automating a sector of white collar labor * over time, they expect these companies to build more sophisticated non-AI or in-house AI products in the same problem space? * they are hoping for positive EV due to unforseen events even if they expect most of these companies to fail? * something else?
- al_borland 2y ago
  If these companies release with subpar products that fail to live up to the claims, all based on the hope they the backend that they don’t own will eventually get good enough… that seems like a recipe for failure. By the time it gets good enough, if it gets there, people and companies may have already rejected the whole concept due to too many false promises and burned bridges.
- burnte 2y ago
  I think they want to spread out the bets and expect a bunch of these to become acquihires fairly quickly.
lowmagnet 2y ago
I interviewed with a company a few years back claiming something unique and asking me to sign an NDA to interview. I told them that no, they are not unique and Dragon basically owns this space since the 90s. Because it's damned good.

by burnte 2y ago

anon523543 2y ago

(anonymous coward - does anyone else remember slashdot heyday?) I so agree with this. I'm tasked with creating "AI flow" for our product. Guess what? I'm cobbling together pieces from Gemini, GPT, sprinkling some transformations and trying my best to keep the price down because OMG these things are expensive. But am I creating something new? Am I even creating something useful? I don't think so. It's becoming table-stakes but I have no idea who's going to use this. It's so inconvenient, clunky and is even the low probability it'll respond with hallucinations or misinterpret causes me to shy away from it personally. For my personal life? sure. I wouldn't count on it but it's a great shortcut. For work? I wouldn't trust what that thing says without verifying. Nor would I let it perform actions for me without making sure of what it's about to do.

lowmagnet 2y ago
They wanted to add AI to our job requests to "attract talent". They did, and all "talent" meant was 600 "ai" resumes.

rvz 2y ago

It is full of grifters and con-artists screeching around with their AI snake oil when it is just a bunch of APIs wrapped around and funnelled into someone else's GPT. Yet another attempt to beg to foolish VCs for infinite Series A to Z funding rounds and easy money because they have slapped 'AI powered' on if-else-statements with APIs + GPTs and diluting it with their multi-level growth hacking schemes. Another industry originally overseen by researchers that has hijacked and turned into another scam industry.

spacemadness 2y ago
I’m happy to see this acknowledged here as HN was swimming with AI startup posts which were nothing but this. Where is the innovation in that? They are hobby ChatGPT projects at best.

crackalamoo 2y ago

It seems that YC is funding a lot of these companies despite all that. I've been wondering why, because I agree with you about the current capabilities of AI. Is it * they expect AI to drastically improve, making these GPT-based products much more useful? e.g. almost fully automating a sector of white collar labor * over time, they expect these companies to build more sophisticated non-AI or in-house AI products in the same problem space? * they are hoping for positive EV due to unforseen events even if they expect most of these companies to fail? * something else?

al_borland 2y ago
If these companies release with subpar products that fail to live up to the claims, all based on the hope they the backend that they don’t own will eventually get good enough… that seems like a recipe for failure. By the time it gets good enough, if it gets there, people and companies may have already rejected the whole concept due to too many false promises and burned bridges.
burnte 2y ago
I think they want to spread out the bets and expect a bunch of these to become acquihires fairly quickly.

lowmagnet 2y ago

I interviewed with a company a few years back claiming something unique and asking me to sign an NDA to interview. I told them that no, they are not unique and Dragon basically owns this space since the 90s. Because it's damned good.