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> What's wrong with trying out 100 different AI features across your product suite, and then seeing which ones "stick"? For users? Almost everything is wrong w

> What's wrong with trying out 100 different AI features across your product suite, and then seeing which ones "stick"? For users? Almost everything is wrong with that. There are no users looking for wild churn in their user interface, no users crossing their fingers that the feature that stuck for them gets pruned because it didn't hit adoption targets overall, no users hoping for popups and nags interrupting their workflow to promote some new garbage that was rushed out and barely considered. Users want to know what their tool does, learn how to use it, and get back to their own business. They can welcome compelling new features, of course, but they generally want them to be introduced in a coherent way, they want to be able to rely on the feature being there for as long as their own use of those features persists, and they want to be able to step into and explore these new features on their own pace and without disturbance to their practiced workflow.

crazygringo 2y ago
Think about the other side though -- if the tool you've learned and rely on goes out of business because they didn't innovate fast enough, it's a whole lot worse for you now that you have to learn an entirely new tool. And I haven't seen any "wild churn" at all -- like I said in another comment, a few informative popups and a magic wand icon in a toolbar? It's not exactly high on the list of disruptions. I can still continue to use my software the exact same way I have been -- it's not replacing workflows. But it's way worse if the product you rely on gets discontinued.
- Arainach 2y ago
  LLMs aren't profitable. There's no significant threat of a product getting discontinued because it didn't jump high enough over the AI shark.
- swatcoder 2y ago
  The presence or absence of some subtle new magic wand icon that shows up in the toolbar is neither making nor breaking anyone's business. And even if it comes to be a compelling feature in my competitor's product, I've got plenty of time to update my product with something comparable. At least if I've done a good job building something useful for my customers in the first place. Generative ML technologies may dramatically change a lot of our products over time, but there's no great hole they're filling and there's basically no moat besides capital requirements that keeps competitors from catching up with each other as features prove themselves out. They just open a few new doors that people will gradually explore. Anxiously spamming features simply betrays a lack of confidence in one's own product as it stands, directly frustrates professional users, and soaks up tons capital that almost certainly has other places it could be going.
  - crazygringo 2y ago
    > The presence or absence of some subtle new magic wand icon that shows up in the toolbar is neither making nor breaking anyone's business. Sounds like famous last words to me. The corporate landscape is filled with the corpses of companies that thought they didn't need to rush to adapt to new technologies. That they'd have time to react if something really did take off in the end. Just think of how Kodak bided its time to see if newfangled digital photography would actually take off and when... and then it was too late.
    - swatcoder 2y ago
      You're comparing being 3 months behind on a supplementary software feature that's tucked among dozens of icons on the toolbar with making a hard decision about pivoting your entire megalithic industrial, research, sales, and distribution infrastructure to a radically new technology. The discussion you started is about spamming features to see what sticks, as set against making deliberate, selective product decisions as you confidently observe your market. It's possible that a company that ideologically sets itself against delivering any generative AI features ever might miss where the industry is going over the next 10 or 20 years. But we were never talking about that, were we?
      - crazygringo 2y ago
        Digital photography started out as a supplementary toy as well. And we are starting to witness a gigantic computational infrastructure pivot with GPU's and NPU's and whatnot. Google and Amazon are literally signing nuclear power plant agreements to power it. AI is a radically new technology. Do you remember two years ago when ChatGPT came out, and people here on HN were confidently declaring it was the end of Google Search, unless Google proved they could respond immediately? And Google released Gemini less than six months later to demonstrate that Search wasn't going to go the way of Kodak, and it still took people a while to calm down after that? And the AI revolution is moving a lot faster than the digital photography revolution. We're not talking about "the next 10 or 20 years". You seem to be severely underestimating the power of competition and technological progress, and the ability for it to put you out of business. You're suggesting the correct approach is "deliberate, selective product decisions as you confidently observe your market." What happens when your deliberation is too slow, your selectivity turns out to be wrong, and your confidence is ill-founded? Well, the company that was willing to experiment with a lot more features is more likely to build the winning features and take over the market while you were busy deliberating. I'm surprised to be having this conversation on HN, where the start-up ethos reigns supreme. The whole idea of the tech world is to try new things and fail fast, because it's better for everyone in the long run. That's what the big corporations are doing with AI features. Isn't that the kind of thing that tech entrepreneurs are supposed to celebrate?
- bigstrat2003 2y ago
  No, it's way worse if the product I rely on does as you suggest and keeps adding new features just to see what will stick. I hate that sort of behavior with a passion and it is the sort of thing which will make me never do business with a company again.
- jmb99 2y ago
  Back in the olden days (10 years ago), when you bought software, you could actually keep using it indefinitely. Doesn’t matter if the company went bankrupt, if you like using Logic Pro 7 and it works with your equipment you can kept using it. I know people who only recently moved off of OS 9 - they were using creative software for over 25 years, it did what they needed it to do so they kept using it. I still know at least one person who uses Office for Mac 98 to this day on an iMac G3; it’s their only computer, but it still works and they have backups of their important documents, so why pay money to switch to an unfamiliar computer, OS, software? This modern idea of “you’ll own nothing and you’ll like it” ruins that of course, but if someone bought CS6 they can still be using it today. If adobe went bankrupt 5 years ago they could still be legally using it today (they’d have to bypass the license checks if the servers go down, which might be illegal in the US, though). If adobe goes bankrupt tomorrow and I have a CC subscription, I can’t legally keep using photoshop after the subscription runs out.
  - t0bia_s 2y ago
    You cannot even work offline in properly licensed CC. I'm wonder when Adobe implement AI check for export. Then it will be impossible to export "wrong" files. It already started with scans of money, soon it targets CSAM, later politically incorrect topics, hatespeech, disinformations and age verification for nudity.
nl 2y ago
There are multiple different types of users. The users of https://notebooklm.google/ https://notebooklm.google/ aren't the same as the users of Google Docs.

crazygringo 2y ago

Think about the other side though -- if the tool you've learned and rely on goes out of business because they didn't innovate fast enough, it's a whole lot worse for you now that you have to learn an entirely new tool. And I haven't seen any "wild churn" at all -- like I said in another comment, a few informative popups and a magic wand icon in a toolbar? It's not exactly high on the list of disruptions. I can still continue to use my software the exact same way I have been -- it's not replacing workflows. But it's way worse if the product you rely on gets discontinued.

Arainach 2y ago
LLMs aren't profitable. There's no significant threat of a product getting discontinued because it didn't jump high enough over the AI shark.
swatcoder 2y ago
The presence or absence of some subtle new magic wand icon that shows up in the toolbar is neither making nor breaking anyone's business. And even if it comes to be a compelling feature in my competitor's product, I've got plenty of time to update my product with something comparable. At least if I've done a good job building something useful for my customers in the first place. Generative ML technologies may dramatically change a lot of our products over time, but there's no great hole they're filling and there's basically no moat besides capital requirements that keeps competitors from catching up with each other as features prove themselves out. They just open a few new doors that people will gradually explore. Anxiously spamming features simply betrays a lack of confidence in one's own product as it stands, directly frustrates professional users, and soaks up tons capital that almost certainly has other places it could be going.
- crazygringo 2y ago
  > The presence or absence of some subtle new magic wand icon that shows up in the toolbar is neither making nor breaking anyone's business. Sounds like famous last words to me. The corporate landscape is filled with the corpses of companies that thought they didn't need to rush to adapt to new technologies. That they'd have time to react if something really did take off in the end. Just think of how Kodak bided its time to see if newfangled digital photography would actually take off and when... and then it was too late.
  - swatcoder 2y ago
    You're comparing being 3 months behind on a supplementary software feature that's tucked among dozens of icons on the toolbar with making a hard decision about pivoting your entire megalithic industrial, research, sales, and distribution infrastructure to a radically new technology. The discussion you started is about spamming features to see what sticks, as set against making deliberate, selective product decisions as you confidently observe your market. It's possible that a company that ideologically sets itself against delivering any generative AI features ever might miss where the industry is going over the next 10 or 20 years. But we were never talking about that, were we?
    - crazygringo 2y ago
      Digital photography started out as a supplementary toy as well. And we are starting to witness a gigantic computational infrastructure pivot with GPU's and NPU's and whatnot. Google and Amazon are literally signing nuclear power plant agreements to power it. AI is a radically new technology. Do you remember two years ago when ChatGPT came out, and people here on HN were confidently declaring it was the end of Google Search, unless Google proved they could respond immediately? And Google released Gemini less than six months later to demonstrate that Search wasn't going to go the way of Kodak, and it still took people a while to calm down after that? And the AI revolution is moving a lot faster than the digital photography revolution. We're not talking about "the next 10 or 20 years". You seem to be severely underestimating the power of competition and technological progress, and the ability for it to put you out of business. You're suggesting the correct approach is "deliberate, selective product decisions as you confidently observe your market." What happens when your deliberation is too slow, your selectivity turns out to be wrong, and your confidence is ill-founded? Well, the company that was willing to experiment with a lot more features is more likely to build the winning features and take over the market while you were busy deliberating. I'm surprised to be having this conversation on HN, where the start-up ethos reigns supreme. The whole idea of the tech world is to try new things and fail fast, because it's better for everyone in the long run. That's what the big corporations are doing with AI features. Isn't that the kind of thing that tech entrepreneurs are supposed to celebrate?
bigstrat2003 2y ago
No, it's way worse if the product I rely on does as you suggest and keeps adding new features just to see what will stick. I hate that sort of behavior with a passion and it is the sort of thing which will make me never do business with a company again.
jmb99 2y ago
Back in the olden days (10 years ago), when you bought software, you could actually keep using it indefinitely. Doesn’t matter if the company went bankrupt, if you like using Logic Pro 7 and it works with your equipment you can kept using it. I know people who only recently moved off of OS 9 - they were using creative software for over 25 years, it did what they needed it to do so they kept using it. I still know at least one person who uses Office for Mac 98 to this day on an iMac G3; it’s their only computer, but it still works and they have backups of their important documents, so why pay money to switch to an unfamiliar computer, OS, software? This modern idea of “you’ll own nothing and you’ll like it” ruins that of course, but if someone bought CS6 they can still be using it today. If adobe went bankrupt 5 years ago they could still be legally using it today (they’d have to bypass the license checks if the servers go down, which might be illegal in the US, though). If adobe goes bankrupt tomorrow and I have a CC subscription, I can’t legally keep using photoshop after the subscription runs out.
- t0bia_s 2y ago
  You cannot even work offline in properly licensed CC. I'm wonder when Adobe implement AI check for export. Then it will be impossible to export "wrong" files. It already started with scans of money, soon it targets CSAM, later politically incorrect topics, hatespeech, disinformations and age verification for nudity.

nl 2y ago

There are multiple different types of users. The users of https://notebooklm.google/ https://notebooklm.google/ aren't the same as the users of Google Docs.