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> We are slowly but surely witnessing the collapse of Western Tech scene Generally, I’ve found that almost no founders or friends I speak with have any vision

> We are slowly but surely witnessing the collapse of Western Tech scene Generally, I’ve found that almost no founders or friends I speak with have any vision for the future anymore. They care only about making money and do not care how. It’s a spectacular collapse of vision and purpose—these people have always existed but it feels incredibly pervasive now. With that, I realize your comment is much broader than AI so below is too domain specific but… VC has been investing in AI as-if it were a winner takes all market, but it has been obvious that isn’t the case. Not only that, but the massive amount of cash thrown to anyone with even marginal credentials has undermined the constraints that often lead to innovation. There is 0 reason that Safe Superintelligence should be raising for the second time at a 30 B valuation with no product.

Imustaskforhelp 2y ago
can I say something. This is one of the most finest and most accurate things that I have read in a long time. This really could be a blog post which I encourage you to make! (I would prefer github pages but if you really want , I have a domain name on cloudflare and I am more than willing to host the static page of such blog on my own domain name for absolutely free (lets go , cloudflare!) Its just facts. Pure facts. "" Generally, I’ve found that almost no founders or friends I speak with have any vision for the future anymore. They care only about making money and do not care how. It’s a spectacular collapse of vision and purpose—these people have always existed but it feels incredibly pervasive now. "" Why did I read it in a monotonous way as if a student from the future understands the current scenario. I felt as if it was the same level of sadness in my heart as that when you listen to some video which has raining background and he reads the dark comedy (something like burialgoods oats shitposting but this time more serious and real!) Currently saving this on wayback machine just for this comment. Internet needs to preserve this comment , no matter what.
- Imustaskforhelp 2y ago
  https://web.archive.org/web/20250316121222/https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43377962 https://web.archive.org/web/20250316121222/https://news.ycom... May archive never go down!
jarsin 2y ago
> I’ve found that almost no founders or friends I speak with have any vision for the future anymore. I think in general there is a feeling that the time to get your bag is rapidly shrinking. Once everything is built by these things there will be no reason to create anything as the platform owners (big tech) will be able to take everything for themselves and no longer have to share 70% with those pesky creators/small business/startups etc.
tmpz22 2y ago
Founder risk has been nil for a long time either because they pay themselves six figures out the gate or because the job market has been hot enough that they can market utter failure to get another job. There’s a lot of opportunity to make low cost software that out competes big tech just because it doesn’t demand 10000x returns on every if statement. I’d encourage Europeans to start replacing American software vendors with small teams today. You won’t become the next American oligarch but you’ll be able to clean up millions from the incompetent Americans.
- dukeyukey 2y ago
  I think there's huge opportunity for software that replicates the 80% most used features from big tech companies/packages, but at half the price and a tiny fraction of the overall complexity. Think of Python Anywhere, offering a very simple Python-focused VPS/PaaS platform, but so so much easier to use than AWS.
- jarsin 2y ago
  [flagged]
nyarlathotep_ 2y ago
> VC has been investing in AI as-if it were a winner takes all market, but it has been obvious that isn’t the case. I really don't see how this was supposed to go, and I've never heard an explanation. I don't see any kind of coherent vision from any of these types. Most normal folks (i.e not SV/HN types that seem to desire to replace their marketable programming skills with LLM output) really don't "want" LLMs in any real sense. Sure, people use them like a search engine, kids cheat on homework with them etc, but there's not this overwhelming universal desire for them like there was for, say iPhones. I never once have heard any sort of proposed roadmap for how LLMs were supposed to work as a product. They were just going to get, uh "really good" and take everyone's office job or something?* Normal F500 organizations that are obviously a target for LLM use (via hyperscaler sales) are still yet to see a clear path to "revolutionizing" their workforce or whatever via LLMs-it's just not there. Costs are too high, there's no obvious use case, "hallucinations" are a real impediment etc. I'll add many of the public usecases for this (i.e those a hyperscaler would blog about as a sales promo) are seriously weak ("we reduced onboarding time by 20% with $MODEL") I would really like to hear a proposal for how this is all supposed to come together. Does anyone have a concrete plan for the future for all this stuff? *I'll note, this is NOT the way to sell a product to the masses, either. Addendum: I'm not an "LLM hater" by any means. I pay for GH Copilot, and have been running local LLMs since it's been a thing (granted with limited hardware, and limited quality)--I intend to wait a bit and buy better hardware with one motivating factor being running local LLMs in a year or so when the open-source offerings stabilize"
- nasmorn 2y ago
  I have changed from Copilot to Cline with Claude 3.7 and it is a total gamechanger. For some one like me being able to describe a multi file edit is really empowering. I hate that kind of busy work
- SpicyLemonZest 2y ago
  You're looking for a proposal for how it's supposed to come together in the future, but VCs are living in the world where it already has come together. Normal F500 organizations have widely adopted LLMs, with OpenAI reporting that 92% of them are customers. (https://www.axios.com/2024/08/29/openai-chatgpt-200-million-weekly-active-users https://www.axios.com/2024/08/29/openai-chatgpt-200-million-...) Determining individual business usage is always a bit sketchy, but at least one survey run by a major staffing firm indicates that a majority of workers and almost all executives use generative AI for their jobs. (https://www.weforum.org/stories/2024/01/ai-training-workforce/ https://www.weforum.org/stories/2024/01/ai-training-workforc...)
spamizbad 2y ago
There used to be significant alignment between engineers, founders and certain VCs: lots of excitement around building software that genuinely made things better/easier/cheaper. Each group naturally wanted a different thing out of this arrangement but each camp was on the same page. Now I feel like everything is more top-down. The tech sector feels less like market capitalism and more like something being centrally planned: we all must chase trends that come from various industry thought-leaders. And it all must be done a very specific way (this in particular is why Chinese companies are likely going to disrupt the AI market: they’re free from this burden)
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
amelius 2y ago
VCs are happy to throw money at something if they believe they can corner a market. It just doesn't have to do much with reality. Until of course, it becomes self fulfilling. But in this case it seems like it's not going to happen because nobody has a moat.

Imustaskforhelp 2y ago

can I say something. This is one of the most finest and most accurate things that I have read in a long time. This really could be a blog post which I encourage you to make! (I would prefer github pages but if you really want , I have a domain name on cloudflare and I am more than willing to host the static page of such blog on my own domain name for absolutely free (lets go , cloudflare!) Its just facts. Pure facts. "" Generally, I’ve found that almost no founders or friends I speak with have any vision for the future anymore. They care only about making money and do not care how. It’s a spectacular collapse of vision and purpose—these people have always existed but it feels incredibly pervasive now. "" Why did I read it in a monotonous way as if a student from the future understands the current scenario. I felt as if it was the same level of sadness in my heart as that when you listen to some video which has raining background and he reads the dark comedy (something like burialgoods oats shitposting but this time more serious and real!) Currently saving this on wayback machine just for this comment. Internet needs to preserve this comment , no matter what.

Imustaskforhelp 2y ago
https://web.archive.org/web/20250316121222/https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43377962 https://web.archive.org/web/20250316121222/https://news.ycom... May archive never go down!

jarsin 2y ago

> I’ve found that almost no founders or friends I speak with have any vision for the future anymore. I think in general there is a feeling that the time to get your bag is rapidly shrinking. Once everything is built by these things there will be no reason to create anything as the platform owners (big tech) will be able to take everything for themselves and no longer have to share 70% with those pesky creators/small business/startups etc.

tmpz22 2y ago

Founder risk has been nil for a long time either because they pay themselves six figures out the gate or because the job market has been hot enough that they can market utter failure to get another job. There’s a lot of opportunity to make low cost software that out competes big tech just because it doesn’t demand 10000x returns on every if statement. I’d encourage Europeans to start replacing American software vendors with small teams today. You won’t become the next American oligarch but you’ll be able to clean up millions from the incompetent Americans.

dukeyukey 2y ago
I think there's huge opportunity for software that replicates the 80% most used features from big tech companies/packages, but at half the price and a tiny fraction of the overall complexity. Think of Python Anywhere, offering a very simple Python-focused VPS/PaaS platform, but so so much easier to use than AWS.
jarsin 2y ago
[flagged]

nyarlathotep_ 2y ago

> VC has been investing in AI as-if it were a winner takes all market, but it has been obvious that isn’t the case. I really don't see how this was supposed to go, and I've never heard an explanation. I don't see any kind of coherent vision from any of these types. Most normal folks (i.e not SV/HN types that seem to desire to replace their marketable programming skills with LLM output) really don't "want" LLMs in any real sense. Sure, people use them like a search engine, kids cheat on homework with them etc, but there's not this overwhelming universal desire for them like there was for, say iPhones. I never once have heard any sort of proposed roadmap for how LLMs were supposed to work as a product. They were just going to get, uh "really good" and take everyone's office job or something?* Normal F500 organizations that are obviously a target for LLM use (via hyperscaler sales) are still yet to see a clear path to "revolutionizing" their workforce or whatever via LLMs-it's just not there. Costs are too high, there's no obvious use case, "hallucinations" are a real impediment etc. I'll add many of the public usecases for this (i.e those a hyperscaler would blog about as a sales promo) are seriously weak ("we reduced onboarding time by 20% with $MODEL") I would really like to hear a proposal for how this is all supposed to come together. Does anyone have a concrete plan for the future for all this stuff? *I'll note, this is NOT the way to sell a product to the masses, either. Addendum: I'm not an "LLM hater" by any means. I pay for GH Copilot, and have been running local LLMs since it's been a thing (granted with limited hardware, and limited quality)--I intend to wait a bit and buy better hardware with one motivating factor being running local LLMs in a year or so when the open-source offerings stabilize"

nasmorn 2y ago
I have changed from Copilot to Cline with Claude 3.7 and it is a total gamechanger. For some one like me being able to describe a multi file edit is really empowering. I hate that kind of busy work
SpicyLemonZest 2y ago
You're looking for a proposal for how it's supposed to come together in the future, but VCs are living in the world where it already has come together. Normal F500 organizations have widely adopted LLMs, with OpenAI reporting that 92% of them are customers. (https://www.axios.com/2024/08/29/openai-chatgpt-200-million-weekly-active-users https://www.axios.com/2024/08/29/openai-chatgpt-200-million-...) Determining individual business usage is always a bit sketchy, but at least one survey run by a major staffing firm indicates that a majority of workers and almost all executives use generative AI for their jobs. (https://www.weforum.org/stories/2024/01/ai-training-workforce/ https://www.weforum.org/stories/2024/01/ai-training-workforc...)

spamizbad 2y ago

There used to be significant alignment between engineers, founders and certain VCs: lots of excitement around building software that genuinely made things better/easier/cheaper. Each group naturally wanted a different thing out of this arrangement but each camp was on the same page. Now I feel like everything is more top-down. The tech sector feels less like market capitalism and more like something being centrally planned: we all must chase trends that come from various industry thought-leaders. And it all must be done a very specific way (this in particular is why Chinese companies are likely going to disrupt the AI market: they’re free from this burden)

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

amelius 2y ago

VCs are happy to throw money at something if they believe they can corner a market. It just doesn't have to do much with reality. Until of course, it becomes self fulfilling. But in this case it seems like it's not going to happen because nobody has a moat.