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But ... what else should they be doing? What's the expectation here? For example, in the 90's, a startup that offered a nice UI for a legacy console based syst
by zkmon 11mo ago
But ... what else should they be doing? What's the expectation here?
For example, in the 90's, a startup that offered a nice UI for a legacy console based system, would have been a great idea. What's wrong with that?
- nottorp 11mo agoActual AI. Not being "AI" users. Being LLM users would be fine but they pretend they do AI.
- zkmon 11mo agoAI is an ecosystem that includes users at all layers and innovation at all those layers - infra, databases, models, agents, portals, UIs and so on. What do you mean by doing AI? Btw, the so-called AI devs or model developers are "users" of the databases and all the underlying layers of the stack.
- jasonjmcghee 11mo agoEverything is a spectrum. At what point can you claim that you did "it"? Do you have to use an open source model instead of an API? Do you have to fine tune it? How much do you need to? Do you have to create synthetic data for training? Do you have to gather your own data? Do you need to train from scratch? Do you need to come up with a novel architecture? 10 years ago if you gathered some data and trained a linear model to determine the likelihood your client would default on their loan and used that to decide how much, if any, to loan them- you're absolutely doing "actual AI" --- Any other software you could ask all the same questions but with using a high level language, frameworks, dependencies, hiring consultants / firm, using an LLM, no-code, etc. At what point does outsourcing some portion of the end product become no longer doing the thing?
- FridgeSeal 11mo ago> At what point can you claim that you did "it"? When the core of your business ist something that’s shamelessly farmed out to <LLM provider of choice>. It would be like calling yourself a restaurant, and then getting uber eats deliveries of whatever customers ordered and handing that to them.
- jasonjmcghee 11mo agoI mean- yeah I think that's a fair analogy. The customers don't see where the food is coming from and are still coming to eat. If you can make the economics work... You don't have the moat other restaurants have, but you're still a restaurant.
- zkmon 11mo agoRestaurants are a spectrum too. Some restaurants may not have much of what you call as kitchen. It's not like they make food from raw ingredients. They might just assemble the food. A lot of it could be instant food, pre-made. They might just do wrapping, stuffing and heating it up. Not too different from what uber eats does.
- nottorp 11mo agoGreat analogy. I don't eat at those kinds of "restaurants" though. If I buy pre made it's at best from supermarkets for heating at home.
- zkmon 11mo agoIf restaurants can't use pre-made food, they would have to have a farm in their backyard with all sorts of animals, veggies and grain crops.
- FridgeSeal 11mo agoWhat an incredible false dichotomy. Yes clearly the only 2 options are “sells someone else pre-made meals” or “farms everything on premises”. Clearly no other alternatives exist. /s
- xenospn 11mo agoWhat’s actual AI in this context?
- sethops1 11mo agoThey should compete in the crucible of the free market. If prompt engineering is indeed a profitable industry then so be it. I for one am just tired of all things software being dominated by this hype funded AI frenzy.
- ang_cire 11mo agoI think the point is more to point out the inherent danger presented when your platform is just a wrapper, but is being sold as more than that. A lot of these startups have little to no moat, but they're raking in money like no one's business. That's exactly what happened in the dotcom bubble.
- danny_codes 11mo agoIMO nothing wrong with it. Just misleading to call yourself an AI company when you actually make a CRUD app. I think if these companies were honest about what they’re doing nobody would be upset. There’s an obvious deliberate attempt to give an impression of technical complexity/competence that isn’t there. I assume it works because the ecosystem is, as you say, so new. Non-technical observers have trouble distinguishing between LLM companies and CRUD companies
- zkmon 11mo agoSo, what is an AI company? What do they sell? AI models? agents? Are they building these from scratch or using some pre-trained base models/agents?
- Esophagus4 11mo agoI don’t have a problem with a company calling themselves an AI company if they use OpenAI behind the scenes. The thing that annoys me is when clearly non-AI companies try to brand themselves as AI: like how Long Island Iced Tea tried to brand themselves as a blockchain company or WeWork tried to brand themselves as a tech company. If we’re complaining about AI startups not building their own in house LLMs, that really just seems like people who are not in the arena criticizing those who are.
- ungreased0675 11mo agoThey should be creating tiny domain specific models, because someday OpenAI will stop selling dollars for a nickel.
- ankit219 11mo agoMaybe, not lie about what they are doing? That is not unreasonable as a base expectation.