Facebook and Google use ML as a core part of their products? and they're some of the biggest companies in the world, so...
Ask HN: Do AI/ML companies actually have real customers?
11–20 of 59 posts
Re: Ask HN: Do AI/ML companies actually have real customers?
#12The most difficult thing to do is to pitch a product instead of a technology. This is more accentuated by the fact that we're mostly engineers and we're not good at pitching benefits vs features.
But I can assure you that customers do appreciate the AI component, especially when explained to them. I do a LOT of education in commercial meetings and demos. Some of our customers we invited to our offices for a more in-depth explanation of our technology.
My experience is that customers' interest is piqued by buzzwords, but if you are able to explain the tech in plain words, they are astonished and the sale is much easier.
To summarize, if you are raising money it may be worth it to buzzword the hell of your deck, but when selling the product the key is to focus on benefits + education.
Disclaimer: Am an AI startup founder (https://optimusprice.ai)
Re: Ask HN: Do AI/ML companies actually have real customers?
#13I know Seldon have real paying customers:
https://www.seldon.io
I can’t speak for them specifically or any other AI company but from cursory chats with folk in the industry suggests a lot of work is consultancy and proof of concept type stuff with bigger companies which they use to partially fund product dev on their own internal projects - some of which see the light of day.
Re: Ask HN: Do AI/ML companies actually have real customers?
#14Most people that balk at the term A.I. seem to presume that intelligence is some capacity unique to humans. Intelligence is merely pattern matching and goal oriented planning, exactly what machine learning is doing today. Stop worrying and learn to love the bomb.
To be really precise when talking to potential customers, I call it artificial classification. Even artificial learning is a hazy term that doesn't really explain much. Classification has many real world examples that customers can relate to. "Intelligence" has too many connotations and isn't really useful in getting your point through when consulting people with non-technical domain expertise.
Re: Ask HN: Do AI/ML companies actually have real customers?
#15Customers (mostly businesses) are pretty much queueing to use our product, Datavoyant by Amplyfi (https://www.amplyfigroup.com/). We have real paying customers.
AI and ML techniques are great for both our product, as well for our marketing.
Re: Ask HN: Do AI/ML companies actually have real customers?
#16Some of us not only have real customers, but are profitable also...
Re: Ask HN: Do AI/ML companies actually have real customers?
#17Aktana has real big entreprise customers. They market themselves as AI while their algorithms are certainly not matching up to the buzz.
Re: Ask HN: Do AI/ML companies actually have real customers?
#18I was at an AI company at my last job. They had customers, but it was largely speculative. I cannot say the product was worth what was being paid for it. That being said, there is certainly a problem domain that AI could be good for, if it ever lives up to the hype. Much more effective is human-in-the-loop AI, which is what Google, Facebook, etc. use and make lots of money from.
Re: Ask HN: Do AI/ML companies actually have real customers?
#19Facebook and Google use ML as a core part of their products? and they're some of the biggest companies in the world, so...
Right, but the ML they use is largely developed in-house. It's not part of a prepackaged ML "product" provided by an outside group.
Re: Ask HN: Do AI/ML companies actually have real customers?
#20Most people that balk at the term A.I. seem to presume that intelligence is some capacity unique to humans. Intelligence is merely pattern matching and goal oriented planning, exactly what machine learning is doing today. Stop worrying and learn to love the bomb.
The term "Intelligence" does not have a definition everyone agrees on but it surely is not "pattern matching". Machine learning today does little more than pattern matching and it is far from intelligence at a human level.