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YC Research

blog.ycombinator.com

91–100 of 389 posts

Re: YC Research

#91

It takes a special person to donate $10 million to a new project. You don't get enough credit Sam Altman. Good job and a very good idea. EDIT: Why am getting down votes for this comment? You must know that in this world not everyone is willing to part with their money and are not that giving. So relax before you down vote me promptly:)

I downvoted by mistake! I wanted to upvote.

Re: YC Research

#92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sam has expressed his desired to get really good AI to become a thing. Since YC does a ton of tech I'd bet $10 it's AI. But of course this is just my useless speculation :)

He's also chairman of the board for two nuclear power companies. And YC itself has been branching into biotech and hardware and other science-y companies. Anything seems possible to me.

A 25-year estimate for how long it will take them to develop an AI that will be able to create biological organisms that utilize nuclear power directly? Sounds reasonable.

Re: YC Research

#93
post #38

> "To start off, I’m going to personally donate $10 million..." Holy cow. That's real money. Sincerely very impressed by the commitment.

Reminds me of a great historical figure of Hungary, István Széchenyi.

>Széchenyi gained a wider reputation in 1825, by supporting the proposal of the prime minister, Nagy, to establish the Hungarian Academy of Sciences; Széchenyi donated the full annual income of his estates that year, 60,000 florins, towards it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Istv%C3%A1n_Sz%C3%A9chenyi

Re: YC Research

#94
post #85

Why not give YC a 7% ownership of the IP and YC the other 93%. That would definitely drive the more entrepreneurial scientists to work there and also allow YC to monetize products out it's own research. I have some ideas on technologies that are harder to create and takes time, but actually want to own the IP at the end.

> Why not give YC a 7% ownership of the IP and YC the other 93%.

I suspect that one of these "YCs" is supposed to be someone other than YC, but its not clear which one.

Re: YC Research

#95
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bell Labs had an annual budget of over 3 billion since the 80s.

Clearly if it seems promising we're going to up the funding significantly.

Just curious, are you going to also have people filing grant proposals (with government agencies, etc), as an avenue of additional funding?

Re: YC Research

#96
post #32

> YC has a very high problem flux at this point What does this phrase mean in English?

A significant amount of proposals are too pie-in-the-sky to take seriously but still warrant attention.

Honestly I'd like to see Kickstarter take a stab at this too, providing the general populace with an outlet to support research projects.

Re: YC Research

#97
Great news! Probably the only other non-university lab at the moment with this type of long-term basic research goal is Microsoft Research.

Re: YC Research

#98
post #77

I like the idea of YC funding research. Bias free and politics free research can go a long way. A couple of questions though for @sama: 1. Where will the research be based? Is YC providing space to setup lab? 2. One of the problems I see with this is lack of fellow researches present on site making casual collaboration harder (compared to a research university campus). Have you thought of that? 3. Are you planning on…

1. SF for now. 2. Yes, eventually we'd like to have multiple groups in the same space just for this reason--I always think the interdisciplinary stuff is underrated. 3. Some of both, probably, but mostly we want to support people that the existing system does not support (e.g. people that are not yet famous)

Interdisciplinary work is incredibly hard to pull off in academia due to tribal affiliations. I think the MSR NYC lab (where I work), which consists of computer scientists, economists, and other social scientists, is one of the few places I've seen it actually flourish.

Re: YC Research

#99
post #91

It takes a special person to donate $10 million to a new project. You don't get enough credit Sam Altman. Good job and a very good idea. EDIT: Why am getting down votes for this comment? You must know that in this world not everyone is willing to part with their money and are not that giving. So relax before you down vote me promptly:)

I downvoted by mistake! I wanted to upvote.

It will cost you a buck buddy:). I was about to weep after losing my hard earned karma point. (Just kidding).

Re: YC Research

#100
This is the biggest news since YC started. The YC model works, but it isn't churning out disruptions like Xerox PARC did... ethernet, the laser printer, the PC. It tends to produce Reddits. This could fill that gap. Bravo...
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