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YC Research

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: YC Research

#101

Post by gdb »

go1979 wrote: post #76

Will scientists at YC Research continue the common pattern of academic research/publications? Or are there some grander plans to disrupt traditional research?

(I'm working with Sam on YCR.)

It's pretty important that YCR groups have strong ties with the existing research communities — research collaborations tend to have a multiplicative effect.

So I'd expect to see papers coming out of YCR. However, I'd also expect to see many other forms of communication (e.g. blog posts, code releases, etc). In general, we'll tune our efforts to achieve the best research results and impact, rather than to fit the existing incentive systems.

Re: YC Research

#102

Post by mizzao »

gozo wrote: post #70
urs2102 wrote: post #3

@sama - are the members of these groups going to be selected by YC or will there be an application process similar to YC? This is awesome to see, maybe YCR could be the next Bell Labs or something (although Google probably has a hold on that now).

"YCR could be the next Bell Labs" Eh. That a pretty huge jump. Look, most new "tech" companies research is mostly PR, internal and external. If you're doing something you have little experience in and therefor can't evaluate, which success you aren't dependent on or necessarily benefit from and everyone will say how cool it is regardless then it's extremely hard to not cut corners and achieve real success. Still exci…

MSR has been around for a while, with quite a bit of freedom, and still is a far cry from the accomplishments of Bell Labs (maybe time will tell, though.)

Re: YC Research

#103

Post by raphman »

arasmussen wrote: post #46
exgrv wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft Research is also an excellent organization for CS related research.

Do they have similar policies with regards to openness as YC's research lab?

MSR publish a lot but try to get patents on potentially valuable research first.

Re: YC Research

#104

Post by seiji »

waterlesscloud wrote: post #41

TIL that Sam Altman has considerably more personal wealth than I would have guessed, if I'd ever been inclined to guess. Anyway, this is very cool. Exactly the sort of thing that needs to happen to push the world forward in deeper ways. I'll be very curious to see what sort of teams they put together and just how fundamental and long term and heretical they go with their research.

If every poster here had their net worth attached to their username, you'd probably cry.

We all realize founders maintain "a lot more" equity than employees, but it's almost like our brains aren't wired to recognize, remember, or rationalize how some people get really really rewarded more than others. With Sam being grand poobah of YC, he's on a life track to being a liquid-capable multibillionaire within 5-10 years after the current unicornpalooza goes through a few rounds of lofty exits.

My propositions for SF to require all equity-exited techies to tattoo their net worth on their foreheads keeps getting shot down by anonymous "concerned citizens."

Re: YC Research

#106

Post by vasilipupkin »

imajes wrote: post #5

@sama: is one of the intentions for this group to acquire patents, so that you may be able to use them in defense for YC companies?

what YC could get out of it ( besides making the world a better place ) is very good knowledge of the capabilities of potential entrepreneurs. Imagine one of these researchers then founding a startup. Funding that would be a lot less risky, so that's quite a bit of edge

Re: YC Research

#107

Post by acidburnNSA »

nmrm2 wrote: post #49
BinaryIdiot wrote: post #35

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 :)

Nuclear would also make sense? AI might make more sense becaues nuclear seems like a hard place to do "heretical" research, but what do I know

Nuclear makes sense. The fluid-fueled nuclear company he's the chairman of (Transatomic) is considered at least slightly heretical by the nuclear industry, which is used to its solid fuel water-cooled reactors. They also use used nuclear fuel (i.e. transuranics in nuclear waste) as fuel, which could be called heretical because recycling nuclear waste was once outlawed in the US by Jimmy Carter (but it no longer is illegal).

Re: YC Research

#108

Post by curiousfiddler »

I just passively started looking around for a change. My criteria is exactly what's described here: "work that requires a very long time horizon, seeks to answer very open-ended questions, or develops technology that shouldn’t be owned by any one company." [1]. I have been unable to find very many places that will take non PHDs and let them participate in projects with these characteristics. I really do hope YCR relaxes the PHD constraint a bit. Look forward to it.

1. https://ycr.org/

Re: YC Research

#109

Post by rezistik »

mrdrozdov wrote: post #62
BinaryIdiot wrote: post #35

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 :)

25 years is a reasonable number for how long it took deep learning research to begin getting traction. I would think AI would be a strange choice since it seems like there are a lot of research opportunities in academia and industry for this topic, but for the same reason I would say AI research is ripe for disruption.

My bet is on renewable energy/sustainability, agriculture or biotech, with energy being my first choice. Sam has expressed serious concern about powering the future. His first(only?) deviations from the "No Board Seat" policy were two energy companies.

Re: YC Research

#110

Post by acidburnNSA »

waterlesscloud wrote: post #52
BinaryIdiot wrote: post #35

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.

My money's on nuclear. Advanced nuclear designs regularly claim 25 year timeframes for design, qualification testing, licensing activities, supply chain development, and construction. Transatomic is proposing concepts that require long qualification and licensing developments, many of which could make meaningful progress in a small lab with a $10M initial budget. You have to produce your salt fuel and do materials testing with surrogate fission products (e.g. stable isotopes) over long periods of time. They also have to do hydride transport experiments which can be done on a pretty small scale.
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