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AI Company Accused of Using Humans to Fake Its AI

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Re: AI Company Accused of Using Humans to Fake Its AI

#81

Post by conquistadog »

tabbott wrote: post #8

A poorly-kept secret in Silicon Valley is that many "AI startups" started over the last few years are actually using humans, with a long-term plan to slowly decrease the amount of work the humans do using algorithms (generally based on machine learning, but not always) as well as more basic automation. In some cases they don't actually do any "AI" work for the company's first few years, and if they do, it's more like…

I suspect this will continue until any such service can be successfully marketed on the actual merit of the actual service provided, without the hype (or even the mention) that it's an AI-based service.

Re: AI Company Accused of Using Humans to Fake Its AI

#82

Post by ItsMe000001 »

abenedic wrote: post #29
paradite wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> China, Explained > BY BETHANY ALLEN-EBRAHIMIAN Wow. That's an incredible title to use on a subject that is so narrow in scope. Let's look at her other articles: https://foreignpolicy.com/author/bethany-allen-ebrahimian/ Seems pretty one-sided. And her twitter: https://twitter.com/BethanyAllenEbr Seems pretty one-sided as well. Just to be clear, I don't intend to personally attack her. Just pointing out the bias in…

I think it a little funny that you are attacked for this. Personally I have a hate for China due to nationalistic reasons, perhaps unreasonably. But it is good to question the source of information. After all that is the idea of a free press, no? Should we not all question the source of the information to find bias? For myself overall, I would say fuck China.

> But it is good to question the source of information.

Not when it's done in lieu of a rational discussion of the information, which should be the majority of the argument. Hitler liking dogs does not invalidate loving dogs even one iota - so what did you gain by attacking the source (when the subject is not the source but what it says)? It's a distraction and a (dark side!) rhetorical method, attempting a shortcut through evoking emotions.

Re: AI Company Accused of Using Humans to Fake Its AI

#83

Post by ricokatayama »

We are expecting too much to have AI solving all of our problems, when we should have develop tech to help us to achieve more with less.

This is a huge mistake that many companies are falling on, they are trying to sell us a Jarvis when actually what they have is some (good) algorithms

Re: AI Company Accused of Using Humans to Fake Its AI

#84

Post by chestervonwinch »

sonnyblarney wrote: post #61
tabbott wrote: post #8

A poorly-kept secret in Silicon Valley is that many "AI startups" started over the last few years are actually using humans, with a long-term plan to slowly decrease the amount of work the humans do using algorithms (generally based on machine learning, but not always) as well as more basic automation. In some cases they don't actually do any "AI" work for the company's first few years, and if they do, it's more like…

"The actual approach is a perfectly reasonable business strategy" Only if the AI is going to work for sure. There was a UK company, SpinVox, they were big 10 years ago, they did voice recognition of your phone calls and sent you a text. They raised huge, like 100M pounds. Granted not AI. Turns out they were doing most of their transcription manually with hopes of going automated. It was a huge blow up, it boiled to f…

> Only if the AI is going to work for sure.

On the other hand, I could definitely see this being used in mock-ups, just as you might populate some UI with "fake" data to illustrate proofs-of-concept. The transition between mock-up and working application might be fuzzy, and it's a lack of honesty/transparency in this transition that leads to murky territory like you say.

Re: AI Company Accused of Using Humans to Fake Its AI

#86

Post by tixocloud »

tabbott wrote: post #8

A poorly-kept secret in Silicon Valley is that many "AI startups" started over the last few years are actually using humans, with a long-term plan to slowly decrease the amount of work the humans do using algorithms (generally based on machine learning, but not always) as well as more basic automation. In some cases they don't actually do any "AI" work for the company's first few years, and if they do, it's more like…

Our team is looking for machine learning experts and myself in general am hoping to build my network as I’m developing my startup around driving real machine learning adoption. Any chance you might see if your friend is interested in connecting?

Re: AI Company Accused of Using Humans to Fake Its AI

#87

Post by sparkie »

msg3 wrote: post #55
blensor wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A company that needs to be protected from the market to be successful in this very same market, isn't this a fallacy? Trying to create a startup that can't at least compete with the existing solutions isn't a very good business strategy in my opinion. That's what academia is for. Research that is still too far away from being profitable but that has it's merits in the long run.

Not really - Korea protected Samsung et al for years before they were capable of competing globally.

Also, many of the largest internet businesses in China started out as cheap imitations of western websites, but gained success as the western versions were blocked by the great firewall. The Chinese government has basically propped up their own industries by shutting out the west, and are now screaming about "protectionism" when the west is finally responding.

Re: AI Company Accused of Using Humans to Fake Its AI

#89

Post by abandonliberty »

eksemplar wrote: post #32

Being in the public sector, I have the joy of sitting in a lot of meetings with companies and consultants that want to sell us AI for analytics and prediction. I’m still unconvinced. The closest I’ve seen to anything useful was Watson, and all it really offered was stuff we’ve been doing for years. I mean, we have 5 people working with data and building models, and Watson could maybe automate some of that, but you’d…

Watson is also people. Granted, those people are data scientists who can actually build an AI solution for you, but it's still a stretch from the marketing.

Re: AI Company Accused of Using Humans to Fake Its AI

#90

Post by [deleted] »

rajacombinator wrote: post #48
nradov wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Lean Startup approach specifically recommends doing something like this as a "concierge MVP" to gauge customer demand before actually building the automation technology. It's a general approach, not anything specific to AI. Of course the underlying assumption there is that the technology is actually feasible.

This is the main problem imo and the reason why people with real domain knowledge hate these companies. Most of the people funding, selling, or buying “AI” products have no clue what is feasible!

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