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A college student reached $64k/mo in 6 months by being an AI first mover

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Re: A college student reached $64k/mo in 6 months by being an AI first mover

#61

Post by nicoburns »

janalsncm wrote: post #52
yamtaddle wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure it's to keep FAANG workers from jumping ship too easily, in order to suppress wages. If it were actually for evaluation reasons, FAANG and friends would just get together and come up with some kind of certification with renewal requirements, saving themselves and everyone else an absolute shitload of time and money. [EDIT] My point is, the practice doesn't continue for "gatekeeping" for its own sake ,…

I interview people and ask LC-style questions. It’s not the only part of my interview nor is it a dealbreaker to not get the optimal solution. Being a savant capable of finding a mathematical breakthrough in 30 minutes is not important. But it gives me a chance to see how nimble you are with code which is important.

Why ask leetcode questions rather than realistic ones that represent the sort of code someone might actually be expected to write during the course of their job?

Re: A college student reached $64k/mo in 6 months by being an AI first mover

#62

Post by AHOHA »

Regardless of that product how probably this is near the highest MRR or after the tax cut -given he’s in Canada- there’s no money left or there’s no scale up for such business, it’s a good motivation boost for him for sure, however, I’m sure this story brought to you by OpenAI, anyone is reading that story especially a young one, will immediately jump to build anything that uses OpenAI api, more people do, more profits for openAI, it’s like Apple/Dell/whatever laptop company showing you an ad that you should buy a laptop in a promise of quick wealth, except here it’s a continuous profit for OpenAI and not a one time payment. I highly doubt the story will happen or have any article about it if it was based on an open source LLM.

Re: A college student reached $64k/mo in 6 months by being an AI first mover

#63

Post by janalsncm »

dgfitz wrote: post #47
becquerel wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

communism, because when everyone's basic needs are guaranteed they have the mental/physical bandwidth to be innovators, and without commodity fetishism, scientific advancements can be made for the sake of responding to human needs, rather than facilitating the creation of products

Communism in the US is just never going to happen. Full stop. Just. Not. Happening. Following your line of reasoning to conclusion, what incentive do I have to work if all my "needs" are provided already? Extrapolate that out to the rest of the population. Oh so now I am being forced to work? What motivation do I have to do a good job? What will happen, I'll get fired from the job? Who cares, all my 'needs' are alrea…

There’s something to be said for the fact that in a monopoly, the logical conclusion of capitalism, there is also a lack of competition and incentive to innovate.

To answer your question, though, if everyone’s needs were actually met why should anyone work? Within the century we will be living in a world where a lot of our most basic needs can be fulfilled by fully autonomous machines. Who should benefit from this? A few trillionaires, while the rest toil their lives away? Or the majority, whose lives can all be improved?

Likely every country will answer that question for themselves. But I submit that a country where there are the better part of a million homeless people (including children) and a handful of space-faring billionaires and celebrities hardly has the moral authority to shake their fingers at the others.

Re: A college student reached $64k/mo in 6 months by being an AI first mover

#64

Post by machdiamonds »

The potential use of LLMs as search tools could disrupt the startup ecosystem, especially in niche markets. "Find a service that does this [niche task]" commands could enhance visibility for niche startups. But as LLMs become better at suggesting top products, startups competing with established products might find the path challenging. However, this could also drive a focus on product quality and uniqueness, pushing startups to differentiate more innovatively. LLMs' ability to understand user preferences and suggest products accordingly could open up opportunities for startups providing niche services. I think the startup scene is going to be very interesting going forward.

Re: A college student reached $64k/mo in 6 months by being an AI first mover

#65

Post by prottog »

nicoburns wrote: post #59
ravenstine wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A ton of HN'ers seem woefully butthurt over AI. I'm not saying that the current generation of AI is "smart" or "AGI", but every thread mentioning AI has a disproportionate amount of naysayers who think LLMs are either totally useless or that anything involving AI is "the next bitcoin." When people knee-jerk react negatively to these kinds of stories, I can only picture envy and an insecurity of not truly knowing wher…

I think the hype around AI is more like the dotcom boom. Like the internet (and mostly unlike cryptocurrency), AI is a genuinely useful technology and likely to be transformative over the long term. On the other hand, (and also like the internet) it's currently being peddled as the answer to absolutely everything, much of which is pretty ridiculous.

The number of ads on YouTube that peddle an "AI-powered X" is a clear tell. Just last night, I saw an ad for an "AI golf swing aid"!

Re: A college student reached $64k/mo in 6 months by being an AI first mover

#66

Post by james-revisoai »

Kiro wrote: post #22
abxytg wrote: post #8

there is literally a "how to" in the open AI api docs for the exact use case. I need to be more shameless the next go around.

Link? I didn't find it in https://platform.openai.com/examples

I wrote more about this in another comment ("Postmortem"), as I developed a similar idea from Mid 2022 to early 2023, but made different decisions.

OpenAI had a serious focus on this that did see adoption; as early as Spring 2021 this was in their docs (linked by others), but more crucially, they quickly added an Answers endpoint(https://platform.openai.com/docs/guides/answers) specifically for this use case (query against uploaded files).

The creator of this project did almost everything perfectly, for sure. They had speed, UI, a converting page, found virality. But they also had timing: OpenAI had banned this open-ended use case till that time, they got lucky that people did not develop Explainpaper competitors, and ChatGPT improved quality while reducing run costs by 10x right when they came into this area, meaning many companies that fore-aware of these changes would have taken it's place, were not trying to enter the market (OpenAI approval was hard, and the costs of models before December 2022 were literally 10x as much for decent quality, making it unprofitable)

Re: A college student reached $64k/mo in 6 months by being an AI first mover

#67

Post by [deleted] »

AHOHA wrote: post #62

Regardless of that product how probably this is near the highest MRR or after the tax cut -given he’s in Canada- there’s no money left or there’s no scale up for such business, it’s a good motivation boost for him for sure, however, I’m sure this story brought to you by OpenAI, anyone is reading that story especially a young one, will immediately jump to build anything that uses OpenAI api, more people do, more profi…

[deleted]

Re: A college student reached $64k/mo in 6 months by being an AI first mover

#68

Post by a_techwriter_00 »

mahathu wrote: post #29
boeingUH60 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, that's his goal...the only person who has the right to decide that is him. Hypothetically, How would you suggest working on a "more equitable and just system"? Any actions from you that we can imitate?

Fair enough, you're right, it's his life, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't call out predatory behaviour when we see it, even when the person themselves doesn't see any wrongdoing. One simple change would be to not give 40+ hours of their labour to companies like Meta and google, who operate solely for the profit of their shareholders, just because they have cool massage chairs and free food. I'm sure for someone at…

You really sound like you know what other people should be doing. Have you considered a career in management?

Re: A college student reached $64k/mo in 6 months by being an AI first mover

#69

Post by [deleted] »

prottog wrote: post #65
nicoburns wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the hype around AI is more like the dotcom boom. Like the internet (and mostly unlike cryptocurrency), AI is a genuinely useful technology and likely to be transformative over the long term. On the other hand, (and also like the internet) it's currently being peddled as the answer to absolutely everything, much of which is pretty ridiculous.

The number of ads on YouTube that peddle an "AI-powered X" is a clear tell. Just last night, I saw an ad for an "AI golf swing aid"!

[deleted]

Re: A college student reached $64k/mo in 6 months by being an AI first mover

#70

Post by el_nahual »

teach wrote: post #3

Somebody always wins the lottery. This doesn't mean that playing the lottery is a useful path to riches for anyone else. Edited to add: This is not an indictment on the college student in question! Congrats to him for being prepared to seize on an opportunity and executing well.

How on earth is this "winning the lottery"? Sure, there is an element of luck involved, but this is quite clearly a translation of work/sweat equity + understanding technology + exectution.

The opposite of a lottery.

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