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Lessons from history's greatest R&D labs

answer.ai

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Re: Lessons from history's greatest R&D labs

#11
post #6
post #3

Jeremy from Answer.AI here -- Answer.AI is, to some extent, the subject of this article. Perhaps worth noting here that we didn't pay the author, Eric Gilliam; it's his independent analysis based on years of study of 19th & 20th century R&D labs. I'm hoping that not only will Answer.AI be successful, but that Eric's words in the conclusion will come to pass: > "If their USD10 million experiment works, it has the chan…

Awesome! What sorts of products is your lab working on?

[deleted]

Re: Lessons from history's greatest R&D labs

#12
post #3

Jeremy from Answer.AI here -- Answer.AI is, to some extent, the subject of this article. Perhaps worth noting here that we didn't pay the author, Eric Gilliam; it's his independent analysis based on years of study of 19th & 20th century R&D labs. I'm hoping that not only will Answer.AI be successful, but that Eric's words in the conclusion will come to pass: > "If their USD10 million experiment works, it has the chan…

Fast.AI is awesome and how I first learned ML. Can’t than you enough for that great project and its impact on my career! How do you see Answer.AI as supporting other commercial research efforts that have some overlap with the open source community? I’m thinking of things like Unsloth, which is trying to take a wild swing at efficient fine-tuning of LLMs without getting scooped by big tech.

Re: Lessons from history's greatest R&D labs

#13
post #10
post #3

Jeremy from Answer.AI here -- Answer.AI is, to some extent, the subject of this article. Perhaps worth noting here that we didn't pay the author, Eric Gilliam; it's his independent analysis based on years of study of 19th & 20th century R&D labs. I'm hoping that not only will Answer.AI be successful, but that Eric's words in the conclusion will come to pass: > "If their USD10 million experiment works, it has the chan…

Jeremy, you've taken a bold, open initiative. Thank you for calling on all the small, innovative teams. To better understand the types of projects or applications that excite you and Eric most, could you share examples of companies or applications that Answer.AI currently supports or plants to invest in? Additionally, if yo u have any published articles detailing these ventures please share the link. Best wishes with…

Could you also elaborate on how companies can reach out to you and Eric? What are the key criteria or 'table stakes' you look for in a project or team?

Re: Lessons from history's greatest R&D labs

#14
@Jeremy, have you ever encountered Ken Stanley’s book “Why Greatness Cannot be Planned: The Myth of the Objective”?

If you’re not familiar with him, he was the guy that invented the NEAT algorithm, Novelty Search, etc.

In his book he talks about stepping stones and following what’s “interesting” to individuals. It seems like Answer.AI is focused on applied engineering, but any thoughts on this type of approach from a Research perspective?

Re: Lessons from history's greatest R&D labs

#15

“At first sight, when one comes upon it in its surprisingly rural setting, the Bell Telephone Laboratories’ main New Jersey site looks like a large and up-to-date factory, which in a sense it is. But it is a factory for ideas, and so its production lines are invisible.” — Arthur C. Clarke, science fiction writer, in his 1958 book, Voice Across the Sea.

Prescient, really. Almost all of us knowledge workers today work in factories where the production lines are invisible. It's why we struggle so much with concepts (like work-in-progres inventory or product development flow) that are relatively easy to understand when there is a physical factory to look at.

Re: Lessons from history's greatest R&D labs

#16
post #2

As some of you probably know, I spent a number of years working with GE, which included plenty of time at the legendary GE Research lab in Niskayuna. So it was a special thrill to see this piece connecting Answer.AI to the long history of R&D labs. Our ideas about R&D are kind of out of fashion in our current age, but I hope this says more about the age than it does about the quality of the ideas. Happy to answer que…

What was an average workday like?

Well, considering we only just started, we haven't encountered any average workdays yet. I still hold out hope, though, that one day we will.

Re: Lessons from history's greatest R&D labs

#17
post #2

As some of you probably know, I spent a number of years working with GE, which included plenty of time at the legendary GE Research lab in Niskayuna. So it was a special thrill to see this piece connecting Answer.AI to the long history of R&D labs. Our ideas about R&D are kind of out of fashion in our current age, but I hope this says more about the age than it does about the quality of the ideas. Happy to answer que…

So what are some of the early projects you'll explore? Appreciate your writing by the way!

thank you! nothing specific to announce yet, but I'm pretty excited about the preliminary research results from just our first few weeks of operation

Re: Lessons from history's greatest R&D labs

#19
post #2

As some of you probably know, I spent a number of years working with GE, which included plenty of time at the legendary GE Research lab in Niskayuna. So it was a special thrill to see this piece connecting Answer.AI to the long history of R&D labs. Our ideas about R&D are kind of out of fashion in our current age, but I hope this says more about the age than it does about the quality of the ideas. Happy to answer que…

I'm not sure who's better positioned to answer, you or Jeremy and I asked him already: How are you thinking about the role of patenting at Answer.AI? How about handling tech transfer issues with universities?

I've never been a big fan of patents as they've historically applied to software. But this is a public policy issue, not something an individual company can fix. So I've always been content to follow patent best practices, even when they aren't the most logical.

In terms of tech transfer, Jeremy has quite a bit of experience with collaborating with the best academic labs, especially in machine learning, so I expect we will do a lot of that kind of partnering.

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