Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: I'm 16 and building an AI based startup called Factful with friends

factful.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 163 posts

Re: Show HN: I'm 16 and building an AI based startup called Factful with friends

#151

Post by paulcole »

bruce511 wrote: post #140
paulcole wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If people are naturally selfish and they’re giving you advice to not be selfish, why aren’t they taking their own advice? And why should you take theirs? It’s like a burglar telling you it’s a good idea to leave your doors unlocked.

Lots of people act, at least partially, in unselfish ways. Selfishness is not a binary characteristic. There are degrees of selfishness - and spheres of selfishness. Just because something is in our nature, it does not mean we have to behave that way all the time. Most people are neither purely selfish, nor purely unselfish. To answer your question though, since selfishness exists on a scale, your assumption that peo…

No data? I’m relying on what you said…

> I agree that most (privileged) people behave selfishly

Another great example are the tech bros telling kids to go into the trades. If it was such a great idea, why aren’t they plumbers?

Re: Show HN: I'm 16 and building an AI based startup called Factful with friends

#152

Post by dartos »

paulcole wrote: post #151
bruce511 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of people act, at least partially, in unselfish ways. Selfishness is not a binary characteristic. There are degrees of selfishness - and spheres of selfishness. Just because something is in our nature, it does not mean we have to behave that way all the time. Most people are neither purely selfish, nor purely unselfish. To answer your question though, since selfishness exists on a scale, your assumption that peo…

No data? I’m relying on what you said… > I agree that most (privileged) people behave selfishly Another great example are the tech bros telling kids to go into the trades. If it was such a great idea, why aren’t they plumbers?

Maybe 3 or 4 years ago I’d tell everyone to learn web development and get a cushy frontend engineer job.

Now I don’t. It’s too hard to enter tech right now. Juniors not coming from colleges are basically ignored in the job hunt.

I generally think trade skills are better for most people than a college degree (I don’t even have one.)

Re: Show HN: I'm 16 and building an AI based startup called Factful with friends

#155

Post by PM_me_your_math »

bruce511 wrote: post #131
paulcole wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> most people are hoping to make the world better where they can. Are they actually making the world better or just hoping they can? Everybody in the developed world, if they wanted to make the world better, would live drastically differently because of their impact on the environment/climate change. But it’s more fun to just say that we’re hoping to make the world better so we don’t have to acknowledge how selfish w…

I agree that most (privileged) people behave selfishly. You don't have to look far to see that. That doesn't make it good. Which is why advice to be explicitly selfish is jarring. We don't need advice yo do that, we excel at it naturally. There are however great rewards to be had from being unselfish. We can see that around us too. Being at least aware of our proclivities is the first step in discovering the benefits…

[dead]

Re: Show HN: I'm 16 and building an AI based startup called Factful with friends

#156

Post by spencerflem »

paulcole wrote: post #151
bruce511 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of people act, at least partially, in unselfish ways. Selfishness is not a binary characteristic. There are degrees of selfishness - and spheres of selfishness. Just because something is in our nature, it does not mean we have to behave that way all the time. Most people are neither purely selfish, nor purely unselfish. To answer your question though, since selfishness exists on a scale, your assumption that peo…

No data? I’m relying on what you said… > I agree that most (privileged) people behave selfishly Another great example are the tech bros telling kids to go into the trades. If it was such a great idea, why aren’t they plumbers?

fwiw I agree with you on these gripes, tech bros are often selfish, its something I really hate about our industry and I'm struggling a lot trying to find a software job that does good in the world because mine doesn't and it makes me feel awful, but I am trying at least.

And anyone living an unsustainable lifestyle (almost everyone) is selfish though its such a huge problem that putting the blame on any individual feels wrong.

I think where we disagree is that you're so all or nothing with this. People can be selfish in some ways and not others. You can live unsustainably while also having principles in other ways. Things could always be worse. I encourage anyone to care about the world as much as you can without being self destructive about it, and I really try to live that way myself.

Re: Show HN: I'm 16 and building an AI based startup called Factful with friends

#157

Post by logtempo »

helloduck1234 wrote: post #101
elevation wrote: post #98

Don't hinge your business success on getting an unlimited number of humans to agree with your AI on an unlimited number of facts. The universe of facts is infinite. The larger a user base, the fewer facts they'll collectively agree on. If you take on a large user base and an infinite knowledge domain, you'll lose trust with users who disagree with your fact checking (rightly or wrongly.) Instead, give yourself a smal…

Yea ok, eliminating misinformation is what we want to eventually do. But what we can sell is something that eliminates human errors (the backend also allows for that).

I think you could provide good things to Wikipedia with your tool. For instance, I recently read that earth spinning make earth 10^7 kg heavier. While the principle is corrShow HN: I'm 16 and building an AI based startup c... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40222051ect (energy is mass), the source is really weak and it can easily be found that earth mass uncertainty is about 10^20 kg. Which make the whole point useless.

I challenged your AI on this thematic : "a spring weight heavier when compressed", or "earth spinning make it heavier". Both results tell me it's not true despite it being correct (E=mc2).

I admit I'm cherrypicking, because it does say croissant is not French. But can I trust it blindly? That's why you must provide sources. It's valuable to have sources when we talk about truth.

good job anyway, keep working on what you like

Re: Show HN: I'm 16 and building an AI based startup called Factful with friends

#158

Post by nzealand »

helloduck1234 wrote: post #31
dweinus wrote: post #17

Andrew, you and your friends should be proud. It's really encouraging to see people, especially in your generation, thinking seriously about the problem of misinformation. There are fundamental challenges you all will face in this idea: - most current LLMs are trained on large amounts of web data that itself contains facts, opinions, and misinformation. These things are treated equally, so I would expect the LLM to g…

Yea, thank you for your feedback!

Your response to critical feedback is excellent btw. Nice job all around!

Re: Show HN: I'm 16 and building an AI based startup called Factful with friends

#159

Post by ein0p »

lm28469 wrote: post #148
helloduck1234 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi there, thank you for your feedback! I think we could potentially go down the route of a web3 approach where we get the public consensus on the facts.

Sadly consensus != fact For example: "Which country contributed the most to the demise of Germany during ww2 ?" https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-f7f98c319f4d9ace2079a...

That’s basically what you get if you don’t properly teach history. Idk how it is in France, but in the US I’d advise people to read Howard Zinn’s “The People’s history of the United States” to undo government brainwashing even partially, for just US history. I’m not sure what I’d recommend for history of the world, I have not yet seen a text that’d fit the bill.

Re: Show HN: I'm 16 and building an AI based startup called Factful with friends

#160

Post by _akhe »

lm28469 wrote: post #149
_akhe wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not fizzing, you're going to be able to say: render 40 hours of Harry Potter film based on every detail of all books or: create a sequel to Titanic where Leo DiCap comes back from the dead and rezzes Godzilla and you'll be able to watch that. Imagine that in every content vertical, we haven't even scratched the surface.

I fail to see how that example is supposed to be a good thing for humanity. Everybody watching/listening to what _they_ want to watch/hear is already polarising the masses like never before

Sure, that's a different conversation though. That's like talking about a new brand of beer and then saying "I don't like this beer because there are so many alcohol related deaths and accidents, this will only contribute to more" - while true and you may have a point, there is still a separate conversation where people appreciate beer and engage in connoisseurship etc.

To talk about what entertainment, art, music, etc. might come out of AI I think is a conversation worth having for anyone into those things, either producing or consuming, macro ethics aside.

Post reply on HN