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Why YC went to DC

ycombinator.com

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Re: Why YC went to DC

#51

Post by rshah_45 »

candiddevmike wrote: post #40
mrb wrote: post #14

"This year, we’ll fund more than 500 companies out of 50,000 applications, and almost all of them are related to AI in some way." So, what this means: that in 2024, if you want to get VC capital, your startup must be related to AI.

It's like VR in 2018. I'd love to see a Silicon Valley season for the current tech environment.

Season 9 Erlich: "Oh my god. It's an AI play. That's the frothiest space in the Valley right now. Nobody understands it but everyone wants in. Any idiot could walk into a fucking room, utter the letters A and I, and VCs would hurl bricks of cash at them.”.

Re: Why YC went to DC

#52

Post by vundercind »

no_wizard wrote: post #22
simonw wrote: post #13

This new essay by Jack Clark, who was at OpenAI when they made the decision not to release GPT-2 for safety reasons five years ago, feels relevant: https://importai.substack.com/p/import-ai-375-gpt-2-five-yea... > [...] history shows that once we assign power to governments, they're loathe to subsequently give that power back to the people. Policy is a ratchet and things tend to accrete over time. That means whatever…

I don’t disagree with this assessment but it’s also a narrow view[0] that allows the problem to persist in the first place. Rather, I’d like to see what positive oversight would look like, but that has not been put forth by any of these organizations thus far. It all comes down to “trust us” which is also hard to stomach [0]: most often but not exclusively held by Americans (of which i am one). We collectively fail t…

This is a relatively new and carefully cultivated state of things.

I mean, the early phases of this era are a half-century old at this point, but it’s not like it’s a law of nature that at least half the population of the US and about half the politicians must regard government as rarely-useful. It didn’t used to be that way. It’s not an American trait in some holistic historical sense.

Re: Why YC went to DC

#53

Post by jandrewrogers »

mrb wrote: post #14

"This year, we’ll fund more than 500 companies out of 50,000 applications, and almost all of them are related to AI in some way." So, what this means: that in 2024, if you want to get VC capital, your startup must be related to AI.

Definitely not, there are several other topical areas that currently have significant VC appetite.

If anything, the enormous amount of social media attention on AI has made it easier to raise VC in other trending areas because all of the low-quality "me too" startups have gotten pulled into the fashionable AI orbit. This has significantly improved the signal-to-noise ratio in these non-AI areas because the legions of trend-jumping founders are all doing AI, the startups that remain tend to be founded by people with substantial investment and expertise in their domain without regard for fashion. This is good for VCs and for founders.

Re: Why YC went to DC

#54

Post by alexfromapex »

reducesuffering wrote: post #12

> to disastrous effects, in the form of social media harms > There are many reasons to be optimistic about AI Without a modicum of awareness. Paul G [0] and Sam Altman both have recognized the potential dangers.[1] [0] https://x.com/paulg/status/1651613807779667968 [1] https://blog.samaltman.com/machine-intelligence-part-1

It was funny how the closing statement was admiring rugged individualism too when that philosophy is encouraging a lot of the damaging effects similar to how social media has been harming the world.

Re: Why YC went to DC

#55

Post by benreesman »

probably_wrong wrote: post #42

Apologies for the negative tone: > First, let’s prioritize open source models and more tailored AI applications to shape the competitive landscape and create real opportunities for startups. How does YC square this statement with the fact that their ex-president closed their models with the explicit intention of slowing down competitors [1]? Or is the argument "we want politicians to discourage people like us from do…

Late is better than never in my view, and in spite of whatever happened in the past I will support the people doing the right thing today.

I’m likewise a little wary given some of the history, so maybe a little “wait and see” is in order, but this sounds like a really positive thing to be doing.

Re: Why YC went to DC

#56

Post by jandrewrogers »

siliconc0w wrote: post #9

If you need more things to fix: * Software R&D Amortization - taxes on make-believe profits * Patent law - protect small businesses from patent trolls * Automate government-driven compliance standards - enable small businesses to sell into large companies/government entities, automatic certification when using pre-approved cloud solutions. * Healthcare insurance - employees of SMBs automatically get access to medicar…

Of these, the Section 174 debacle (software R&D amortization) is arguably the problem that needs to be addressed most urgently.

Re: Why YC went to DC

#57

Post by [deleted] »

probably_wrong wrote: post #49
jrockway wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, they parted ways long ago, and pg released a statement recently as to the nature of that breakup. People and organizations can change their mind.

Yes. But AFAIK the official reason for the breakup was "we wanted him to pick a lane" and not "we disagreed with his defintion of the word 'open'". I cannot say whether YC changed their mind because I don't know what their mind is. Therefore I commented with the hope of an official answer.

[deleted]

Re: Why YC went to DC

#58

Post by lolinder »

no_wizard wrote: post #32
lolinder wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a big believer in not allowing the pursuit of perfection to cause us to lose sight of the good things that we have. Yes, these open models could stand to be more open and I hope that we'll see that in the future. But at the same time I'm extremely grateful to the companies who have released their weights under reasonable terms. Them doing so has undeniably led to an enormous amount of innovation and collaboration…

>Yes, these open models could stand to be more open and I hope that we'll see that in the future The most operative word here is hope . Which means we may not see more get open sourced over time. Especially, if there is no pressure for companies to do so. >If we constantly downplay and disparage the real efforts that companies make to release IP to the world because they don't go as far as we'd like, we're setting ou…

> companies aren't releasing this stuff because it makes everyone feel good. Its a tactic.

It's a tactic, but one of the primary reasons to expect it to be effective is building goodwill in the community. If the goodwill dries up then most of the reason to open anything up is gone.

Re: Why YC went to DC

#59

Post by 1auralynn »

jrockway wrote: post #44
siliconc0w wrote: post #9

If you need more things to fix: * Software R&D Amortization - taxes on make-believe profits * Patent law - protect small businesses from patent trolls * Automate government-driven compliance standards - enable small businesses to sell into large companies/government entities, automatic certification when using pre-approved cloud solutions. * Healthcare insurance - employees of SMBs automatically get access to medicar…

Did we even fix Section 174 yet?

No.

Re: Why YC went to DC

#60

Post by robertk »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #33
reaperman wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Closest to this would be https://www.eleuther.ai whose training data is largely public and training processes are openly discussed, planned, and evaluated on their Discord server. Much of their training dataset is available at https://the-eye.eu (their onion link is considered "primary", however, due to copyright concerns)

Is our dataset still available? I thought it was taken offline. Where do you go under that link to get it? E.g. https://the-eye.eu/public/AI/pile/readme.txt says it’s gone (and "old news"? I disagree).

Shawn, there is a mildly redacted version available at https://huggingface.co/datasets/monology/pile-uncopyrighted
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