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What's working for YC companies since the AI boom

jamesin.substack.com

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Re: What's working for YC companies since the AI boom

#91

Post by xhkkffbf »

zdw wrote: post #87
xorcist wrote: post #74

I see a pattern with AI companies. They always try to solve a really hard and not very useful problem. It's the same as with self driving car companies ten years ago: If you believe self driving tech is ripe for commercialization, the reasonable thing to do is something capital intensive and a special case where the technology most likely to succeed. For instance, heavy trucks automatically following others in format…

> heavy trucks automatically following others in formations for long drives. Congratulations, you just reinvented the railroad.

Hah. Sort of. But the big difference is the railroad doesn't let anyone else use it. A regular road can support cars, trucks, truck convoys and maybe even bikes or pedestrians. A railroad can support trains.

Re: What's working for YC companies since the AI boom

#92

Post by sokka_h2otribe »

ljf wrote: post #13
biccsdev wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

0 consumer products is just a symptom of the current state of the global economy

It is also a sign of where something is in its cycle - when engines were first invented they laboured in mines originally, then moving traction engines/tractors, then trains - it was a long time before the average person owned an engine for their own use.

This was largely driven by the efficiency and fuel density.. so like, the mines specifically were coal mines which flood and need pumps, but obviously have unlimited coal. The engines/tractors were competing against oxen and horse, and it's hard to get a lot of power out of them. The trains had an easy time to carry lots of coal due to their nature.

I'm not actually sure where tractors fit in. I haven't heard of them in the equation early on. I think at some point they were probably viable, but I never heard of a coal powered tractor (maybe there were some). I suppose tractors could leave piles of coal and stuff if they needed to by the fields.

Re: What's working for YC companies since the AI boom

#93

Post by blibble »

atleastoptimal wrote: post #47
saubeidl wrote: post #17

YC is going all-in on a technology with no proven business value, driven mostly by ideological desire. It might prove to be their downfall.

Is HN’s continual downplaying of AI’s impact and economic potential against all evidence just the new version of the mentality that precipitated the famous Dropbox comment? The comments in anything AI related on this website are so predictable

> Is HN’s continual downplaying of AI’s impact and economic potential against all evidence

there's quantitative evidence in this article

unfortunately it doesn't support your position

Re: What's working for YC companies since the AI boom

#94

Post by MarkMarine »

idiotsecant wrote: post #51
CyberRymden wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it absolutely makes sense. ChatGPT's strength is how generalised it is as a tool, but openAI will never able to adapt the platform to every single use case. You can absolutely use it to learn a language for instance, but a great AI language learning platform needs a better tailored UI, it needs all kinds of non-AI functionality around it like idk a spaced repetition system, it might need to integrate into oth…

But any use case that gets large enough and makes money will be absorbed by openai direct, based on the market developed by the startup. OpenAI is using the Amazon model. Let someone else spend the money figuring out which market segments are profitable, then steal them with their inherently better access to the platform.

There are use cases that don’t align with OpenAI/Anthropic’s business model, which is to always use more tokens to get better. As the models improve they become way more expensive, with order of magnitude increases in price. I think there is a lane for detecting what can and should be deterministic after doing it a few times, and making it concrete so you don’t just burn tokens every time.

Re: What's working for YC companies since the AI boom

#95

Post by A_D_E_P_T »

dyauspitr wrote: post #33
A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #20

Do "AI Startups" even make sense? There appears to be a pattern. Unmet need is identified: "I want ChatGPT -- but able to read PDFs" or "I want ChatGPT -- but able to do research and produce lengthy reports." Startup gets funding for this and, if they're lucky, releases a rough beta that leans heavily on the OpenAI API. Two months later OpenAI launches a better, much more polished and seamless version, which is integ…

> going so far as to download the fulltext of every legal ruling ever made in the US -- something like 400GB Where can I find this?

Start here: https://com-courtlistener-storage.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com...

The "opinions" are what you want.

These are huge files heavily compressed, so they're quite difficult to handle.

Re: What's working for YC companies since the AI boom

#96

Post by zdw »

rogerrogerr wrote: post #89
zdw wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> heavy trucks automatically following others in formations for long drives. Congratulations, you just reinvented the railroad.

The railroad can’t have individual cars break off from the line to go to arbitrary warehouses, stores, and residences. The railroad is an amazingly low cost way to move tonnage, if you’re going from a place where the railroad stops to another place where the railroad stops. There aren’t really companies that _could_ be using rail and aren’t. But it just isn’t cost effective in many cases once you add in last-mile cos…

I'm assuming this is a north america centric viewpoint - there are plenty of places in europe and asia where rail is far more common and has societal/political favor.

Solving the last mile by having stores that get shipments near a local train station that serves both cargo and passenger needs, and using kei trucks for small local deliveries is definitely a different set of tradeoffs.

Re: What's working for YC companies since the AI boom

#97

Post by MangoToupe »

sokka_h2otribe wrote: post #92
ljf wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is also a sign of where something is in its cycle - when engines were first invented they laboured in mines originally, then moving traction engines/tractors, then trains - it was a long time before the average person owned an engine for their own use.

This was largely driven by the efficiency and fuel density.. so like, the mines specifically were coal mines which flood and need pumps, but obviously have unlimited coal. The engines/tractors were competing against oxen and horse, and it's hard to get a lot of power out of them. The trains had an easy time to carry lots of coal due to their nature. I'm not actually sure where tractors fit in. I haven't heard of them…

Steam Tractors were definitely a thing long before the development of the ICE. I'm not sure what the fuel used was, though. Hell we still have "steamrollers" that no longer run on steam.

Re: What's working for YC companies since the AI boom

#98

Post by overfeed »

rogerrogerr wrote: post #89
zdw wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> heavy trucks automatically following others in formations for long drives. Congratulations, you just reinvented the railroad.

The railroad can’t have individual cars break off from the line to go to arbitrary warehouses, stores, and residences. The railroad is an amazingly low cost way to move tonnage, if you’re going from a place where the railroad stops to another place where the railroad stops. There aren’t really companies that _could_ be using rail and aren’t. But it just isn’t cost effective in many cases once you add in last-mile cos…

> The railroad can’t have individual cars break off from the line to go to arbitrary warehouses, stores, and residences

So the hypothetical trucks can't handle freeways but can self-drive on much more complex urban and suburban roads?

Re: What's working for YC companies since the AI boom

#99

Post by signatoremo »

zdw wrote: post #96
rogerrogerr wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The railroad can’t have individual cars break off from the line to go to arbitrary warehouses, stores, and residences. The railroad is an amazingly low cost way to move tonnage, if you’re going from a place where the railroad stops to another place where the railroad stops. There aren’t really companies that _could_ be using rail and aren’t. But it just isn’t cost effective in many cases once you add in last-mile cos…

I'm assuming this is a north america centric viewpoint - there are plenty of places in europe and asia where rail is far more common and has societal/political favor. Solving the last mile by having stores that get shipments near a local train station that serves both cargo and passenger needs, and using kei trucks for small local deliveries is definitely a different set of tradeoffs.

Huh? The US has the highest train cargo traffic in the world, followed by China and Russia [0]. Passenger train network is what is lacking.

On the other hand, trucks are very popular in Europe and Asia. 75% of land freight in Europe are by truck [1]

[0]-https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/highest-railway-cargo-tr...

[1] - https://www.acea.auto/fact/fact-sheet-trucks/

Re: What's working for YC companies since the AI boom

#100

Post by pona-a »

xhkkffbf wrote: post #91
zdw wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> heavy trucks automatically following others in formations for long drives. Congratulations, you just reinvented the railroad.

Hah. Sort of. But the big difference is the railroad doesn't let anyone else use it. A regular road can support cars, trucks, truck convoys and maybe even bikes or pedestrians. A railroad can support trains.

Do they, pragmatically speaking? High-volume cargo traffic quickly wears down the asphalt and causes regular jams, a bike lane unseparated from cars is a safety hazard enough large enough to push many potential riders off the road, and most morning commutes would be better served by well-developed public transit.

One EMD SD70ACe locomotive moves over 10,000 tonnes of cargo using 1,300 L of diesel per 1,000 km. The equivalent 286 trucks would consume 107,250 L, while needing 55.8 km of a single-lane highway, compared to the 2.16 km freight train.

Similarly, the average US car has 1.5 passengers per ~30 m² of space, so 20 m² per person. An average bike is about 2 m² per person. A typical trolley car holds ~160 passengers per 200 square meters, so 1.25 m² per person. A tram reliably moves at 60–80 km/h on interurban routers, or 30 km/h in urban centers with frequent stops, a considerable improvement over San Francisco's 16 km/h by car for last mile.

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