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At least 105 past YC founders have worked at OpenAI and Anthropic

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Re: At least 105 past YC founders have worked at OpenAI and Anthropic

#141

Post by lII1lIlI11ll »

tmpz22 wrote: post #93
andy99 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People ask the same question of why YC funds yet another Uber for dogs or a button on the Touch Bar that cost $10/mo to help join a meeting faster. They invest in people more than ideas, so you’ve got, at least in many cases, people with good pedigree and skills (age adjusted anyway) building on stupid ideas, but that are eminently employable. Obviously there are other factors, I’m not really trying to defend anythin…

> but that are eminently employable This is what always stood out to me. Founders talk about the risks they take as their major legitimizing force. But what risk? They’re the types who can (mostly) skip an interview and go direct into a six figure job - because of the sales and founder networks they develop. Startup founders with no risk doesnt sound like a recipe for great companies.

There is an opportunity cost in working on a startup that may fail and leave you with nothing while your uni peers have been cashing juicy RSUs in FAANG-type companies so the actual "risk" could be "having 0 net worth while living in a high CoL area by the time they reach middle age".

Re: At least 105 past YC founders have worked at OpenAI and Anthropic

#142

Post by jayd16 »

florakel wrote: post #81
dgellow wrote: post #68

Whatever you think of AI for your own work, the fact that the entire economy is betting everything on it is really concerning. It’s not just the fact that it may not work well economically speaking and would end up with a market crash, or all the negative externalities from AI development, it’s also the opportunity cost we are paying. With so much human capital and resources dedicated to developing and running LLMs a…

I prefer that scenario to the one we had before where too many smart people were building out social networks and similar services trying to maximize ad impressions. We are still dealing with the consequences…

The consequences are different this time because why?

Seems like an even bigger opportunity to inject ads, influence thought, and scrape user information.

Re: At least 105 past YC founders have worked at OpenAI and Anthropic

#143

Post by insane_dreamer »

dgellow wrote: post #68

Whatever you think of AI for your own work, the fact that the entire economy is betting everything on it is really concerning. It’s not just the fact that it may not work well economically speaking and would end up with a market crash, or all the negative externalities from AI development, it’s also the opportunity cost we are paying. With so much human capital and resources dedicated to developing and running LLMs a…

Not only that but with so much human capital and resources devoted to AI’s explicit goal of replacing human labor there are two outcomes: 1) it succeeds and we have a serious social problem on our hands with large swaths of the population out or a job, or 2) it fails and we have a very large market and economic crisis as the AI bubble collapses.

Maybe there’s a partial success future that isn’t those two, but I’m not hopeful. And I’d take the Ai bubble collapse over AI BigTech achieving its goals

Re: At least 105 past YC founders have worked at OpenAI and Anthropic

#144

Post by yoyohello13 »

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #106
florakel wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I prefer that scenario to the one we had before where too many smart people were building out social networks and similar services trying to maximize ad impressions. We are still dealing with the consequences…

> too many smart people were building out social networks and similar services trying to maximize ad impressions. Honest question: where should these very smart people work then in your opinion? Nearly all suitable-looking, "smarter" ideas that come to my mind will bring less revenue/profit in expectation than, for example, letting them maximize ad impressions. I of course wish we lived in a "more intelligent" world…

If I had one wish, it would be to make 'common good' more incentivizing than 'maximize revenue/profit' but sadly it's not the world we live in.

Re: At least 105 past YC founders have worked at OpenAI and Anthropic

#145

Post by freedomben »

jayd16 wrote: post #142
florakel wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I prefer that scenario to the one we had before where too many smart people were building out social networks and similar services trying to maximize ad impressions. We are still dealing with the consequences…

The consequences are different this time because why? Seems like an even bigger opportunity to inject ads, influence thought, and scrape user information.

That will certainly come in time. We're already starting to see/hear the beginnings of it. My hope is that the market maintains competition because the moment one or two corps have monopoly/duopoly they will go full throttle toward that I'm afraid.

Re: At least 105 past YC founders have worked at OpenAI and Anthropic

#146

Post by kortilla »

jayd16 wrote: post #142
florakel wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I prefer that scenario to the one we had before where too many smart people were building out social networks and similar services trying to maximize ad impressions. We are still dealing with the consequences…

The consequences are different this time because why? Seems like an even bigger opportunity to inject ads, influence thought, and scrape user information.

The potential upside in positives is actually there. New cures, personalized really good medicine, breakthroughs in every scientific field, etc.

The people are there because they are betting on AGI, not chatbots that make software engineering go faster.

Re: At least 105 past YC founders have worked at OpenAI and Anthropic

#147

Post by Ancalagon »

florakel wrote: post #81
dgellow wrote: post #68

Whatever you think of AI for your own work, the fact that the entire economy is betting everything on it is really concerning. It’s not just the fact that it may not work well economically speaking and would end up with a market crash, or all the negative externalities from AI development, it’s also the opportunity cost we are paying. With so much human capital and resources dedicated to developing and running LLMs a…

I prefer that scenario to the one we had before where too many smart people were building out social networks and similar services trying to maximize ad impressions. We are still dealing with the consequences…

You think AI won’t/isn’t being used to maximize ad impressions…?

Re: At least 105 past YC founders have worked at OpenAI and Anthropic

#148

Post by jayd16 »

nickysielicki wrote: post #45

The question I have is why are these companies hiring these people and what does it say about their hiring practices and the amount of capital they’re poorly spending? It’s exceedingly unlikely that any of the people who were working on YC startups previously have any real professional experience with any of the following: slurm, collectives, NUMA systems, RDMA, compilers, systems programming, general HPC performance…

Maybe they're sales hires. Hiring influential folks gets them aligned with your business. It means you get their Roladex and tap into their network. They can poach good people. They can convince folks to buy into Claude. If they were able to fund Uber for dogs they could probably pitch AI just fine.

How many times have you heard a C-level person say "I was just meeting with a bunch of my C-level friends and they're all talking about how AI is the future. We should look into this Claude thing"?

Re: At least 105 past YC founders have worked at OpenAI and Anthropic

#149

Post by jmilloy »

florakel wrote: post #81
dgellow wrote: post #68

Whatever you think of AI for your own work, the fact that the entire economy is betting everything on it is really concerning. It’s not just the fact that it may not work well economically speaking and would end up with a market crash, or all the negative externalities from AI development, it’s also the opportunity cost we are paying. With so much human capital and resources dedicated to developing and running LLMs a…

I prefer that scenario to the one we had before where too many smart people were building out social networks and similar services trying to maximize ad impressions. We are still dealing with the consequences…

I don't know, I feel like llms are the even worse replacement for social networks and maximized ad impressions. Now you don't even need a network or users to produce the addictive content and inject narrative that is so impactful on our brains and lives

Re: At least 105 past YC founders have worked at OpenAI and Anthropic

#150

Post by jayd16 »

nickysielicki wrote: post #51
lenerdenator wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Silicon Valley is not about having specialists or knowledge. It's about having connections and charisma. Is this causing massive problems for us as a society? Of course, but no one seems to want to do anything about it, so here we are.

I mean, what are you suggesting “someone” should do about it? The companies can spend their money however they want, and if they want to hire a bunch of product people from YC startups nobody can stop them. I’m just surprised they need this many of them. What do they do all day? And who is left to manage their hundreds of thousands of servers?

> What do they do all day?

AI for dogs.

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