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AI's top startups are barely publishing their research

science.org

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Re: AI's top startups are barely publishing their research

#121

Post by richforrester »

holografix wrote: post #119

Frontier AI research is not only under incredible commercial pressure but it’s also a geopolitical advantage. I don’t think Dario wants to be a monopolist. But history is full of brilliant people who focused on the social good as priority #1 and lost the game early. Once you lose the game and go bankrupt you can’t do anything. Same as politics, if you’re not elected you can’t change anything. Of course there are many…

Great.

How do we fix this.

It's like we know things are destined to go down in a flaming pile, and we're just watching so we can change it AFTER that happens.

Soz. Kinda a "dear diary" response, but am frustrated.

Re: AI's top startups are barely publishing their research

#122

Post by olalonde »

fluoridation wrote: post #108
xienze wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There seems to be this mentality among a large number of people who publish open data/research/software that everything is fine as long as no one else makes money using it. The second that happens, they're furious and act as though someone unfairly profited off of their "unpaid labor" (read: that thing they did purely for the love of the game). I think it has to be some sort of feeling of resentment and/or stupidity…

It's not that difficult. You invest effort into research in the hope it'll give you a competitive edge. If someone else can come along and reproduce your results practically at a much lesser cost, then you lose that competitive edge. You're back at square one, except you've lost the cost of the research.

Hence why most companies don't publish research and most software is proprietary. Publishing and open source only make sense in certain situations.

Re: AI's top startups are barely publishing their research

#123

Post by teleforce »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #115
ninjahawk1 wrote: post #90

I can’t speak for other startups, but I applied to the most recent YC batch with my idea for making AI proactive instead of reactive, and pre-being selected I’ve published a paper on recursive self-improvement mapped to the Epoch AI data. I contacted a professor from a university in the UK and he responded since he was working on similar work, then asked me if I wanted to meet with him. We talked for about an hour si…

That's also a reason the big labs stopped. Publishing is most valuable to people who have no other way to get the attention of smart strangers. Once you can hire nearly anyone and everyone already returns your calls, the main remaining effect of publishing is to tell your competitors which things worked. This is what happens to every field as it turns from a science into an industry. Chemists published freely until d…

Which is a very ironic and selfish situation when your business model dependent mostly on model training based on available published data, academic and non-academic.

Re: AI's top startups are barely publishing their research

#124

Post by perpetuallunch »

geysersam wrote: post #118
lenerdenator wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For researchers, yes. For startups, no, because the point of that is to make money.

So why is op trying to publish?

Arguably, the point of a startup isn’t to make money, it’s to attract attention and then investors.

Once the business is making money it’s not really a startup any more, it’s a going concern.

OP is an undergrad student. Attracting attention is what will make them stand out. And sharing research at this stage will probably expose them to research others don’t want to publish but do want to share with other researchers.

Re: AI's top startups are barely publishing their research

#125

Post by colingauvin »

ninjahawk1 wrote: post #90

I can’t speak for other startups, but I applied to the most recent YC batch with my idea for making AI proactive instead of reactive, and pre-being selected I’ve published a paper on recursive self-improvement mapped to the Epoch AI data. I contacted a professor from a university in the UK and he responded since he was working on similar work, then asked me if I wanted to meet with him. We talked for about an hour si…

Curious what you mean by proactive? Could you share a bit more?

Re: AI's top startups are barely publishing their research

#126

Post by perpetuallunch »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #103
paytonjjones wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not really a common attitude in academia, unfortunately. The most common attitude is something closer to "I want to be well known and respected by smart and influential people". In short, prestige. People using your work is a side effect of success, but simultaneously threatens your ownership of your "brand". If they significantly improve upon the thing you did, your work could be made irrelevant, your prestig…

Huh? Wouldn’t their prestige be improved if some other group spent a lot of effort improving on it? That would clearly demonstrate it had real substance beyond hot air or puffery.

You could be proven wrong and wither in to obscurity.

Better to silo yourself and move in to the penthouse.

Re: AI's top startups are barely publishing their research

#127

Post by baron3dl »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #115
ninjahawk1 wrote: post #90

I can’t speak for other startups, but I applied to the most recent YC batch with my idea for making AI proactive instead of reactive, and pre-being selected I’ve published a paper on recursive self-improvement mapped to the Epoch AI data. I contacted a professor from a university in the UK and he responded since he was working on similar work, then asked me if I wanted to meet with him. We talked for about an hour si…

That's also a reason the big labs stopped. Publishing is most valuable to people who have no other way to get the attention of smart strangers. Once you can hire nearly anyone and everyone already returns your calls, the main remaining effect of publishing is to tell your competitors which things worked. This is what happens to every field as it turns from a science into an industry. Chemists published freely until d…

i wish more people would publish the things that didn't work. i'd like everything, but the exploration of searched negative space is so wasteful.

Re: AI's top startups are barely publishing their research

#128

Post by zdragnar »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #103
paytonjjones wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not really a common attitude in academia, unfortunately. The most common attitude is something closer to "I want to be well known and respected by smart and influential people". In short, prestige. People using your work is a side effect of success, but simultaneously threatens your ownership of your "brand". If they significantly improve upon the thing you did, your work could be made irrelevant, your prestig…

Huh? Wouldn’t their prestige be improved if some other group spent a lot of effort improving on it? That would clearly demonstrate it had real substance beyond hot air or puffery.

I would presume that if their results end up being more impactful or interesting, you end up being a footnote and lose the spotlight.

Re: AI's top startups are barely publishing their research

#130

Post by himata4113 »

threethirtytwo wrote: post #110
ninjahawk1 wrote: post #90

I can’t speak for other startups, but I applied to the most recent YC batch with my idea for making AI proactive instead of reactive, and pre-being selected I’ve published a paper on recursive self-improvement mapped to the Epoch AI data. I contacted a professor from a university in the UK and he responded since he was working on similar work, then asked me if I wanted to meet with him. We talked for about an hour si…

Recursive self improvement is the beginning of the end.

it's actually the end of the beginning, there's walls that self-improving models hit that are never overcome even when given vast amounts of time.
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