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AI's top startups are barely publishing their research

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

#281

Post by adevalois »

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…

The startup landscape has also changed noticeable compared to 5 or 10 years ago. A team of smart/credible people could get funding for an idea and build a product + publish, knowing there was a six month lead time for anyone to copy them and ship. These days, the barrier to ship code is zero. People can copy your business over a weekend, so there is much more urgency to establish product market fit and build a “moat”. Publishing timelines are now at odds with the pace of go-to-market and VC funding timelines.

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

#282

Post by WithinReason »

petesergeant wrote: post #268
WithinReason wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People only care about those because it brings them more resources. People seek glory for power. Altruism is not a stable strategy so will be exploited.

Trivially disproved by self-sacrifice in the persual of both

self-sacrifice often brings resources to your kin, and is also easily exploitable

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

#283

Post by don_esteban »

locknitpicker wrote: post #259
don_esteban wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are talking about a different thing, i.e. you have slipped in a level of abstraction that was not there before: In 'searching a path from A to B in a maze' language: The original statement was: (1) The branch to the left from A is a dead end. Your interpretation: (2) There is no path from A to B. (1) is still very useful (reducing the wasted effort) for those trying to find a path from A to B. The OP's point is t…

> The original statement was: (1) The branch to the left from A is a dead end. This is where you get things wrong at a very basic and fundamental level. Just because you failed to explore branch A, that does not mean it is a dead end. It just means you came up empty. That is why science is based on observations and theories: it is based on building up on ideas and what works and can be proven. Otherwise you will left…

You are assuming incompetence on the scientist saying that the branch from the left of A is a dead end.

While nobody is perfect, there are numerous perfectly valid scientific negative results. You know, there exist things like impossibility proofs in mathematics and computer science. There are equivalents in other sciences (e.g. if X was true, that would lead to Y that is easily observable and clearly not observed). Sometimes that implication has assumptions that might change once the technology/society changes, other times it holds true regardless.

Unicycles are a dead end as a practical transportation, because the bicycles have them beat in every way (except portability).

A scientific result would be much more along the lines of 'Bicycles without gears have limited applicability, especially in hilly terrain.'

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

#284

Post by andy_ppp »

adevalois wrote: post #281
sillysaurusx wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The startup landscape has also changed noticeable compared to 5 or 10 years ago. A team of smart/credible people could get funding for an idea and build a product + publish, knowing there was a six month lead time for anyone to copy them and ship. These days, the barrier to ship code is zero. People can copy your business over a weekend, so there is much more urgency to establish product market fit and build a “moat”…

I think in theory this is true but in practice I don't see loads more good apps or products. There's a paradox here I think. I just don't see loads of quality competitors popping up I actually think it makes building something harder because the barrier to entry just gets higher somehow.

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

#285

Post by 9cb14c1ec0 »

andy_ppp wrote: post #284
adevalois wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The startup landscape has also changed noticeable compared to 5 or 10 years ago. A team of smart/credible people could get funding for an idea and build a product + publish, knowing there was a six month lead time for anyone to copy them and ship. These days, the barrier to ship code is zero. People can copy your business over a weekend, so there is much more urgency to establish product market fit and build a “moat”…

I think in theory this is true but in practice I don't see loads more good apps or products. There's a paradox here I think. I just don't see loads of quality competitors popping up I actually think it makes building something harder because the barrier to entry just gets higher somehow.

I think the revolution is more of a gradual thing than an overnight one. New features and more complex apps in days or weeks instead of months. I think the world will be a much different place in 10 years than it is now, but it will be a gradual change rather than the overnight switch flip some AI maximalists would have you believe.

At my company, AI has had a huge positive impact in helping us manage technical debt that we just didn't have time to deal with before. This simple thing will have a compounding efficiency and profitability effect over the next several years.

The other thing that we have found is that AI coding abilities can crank out features faster than we can provide human support to our customers using said features. We have feature PRs that have been open for months without being merged because our company does not have the human bandwidth to provide support for them. In case you can't tell, we prioritize human support and individual connection with our customers. We actually value them.

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

#286

Post by andy_ppp »

9cb14c1ec0 wrote: post #285
andy_ppp wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think in theory this is true but in practice I don't see loads more good apps or products. There's a paradox here I think. I just don't see loads of quality competitors popping up I actually think it makes building something harder because the barrier to entry just gets higher somehow.

I think the revolution is more of a gradual thing than an overnight one. New features and more complex apps in days or weeks instead of months. I think the world will be a much different place in 10 years than it is now, but it will be a gradual change rather than the overnight switch flip some AI maximalists would have you believe. At my company, AI has had a huge positive impact in helping us manage technical debt…

As with all human endeavours, as the tooling gets better the expectation for a launch/product/feature increases dramatically too. I probably do 3-5x the features I used to before AI, yet there's still more to do. I'm not running out of work but making incredible progress on features that save the place I work at weeks and weeks of time every month which frees people up to do more of the other things. It still takes time to build and check and test things though.

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

#289

Post by odyssey7 »

ndriscoll wrote: post #96
odyssey7 wrote: post #19

Once something goes commercial, academics have to consider what progress would be research-worthy, rather than a half-baked prototype for a product or feature. Companies can’t be expected to publish their confidential and proprietary information about their feature development, and academics should consider projects that would have higher impact. If you’re taking up a seat in a PhD program tinkering with would-be fea…

> Companies can’t be expected to publish their confidential and proprietary information about their feature development, Of course they can. Simply eliminate trade secret protections and NDAs, which have literally zero purpose for society and in fact undermine patents' incentive to publish. Give a one year grace period to apply for a patent. Patent protection should be designed to be only as long as needed to try to…

For as long as the information is confidential and proprietary, we live in a world where my advice applies.

Additionally, the reason ML is rapidly developing and that companies are spending billions to do so is that they are in competition with one another. If trade secrets were impossible, they would have no economic motive. Any advantage gained, at a cost of millions or billions, would not improve their competitive stance in the market at all, since their competitors would also immediately have the same product. No company can get away with, at least not for very long, throwing billions at vanity projects that lack the potential to improve shareholder value.

If the process of invention were free, the point about freely / mandatorily contributing to the commons might stand, but when the process requires the actors to take on massive financial risks, you need the economic incentives to be present.

Academia is a unique place where the incentive is to share ideas—though not immediately and freely, but under carefully controlled conditions that support the career of the researcher. Once the area of study goes commercial, the game changes.

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

#290

Post by otherme123 »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #136
noosphr wrote: post #66

I've been at two startups that have done genuine world first fundamental research. The first tried to publish novel results for 3 years in tier 1 journals before finally doing a preprint and telling the tier one publishers to jump in a fire. The second, and ongoing, isn't publishing anything because of my experience with the first. That and avoiding openAI and Anthropic copying our results and leaving us with nothing…

There is almost no benefit in publishing frontier research as a startup. People can try to argue it but it is not defensible. Publishing that kind of thing is a flex that companies risking nothing can do. Cool for Google. Problematic if you are a startup.

Publishing is not fire and forget. You usually publish and then network your publication(s) in congresses, where you are approached by many people either working in closely related issues, or noticing your work is complementary to what they are doing. A lot of fruitful colabs start that way.

Also there are hybrid fairs with academic and market exhibitors in the same place, so you might find someone that sells something that fits your research. Some startups sprout from academia and keep being that hybrid for years (getting research grants but also selling something).

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