Cool idea! Thanks for doing this.
Show HN: AI Grant – Non-profit, distributed AI research lab
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Re: Show HN: AI Grant – Non-profit, distributed AI research lab
#12From the application: > What's your background? In particular anything that would help convince us that you're actually capable of finishing your project. > Project description: Describe your project, including: where you got the idea, how you think others might use it, and how it is new/different/better than what already exists. This is the main answer we use to judge applications. These questions make the grant see…
Hmm, I think there's a number of people who have some limited AI experience (side project, internship, etc.) but don't have the money to invest in a huge amount of cloud computing hours to do novel research.
It doesn't seem like this is something like the Thiel fellowship that's supposed to replace an education, it's just a way to make AI research affordable. I'm sure if I wanted to I could scrape together enough money to do a lot of cloud computing and be able to aggressively try out ideas, but that would cut into money for living expenses. With a grant like this, I would feel much more comfortable just experimenting, not feeling like if I train a model overnight and it doesn't turn out perfectly I lose $10.
I don't think a hobbyist can justify using Google/Amazon's best GPU processors, and instead must settle for their cheaper options to feel like they're being financially responsible. I see this AI Grant as a way to solve that problem. AI projects aren't like web-dev projects-- it can take significant amount of money to train a state of the art model in the cloud.
Re: Show HN: AI Grant – Non-profit, distributed AI research lab
#13From the application: > What's your background? In particular anything that would help convince us that you're actually capable of finishing your project. > Project description: Describe your project, including: where you got the idea, how you think others might use it, and how it is new/different/better than what already exists. This is the main answer we use to judge applications. These questions make the grant see…
> The people who are skilled enough at machine learning/deep learning to receive the grant would be able to be employed at any relevant company for their research.
Yes, but maybe some of those people want to work on a side project in their free time. And if you work in deep learning you need some resources to train your models, so any help is welcome.
Re: Show HN: AI Grant – Non-profit, distributed AI research lab
#14Great idea. I am curious about how you plan to keep in touch with the teams/individuals that do get the grant, and how the "AI Grant Network" works concretely. My understanding: you get nothing tangible from the grant ("The money is a gift"), no contracts or IP... To me it seems like a bet that the networks effects and the gratefulness of the grantees will pay back somehow. I think this is a smart move because invest…
We're starting off with a chatroom for grant winners, reviewers and some experts. We have other things planned like Q&A over Hangouts, in-person meetups and more. We'll treat this like a startup: experiment with a few options, talk to our users and see what's most useful.
As for value capture, there's no master plan. Getting to know smart people is enough of a reward.
Re: Show HN: AI Grant – Non-profit, distributed AI research lab
#15Thank you for sharing and running this. I'm super excited this exists and plan on applying.
One of the things I've finding difficult to find in my process is actually mentoring support. You can learn a lot from online resources, but often I have hit walls where I wish I could ask for help and guidance.
It'd be cool to a version of this with more defined mentoring path, especially for those who are new to the space!
Re: Show HN: AI Grant – Non-profit, distributed AI research lab
#16Thank you for sharing and running this. I'm super excited this exists and plan on applying. One of the things I've finding difficult to find in my process is actually mentoring support. You can learn a lot from online resources, but often I have hit walls where I wish I could ask for help and guidance. It'd be cool to a version of this with more defined mentoring path, especially for those who are new to the space!
Great point. We have a chat community which is a start. We'll definitely add more structured mentoring if more people find it useful.
Re: Show HN: AI Grant – Non-profit, distributed AI research lab
#17You know, I might have misread what you're offering here when I submitted an application a minute ago, but what I was really hoping was that you would be able to put me in touch with researchers in the field who would answer my emails about whether the research topics I was considering were interesting and promising or not and could help me navigate the academic publication process. The monetary pieces of this grant are largely irrelevant to me.
Re: Show HN: AI Grant – Non-profit, distributed AI research lab
#18Could we apply if we have started doing some work on our idea already? Or should it be a brand new project?
Re: Show HN: AI Grant – Non-profit, distributed AI research lab
#19Could we apply if we have started doing some work on our idea already? Or should it be a brand new project?
Apply either way!
Re: Show HN: AI Grant – Non-profit, distributed AI research lab
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's fine to tell people about your related project, but it's not fine to hijack the thread with comments about it, so please don't. We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14852088 and marked it off-topic.
Someday perhaps YC's efforts at UBI will trickle down to HN, resulting in a fair platform that doesn't extremize inequality. In the meantime, us peons are left to hijack the threads of YC Partners.
Every community has a set of rules you need to abide by, it's really not that complicated.