Blind to Disruption – The CEOs Who Missed the Future • Hacker News Board

Re: Blind to Disruption – The CEOs Who Missed the Future

#111

Post by hattmall » Wed, Jul 09, 2025, 3:52 AM UTC

djhn wrote: post #68

NitpickLawyer wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The best AI applications are beneath the surface to empower users Not this time, tho. ChatGPT is the iphone moment for "AI" for the masses. And it was surprising and unexpected both for the experts / practitioners and said masses. Working with LLMs pre gpt3.5 was a mess, hackish and "in the background" but way way worse experience overall. Chatgpt made it happen just like the proverbial "you had me at scroll and pi…

I’ll spend an anti-hype token :) ChatGPT wasn’t the iphone moment, because the iphone wasn’t quickly forgotten. Outside of software, most adult professionals in my network had a play with chatgpt and have long since abandoned their accounts. They can’t use chatbots for work (maybe data is sensitive, or their ‘knowledge work’ isn’t the kind that produces text output). Our native language is too poorly supported for li…

Not only that, there is active backlash for talking about ChatGPT in social circles now. Where as, I guess March 2023-ish it was the topic of conversation. Then when something new dropped it came up again and most people had used it and had an interesting story mainly about asking it for some sort of advice. Now when someone mentions it or tries to show you something it's mostly an eye roll and to the non-tech general user it hasn't made any major improvement since mid 2023. Most people I know are in fact complaining about the amount of crappy AI content and are actively opposed to it.

Re: Blind to Disruption – The CEOs Who Missed the Future

#112

Post by hattmall » Wed, Jul 09, 2025, 3:55 AM UTC

janalsncm wrote: post #70

anon7000 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it’s completely true — Amazon undoubtedly has a pretty advanced logistics set up and certainly uses AI all over the place. Even if they’re not a big AI researcher. There are a lot of great use cases for ML outside of chatbots

> There are a lot of great use cases for ML outside of chatbots To be slightly provocative, most of the ML applications that are profitable are not chatbots. To stay on Amazon, their product recommendations, ads ranking, and search likely make Amazon way more than their little AI summaries or Rufus chatbot.

But also, like, how much of that is really "AI" in the general sense as it applies to things like ChatGPT today? Do you really need a massive resource intensive system for products recommendations and things related to Amazon's marketing.

Re: Blind to Disruption – The CEOs Who Missed the Future

#113

Post by BenFranklin100 » Wed, Jul 09, 2025, 3:56 AM UTC

baxtr wrote: post #50

jampa wrote: post #24

I like Steve's content, but the ending misses the mark. With the carriage / car situation, individual transportation is their core business, and most companies are not in the field of Artificial Intelligence. I say this as someone who has worked for 7 years implementing AI research for production, from automated hardware testing to accessibility for nonverbals: I don't think founders need to obsess even more than the…

Just today I used the AI service on the amazon product page to get more information about a specific product, basically RAG on the reviews. So maybe your analysis is outdated?

Are you seriously suggesting the crappy AI bot on Amazon product pages is evidence of an ‘AI’ revolution? The thing sucks. If I’m ready to spend money on a product, it’s worth my time to do a traditional keyword search and quickly scroll through the search returns to get the contextualized information, rather then hoping an LLM will get it right.

Re: Blind to Disruption – The CEOs Who Missed the Future

#114

Post by hattmall » Wed, Jul 09, 2025, 4:00 AM UTC

myrmidon wrote: post #35

danbruc wrote: post #15

Let us see how this will age. The current generation of AI models will turn out to be essentially a dead end. I have no doubt that AI will eventually fundamentally change a lot of things, but it will not be large language models [1]. And I think there is no path of gradual improvement, we still need some fundamental new ideas. Integration with external tools will help but not overcome fundamental limitations. Once th…

> The current generation of AI models will turn out to be essentially a dead end. It seems a matter of perspective to me whether you call it "dead end" or "stepping stone". To give some pause before dismissing the current state of the art prematurely: I would already consider LLM based current systems more "intelligent" than a housecat. And a pets intelligence is enough to have ethical implications, so we arguably re…

>I would already consider LLM based current systems more "intelligent" than a housecat.

An interesting experiment would be to have a robot with an LLM mind and see what things it could figure out, like would it learn to charge itself or something. But personally I don't think they have anywhere near the general intelligence of animals.

Re: Blind to Disruption – The CEOs Who Missed the Future

#115

Post by hedgehog » Wed, Jul 09, 2025, 4:13 AM UTC

majormajor wrote: post #91

hedgehog wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Viewed from a different angle I think he's probably close. A service provider changing the back end while leaving the front end UI similar is not dissimilar to early cars being built like carriages. But when the product can shift from "give me an app that makes it easier to do my taxes" to "keep me current on my taxes and send me status updates" that's a pretty radical difference in what the customer sees.

> But when the product can shift from "give me an app that makes it easier to do my taxes" to "keep me current on my taxes and send me status updates" that's a pretty radical difference in what the customer sees. For a bunch of stuff - banks, online shopping, booking a taxi, etc - this shift already happened with non-LLM-based "send me notifications of unusual account activity" or even the dead-simple "send me an ema…

No the shift hasn't happened yet at all. Let's take those examples one by one.

Banks: Normal retail customers are responsible for managing their account balances, importing transaction data into whatever book keeping system, downloading their tax forms for filing, adjusting their services and strategy based on whatever they're planning to do in their life etc. Private banking is a reasonable model for the service that everyone should get, but can't because it's too expensive.

Online shopping: Most people have to figure out what they're looking for, research the options, figure out where to order from, keep track of warranties, repairs, returns, recalls, maintenance, consumables, etc. Personal assistants can absorb most of that, but that's expensive.

Booking a taxi: On the same theme, for all the scheduled travel that should be booked and ready to go based on your calendar. Personal assistants can do this too, but again it's expensive.

The core ideas of giving the service provider context, guidance, and autonomy to work without regular intervention are not unique to automation but only recently is there a conceivable path to building software that can actually deliver.

Re: Blind to Disruption – The CEOs Who Missed the Future

#116

Post by Velorivox » Wed, Jul 09, 2025, 4:28 AM UTC

SoftTalker wrote: post #49

mxfh wrote: post #47

The historical part completely misses the first boom of EV from 1890s to 1910s besides mentioning that they existed. The history of those is the big untold story here. It doesn't help if you're betting on the right tech too early. Clearly superior in theory, but lacking significant breakthroughs in battery reasearch and general spottyness of electrification in that era. Tons of Electric Vehicle companies existed to p…

Yep. Too early is as bad as too late. The EV was invented but the supporting technology wasn't there. Lots of ideas that failed in the first dotcom boom in the late 1990s are popular and successful today but weren't able to find a market at the time.

This reminds me of Mary Anderson [0], who invented the windshield wiper so early that her patent expired by the time Cadillac made them standard equipment.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Anderson_(inventor)

Re: Blind to Disruption – The CEOs Who Missed the Future

#117

Post by bluefirebrand » Wed, Jul 09, 2025, 4:34 AM UTC

worik wrote: post #98

bluefirebrand wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being fired is not being held accountable, it is being terminated

> Being fired is not being held accountable, it is being terminated Termination is the end result of a process It is not unreasonable to think that is an accountability process of some sort...

You're talking about being accountable to shareholders

I am talking about being accountable to society

Re: Blind to Disruption – The CEOs Who Missed the Future

#118

Post by joe_the_user » Wed, Jul 09, 2025, 4:53 AM UTC

This kind of article has to be a subgenre of business writing.

Why didn't all the carriage makers (400+) become Ford, General Motors and Chrysler? Why didn't hundreds of catalogue sales companies become Amazon? Why didn't hundreds of local city taxi services become Uber and Lyfe.

Hint: there's hundreds on one side of these questions and a handful on the other.

Beyond the point that a future market doesn't necessary have space for present players, the "Oo, look how foolish, they missed the next wave" articles miss the point that present businesses exist to make money in the present and generally do so. If you're horseshoe maker, you may know your days are numbered but you have equipment and you're making money. Liquidating to jump into this next wave may not make any sense - make your product 'till demand stops and retire. Don't reinvest but maybe raise prices and extract all you can from the operation now. Basically, "failed to pivot" applies to startups that don't have a capital investment and income stream with a given technology. If you have those, speculative pivoting is ignoring your fiduciary duty to protect that stuff while it's making making even if the income stream is declining.

And sure, I couldn't even get to the part about AI this offended most economist part so much...

Re: Blind to Disruption – The CEOs Who Missed the Future

#119

Post by crossroadsguy » Wed, Jul 09, 2025, 4:58 AM UTC

I feel this at a personal level. I started as an Android developer and stayed so. Not venturing into hybrid/etc or even trying to be into iOS as well, let alone backend, full stack (let's not even begin to talk of AI) - while kind of always seeing this might happen. Now I see the world pass by kind of. I don't think it's always missing the future. Maybe a comfort zone thing - institutional or personal? Sometimes it's just vehement refusal to believe something. I think it's just foolish hope against the incoming tidal shift.

Re: Blind to Disruption – The CEOs Who Missed the Future

#120

Post by aryehof » Wed, Jul 09, 2025, 5:05 AM UTC

mcswell wrote: post #95

jampa wrote: post #24

I like Steve's content, but the ending misses the mark. With the carriage / car situation, individual transportation is their core business, and most companies are not in the field of Artificial Intelligence. I say this as someone who has worked for 7 years implementing AI research for production, from automated hardware testing to accessibility for nonverbals: I don't think founders need to obsess even more than the…

"With the carriage / car situation, individual transportation is their core business, and most companies are not in the field of Artificial Intelligence." I'm missing something here. First, I thought Steve's point was that the carriage makers did not see "individual transportation" as their business, and they should have--if they had, they might have pivoted like Studebaker did. So if "most companies are not in the f…

Commercial endeavors exist to provide goods and services to consumer and users.

The implication of the author here is that those providing services that continue using human resources rather than AI, are potentially acting like carriage manufacturers.

Of course that assumes improvements in technology, which is not guaranteed.