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How the AI bubble ate Y Combinator

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Re: How the AI bubble ate Y Combinator

#111

Post by recursive »

yawnxyz wrote: post #103
tobias3 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LLMs are good at prototyping something that is similar to something that already exists and is open sourced. It may be that there are such projects which can be monetized or need better marketing. Innovative it is not, however.

there's only so many times (in fact, 3!) I want to implement oauth from absolute scratch

This seems to suggest a failure in our model of software. We were supposed to have reusable components. Writing the same thing more than once was not supposed to be necessary.

I recognize that in reality this hasn't always worked out. But I also don't think that the answer is a black box that can churn out questionable boiler-plate.

Re: How the AI bubble ate Y Combinator

#112

Post by nartho »

devin wrote: post #3

“All the smart kids of the Bay Area want to work on AI,” Operative word here is "kids", and from what I can tell they're not even the smart ones, just the ones who are more geared toward being money and status-obsessed.

Forgive my ignorance, I'm just a mid-tier dev, but isn't AI pretty much PhD with multiple publications territory at this point ? I'm not talking about writing wrappers around ChatGPT but working at OpenAI or Anthropic

Re: How the AI bubble ate Y Combinator

#113

Post by fidotron »

kordlessagain wrote: post #58
hshshshshsh wrote: post #16

Is it just me or anyone else fed up with the startup community. I cannot find anyone who actually cares about values and have backbone. The stories I grew up with of Wozniak, Jobs, Larry and the hacker community does not resemble them anymore. Everyone I know who raised money is a moron or narcissist. YC has became like a resume builder. And the genuine hackers I know of are wasting life away working on pointless pro…

The AI bubble isn't what everyone thinks it is. Everyone's panicking about "AI features" being bolted onto products like it's 2010 and we're adding social login buttons. That's not the bubble. The bubble is the assumption that current software companies have defensibility. Here's the thing: we're not adding AI to products. We're removing the need for most products entirely. Nobody shipped without search after Google.…

The fun part is what looks like the core assumption here, that the current AI thing will actually work, doesn't even need to be true; it just needs enough people to believe it for the negative effects of it to become true.

Even without AI the software industry is not in a good state for a range of reasons. The big tech companies barely sell software - it's custom software operated to perform some other much stickier function, but the value is not in the software per se beyond it enabling selling the other thing.

Re: How the AI bubble ate Y Combinator

#114

Post by Imustaskforhelp »

pixl97 wrote: post #96
Imustaskforhelp wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly my thoughts. Couldn't agree more really, there is so much to discuss on this short time that we have on earth but a lot of that energy is going into talking about AI and AI again it seems. I have nothing against the tech but c'mon I would argue that open source itself overall is more valuable than AI but that isn't an apples to orange comparison but still, I see far fewer discussions of open source as compare…

>I see far fewer discussions of open source as compared to AI. Because the big discussions of open source were decades ago now. If you add up all the discussions of open source in the past I'd assume they'd out number the AI discussions now. Also, there is very little novel to discuss about open source. Now novel and 'important' are different things, but novel is what tends to write articles and get eyeballs.

I don't really know man half the population doesn't know what open source means or cares whereas a lot of people seemingly have lots of opinions about AI.

One can liberate people from big tech and the other ties them to it in sorts. And there are very very more conversations about the latter than the former.

The point of discussion is to bring change. There has been a real change in how usable Linux has been lets say compared to past but now its really about user adoption I suppose. I genuinely think that we might need to reopen that discussion window as a lot of people are getting interested in linux/homelabbing /realizing that they can degoogle and what not to really get privacy.

Those discussions brought a change into how open source software is written today (git) etc. but now we probably might need discussions about the awareness of these open source products to the general public if we truly want mass adoption I suppose.

What are your thoughts?

Re: How the AI bubble ate Y Combinator

#115

Post by SubiculumCode »

AI is the pinnacle of everything that came before it on HN.

It is the logical conclusion to all our efforts before it to build machines that do work for us; every idea pursued to get computers to do more for us, in every possible way, in every possible location, ALL at once and in synchrony, faster, better, stronger.

Artificial intelligence IS HN.

Resistance to that truth, is resistance to a coming singularity that already always was.

Re: How the AI bubble ate Y Combinator

#116

Post by yummypaint »

Timsky wrote: post #82

YC remains a great source of creative inspiration for me. However, I tend to skip most AI-related content on HN, as the topic does more harm than good to me in my daily life. Some people around me delegate more and more decisions to the chat, and that frightens. Especially if you are somehow dependent on them or your work gets evaluated by some creepy AI-driven bossware. We should admit that AI, particularly LLMs, is…

I work with some undergrads and see this delegation increasing year over year. Unfortunately it's also happening at the expense of reading books, using library search tools to find proper sources, and information gathering in general.

"An LLM might be able to explain something to you, but it can never understand it for you."

Re: How the AI bubble ate Y Combinator

#117

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

SubiculumCode wrote: post #115

AI is the pinnacle of everything that came before it on HN. It is the logical conclusion to all our efforts before it to build machines that do work for us; every idea pursued to get computers to do more for us, in every possible way, in every possible location, ALL at once and in synchrony, faster, better, stronger. Artificial intelligence IS HN. Resistance to that truth, is resistance to a coming singularity that a…

Have we had any articles about people vibe coding Doom onto a toaster yet? If not, I'd say you're likely incorrect.

Re: How the AI bubble ate Y Combinator

#118

Post by [deleted] »

jacquesm wrote: post #106

I was at a meeting of a bunch of VCs a while ago (a couple of months). The principal partner of one of the larger funds said that they will now only consider investments that are AI related. Just to give you a data point, I'm not saying that that is a trend. But if that's a market representative you can't fault the supply side for adapting to it.

[deleted]

Re: How the AI bubble ate Y Combinator

#119

Post by BlueUmarell »

gjgtcbkj wrote: post #95
Timsky wrote: post #82

YC remains a great source of creative inspiration for me. However, I tend to skip most AI-related content on HN, as the topic does more harm than good to me in my daily life. Some people around me delegate more and more decisions to the chat, and that frightens. Especially if you are somehow dependent on them or your work gets evaluated by some creepy AI-driven bossware. We should admit that AI, particularly LLMs, is…

I welcome the bossware. Bye bye bosses.

Bossware, where

the boss is nowhere

Re: How the AI bubble ate Y Combinator

#120

Post by pton_xd »

tipiirai wrote: post #17

90% (154/170) of the latest HN summer batch are AI startups. I was expecting a lot, but not this much.

I've also noticed many startups from prior YC batches that haven't found traction yet have pivoted to AI-related offerings. It's been kind of amusing to watch them become absorbed into the hype cycle, one by one.
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