Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Acquisitions, consolidation, and innovation in AI

frontierai.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 45 posts

Re: Acquisitions, consolidation, and innovation in AI

#21

Post by bongodongobob »

no_wizard wrote: post #2

I read the article and while it doesn’t say this nor imply it, this is my takeaway, though correct me if I’m wrong: Model innovation is effectively converging and slowing down considerably. The big companies in this space doing the research are not making leap over leap with each release, and the downstream open source projects are coming closer to the same quality or in fact can produce the same quality (e.g DeepSee…

> This is demonstrably untrue. CEOs are chomping at the bit to reorganize their business around AI, as in, AI doing things humans used to do and getting the same effective results or better, thereby they can reduce staff across the board while supposedly maintaining the same output or better.

Nah. Maybe tech CEOs. Companies are blocking AI carte blanche at the direction of their security teams and/or only allowing an instanced version of MS Copilot, if anything. Other than write emails, it doesn't do much for the average office worker and we all know it.

The value is going to be the apps that build on AI, as you said.

Re: Acquisitions, consolidation, and innovation in AI

#22

Post by borski »

bongodongobob wrote: post #21
no_wizard wrote: post #2

I read the article and while it doesn’t say this nor imply it, this is my takeaway, though correct me if I’m wrong: Model innovation is effectively converging and slowing down considerably. The big companies in this space doing the research are not making leap over leap with each release, and the downstream open source projects are coming closer to the same quality or in fact can produce the same quality (e.g DeepSee…

> This is demonstrably untrue. CEOs are chomping at the bit to reorganize their business around AI, as in, AI doing things humans used to do and getting the same effective results or better, thereby they can reduce staff across the board while supposedly maintaining the same output or better. Nah. Maybe tech CEOs. Companies are blocking AI carte blanche at the direction of their security teams and/or only allowing an…

> Companies are blocking AI carte blanche at the direction of their security teams

What companies?

Re: Acquisitions, consolidation, and innovation in AI

#26

Post by o1inventor »

no_wizard wrote: post #2

I read the article and while it doesn’t say this nor imply it, this is my takeaway, though correct me if I’m wrong: Model innovation is effectively converging and slowing down considerably. The big companies in this space doing the research are not making leap over leap with each release, and the downstream open source projects are coming closer to the same quality or in fact can produce the same quality (e.g DeepSee…

One of the possible alternative routes is this:

Model providers and model labs stop opensourcing/listing their innovations/papers and start patenting instead.

Re: Acquisitions, consolidation, and innovation in AI

#27

Post by paulsutter »

Work just to be a part of it. This is the most consequential time in history.

It's the best time ever to build. Don't work on anything that could have been done two years ago.

Learn the current tools - so that you can adapt to the new tools that much faster as they come out.

Re: Acquisitions, consolidation, and innovation in AI

#28

Post by dingnuts »

adpirz wrote: post #18
skeeter2020 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with this but I think it's still an open question if anyone can build a successful product on top of the tech. There will likely be some but it feels eerily similar to the dot com boom (and then bust) when the vast majority of new products built on top of this (internet) technology didn't produce and didn't survive. Most AI products so far are fun toys or interesting proofs, and mediocre when evaluated agains…

The dot com boom is an apt analogy: the internet took off, we understood it had potential, but the innovation didn't all come in the first wave. It took time for the internet to bake, and then we saw another boom with the advent of mobile phones, higher bandwidth, and more compute per user. It is still simply too early to tell exactly what the new steady state is, but I can tell you that where we're at _today_ is alr…

other than constantly feeling gaslit about the quality of these tools, I can tell you where we are _today_ is basically the same in my day to day as it was three years ago.

oh except, sometimes someone tells me I could use the bot to generate a thing, and it doesn't work, and I waste some time, and then do it manually.

Re: Acquisitions, consolidation, and innovation in AI

#29

Post by riku_iki »

lenerdenator wrote: post #6
xnx wrote: post #4

There's a lot of opportunity to apply leading edge AI models to specific business applications, but success here is determined more by experience with those business domains than with AI generally. An AI startup could still be a useful "resume" to get acqui/hired by one of the big players.

I think too many people are focused on the idea of AGI instead of doing what you're suggesting, which is where the real value-add is for customers. I don't need God in a datacenter. I need help diagnosing an Elastic Search problem.

Its just it is not easy to come into specific pre-occupied space for outsiders.

Re: Acquisitions, consolidation, and innovation in AI

#30

Post by epistasis »

borski wrote: post #22
bongodongobob wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is demonstrably untrue. CEOs are chomping at the bit to reorganize their business around AI, as in, AI doing things humans used to do and getting the same effective results or better, thereby they can reduce staff across the board while supposedly maintaining the same output or better. Nah. Maybe tech CEOs. Companies are blocking AI carte blanche at the direction of their security teams and/or only allowing an…

> Companies are blocking AI carte blanche at the direction of their security teams What companies?

I know many IP-heavy and health-centric companies are blocking AI use severely. For example, pharma depends on huge amounts of secrecy and does not want any data leaked to OpenAI, and often has barely-competent IT and security staff that don't know what "threat model" means. Those who deal with controlled health data also block with a heavy hand.
Post reply on HN