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You probably don't need AI/ML. You can make do with well written SQL scripts

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Re: You probably don't need AI/ML. You can make do with well written SQL scripts

#71

Post by gnicholas »

parmesan wrote: post #70
gnicholas wrote: post #40

My startup was approached by a corporate VC that wanted to make a strategic investment. Based on the attendee list from our meeting, which included very high up folks from the company, I felt good going in. They expressed interest in our technology that makes reading on screen easier [1], but they were surprised to learn that we didn't use machine learning to accomplish this. I indicated that it was actually quite ef…

Wow this is amazing! I don't understand the VCs input about ML, why and how would it help in this use case?

I think they wanted us to do something with NLP and ML, to make it syntactically-based. I happen to have studied linguistics and know how complex this would be — and of course it would have to be custom-built for every language. The current version, which just uses line position, works fine and is language-independent.

Another explanation: they didn't actually know how they wanted us to us ML — they just knew they wanted us to use it.

Re: You probably don't need AI/ML. You can make do with well written SQL scripts

#72

Post by azernik »

xevb3k wrote: post #64
gnicholas wrote: post #40

My startup was approached by a corporate VC that wanted to make a strategic investment. Based on the attendee list from our meeting, which included very high up folks from the company, I felt good going in. They expressed interest in our technology that makes reading on screen easier [1], but they were surprised to learn that we didn't use machine learning to accomplish this. I indicated that it was actually quite ef…

Can someone explain the dynamic that’s going on here? I somehow can believe that VCs are so stupid to be purely hype driven, so what is pushing them to make this their investment focus? Do they just jump on every bandwagon in the hope that one of them might pan out?

They put a lot of study into hyped categories, so they at least understand the businesses they're investing in. They can evaluate the caliber of talent, understand the depth of your moat, etc. Whereas with businesses outside of the hype (or outside of their specific specialty) they're not confident in their ability to even evaluate the potential of an investment.

(I'm working on a startup right now that's in a similar position - non-hyped B2B segment. VCs are all "hey, look, we don't understand X market very well, maybe go to Y VC?" And Y VC is all "hmm, you're only tangentially related to Z market that we actually understand, so you'll need to get to Series A-sized revenues before we'll put in a seed-size investment.")

Re: You probably don't need AI/ML. You can make do with well written SQL scripts

#73

Post by gnicholas »

azernik wrote: post #69
gnicholas wrote: post #40

My startup was approached by a corporate VC that wanted to make a strategic investment. Based on the attendee list from our meeting, which included very high up folks from the company, I felt good going in. They expressed interest in our technology that makes reading on screen easier [1], but they were surprised to learn that we didn't use machine learning to accomplish this. I indicated that it was actually quite ef…

Awesome product! Been using it for a bit, and does indeed help. Just a quick bug report - it does the wrong thing on right-to-left text. e.g. on this article [1], it highlights the beginning (right side) of one line and the end (left side) of the next line in the same color, which doesn't actually reflect the flow of reading. There's also a weird effect on LTR text embedded in the RTL (on my setup, the "a" in "axios"…

Can you share the link? I thought we fixed the right-to-left issue a long time ago. Feel free to share screenshots or more info with contact@[domain].

Re: You probably don't need AI/ML. You can make do with well written SQL scripts

#74

Post by joewee »

xevb3k wrote: post #64
gnicholas wrote: post #40

My startup was approached by a corporate VC that wanted to make a strategic investment. Based on the attendee list from our meeting, which included very high up folks from the company, I felt good going in. They expressed interest in our technology that makes reading on screen easier [1], but they were surprised to learn that we didn't use machine learning to accomplish this. I indicated that it was actually quite ef…

Can someone explain the dynamic that’s going on here? I somehow can believe that VCs are so stupid to be purely hype driven, so what is pushing them to make this their investment focus? Do they just jump on every bandwagon in the hope that one of them might pan out?

VCs raise money the same way startups do, only with more regulation. For that bucket of money they likely presented a thesis for how they would used to invest in the ML/AI wave. Investors have rights if the money isn’t used they way they were told it would be.

VCs raise money from fund managers (sovereign wealth funds for example) who also present a thesis to their stakeholders for how the money will be managed.

Depends on the timing but I think VC focus on ML is a good indicator of where smart money thinks the money is going to be made. But there are a lot of people that catch a trend in the tail in, I don’t think we’ve gotten anywhere close to that for ML investments.

Re: You probably don't need AI/ML. You can make do with well written SQL scripts

#75

Post by didibus »

What the article describes is called an "expert system" and is what AI in the enterprise used to look like.

Basically, you try to capture the instinct of a great salesmen by formalizing it into computer logic.

Often that's done with rules like in the article.

It works good, but has its limits. The finer reasoning of human judgement are often not expressable, people don't know why they made that decision. Making it hard to capture. And human also have their limits. Too many variables, too much noise, too much data and they won't make the best prediction/decision.

That's when ML shines. Instead of trying to encode an expert's intuition, instead you let the machine develop its own intuition, itself becoming an expert through training.

The downside is it now similarly becomes challenging to formalize the machine's intuition. Why it made a given choice is no longer easily apparent.

I do think expert systems still have value. Especially when you lack the dataset to train a machine expert.

Re: You probably don't need AI/ML. You can make do with well written SQL scripts

#76

Post by willvarfar »

gnicholas wrote: post #57
db1 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went to your website, and I can't figure out what your product is or does. I had to click in to individuals before I figured out what it does. Why not put "BeeLine Reader makes reading on-screen easier, faster, and more enjoyable. We use a simple cognitive trick — an eye-guiding color gradient — to pull your eyes from one line to the next." on your front page? Maybe you guys have already done some kind of testing a…

Appreciate the feedback. We recently redesigned the website to offer silos, and one of the goals was to make the landing page not offer too many specifics that would make some audiences bounce. But perhaps your suggestion is just what we need to do. Thanks for taking the time to share! One lesson learned: I should have linked to the /individual page instead of the generic landing page in my comment. Updating link now…

The lesson you should have learned is to make the generic landing page actually describe the what the product attempts to acheive! You have just had a load of inquisitive wanting-to-be-impressed HNers descend on your page and nobody knew what the thing was about! :)

Publishers, educators etc also need to understand what the value proposition is for their users.

I also think the page ought to be written in longer sentences. The current silo buttons aren't even making it clear that they explain more.

So, suggestions:

You just have to take the few sentences from your Individuals page "Reading on-screen can be tough on your eyes, especially if you have to do it all day long. We’re here to help. BeeLine Reader makes reading on-screen easier, faster, and more enjoyable." and put that on your landing page instead of "A New Way to Read."

Now change the "(choose)" subheading to "perspectives:", put it lower nearer the buttons instead of near the description, and perhaps left-align it.

Change the buttons from meaningless colours with labels to something descriptive like "for you the user :smile:", "for the publisher $" and "for the educator :graduation-hat-icon:".

Voila! good luck!

Re: You probably don't need AI/ML. You can make do with well written SQL scripts

#77

Post by gnicholas »

joewee wrote: post #74
xevb3k wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can someone explain the dynamic that’s going on here? I somehow can believe that VCs are so stupid to be purely hype driven, so what is pushing them to make this their investment focus? Do they just jump on every bandwagon in the hope that one of them might pan out?

VCs raise money the same way startups do, only with more regulation. For that bucket of money they likely presented a thesis for how they would used to invest in the ML/AI wave. Investors have rights if the money isn’t used they way they were told it would be. VCs raise money from fund managers (sovereign wealth funds for example) who also present a thesis to their stakeholders for how the money will be managed. Depe…

You make a good point about a VC's responsibility to stick to the plan they sold their LPs on. This could explain a lot of group-think and myopia in the industry.

But in this particular case, it was a corporate VC, investing their own money.

Re: You probably don't need AI/ML. You can make do with well written SQL scripts

#78

Post by mygo »

1123581321 wrote: post #37
mygo wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how did you convince them to stick on for a year when most clients want to see some results within 2 months or they give up? according to your schedule they’d ask what I’ve been doing and if I tell them I’ve just been “collecting data” that translates to them as “I haven’t done anything in 2 months”. If I say “keep paying me and you’ll see results in a year” that translates to “I haven’t done anything in 2 months but…

Companies with budgets are willing to think in terms of quarters or years. You’ve laid out the plan for them and they’ve agreed to it. The money is allocated in an annual budget or obtained with a purchase order, so it’s not going to be suddenly reallocated unless there’s a big problem. Experienced clients wouldn’t move to another agency to do analytics “faster” because they would know they’d just have to ramp up the…

well then in that case in many regards working with companies that have quarterly / annual budgets is easier than working with clients who do not. But it appears to be harder to make the sale if you don’t already have a legendary track record that warrants their one-year-commitment.

Re: You probably don't need AI/ML. You can make do with well written SQL scripts

#79

Post by cup-of-tea »

Yeah but non technical people who don't know what they are doing but for some reason have money to spend just know they want you to use machine learning for everything.

One time at work I wrote a simple web app with a search box (just doing an sql query, nothing fancy). One of the "higher ups" was impressed and decided to flex their knowledge, pointing to the search box saying "and this uses nlp". It was a damn sql query on a full text field.

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