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Lessons from YC AI Startups

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Re: Lessons from YC AI Startups

#71

Post by fatnoah »

kozikow wrote: post #45
iancmceachern wrote: post #24

Are there any examples if successful exits or AI companies making it into the black yet? In general, not just YC

I feel that really there are no more place for "AI startup" as there is for "database startup" - there are some exceptions, but it's hard to compete with open source and large corporations treating AI tech as loss leader. Of course there are exceptions. I work on AI startup that with squinted eyes could be described "AI for pricing the insurance policy". As the company grows, we really add a lot of more non-AI pieces…

> I work on AI startup that with squinted eyes could be described "AI for pricing the insurance policy".

I work in a very similar domain, and my company is also in the business of "solving problem x" with AI as the means to do so. It's in an area where effectiveness in solving the problem can be clearly measured, so it's easy to calculate ROI for customers.

The main downside of the AI hype, IMHO, is the conflation with LLMs and the AI bubble. We do plan to leverage LLMs in some specific ways, but it's not the core of our business, just part of the solution.

Re: Lessons from YC AI Startups

#72

Post by lumost »

epolanski wrote: post #42
noduerme wrote: post #34

Most of my dev work is in logistics for a very staid industry which doesn't even make this list, that would have a difficult time finding a use for LLMs, because most of the day-to-day jobs involve manual labor. That said, I've been asked "how can AI help us" quite a bit (the unsaid ending to that sentence being, "...help us lay off workers"). Just as a thought experiment, I've considered the pros and cons of automat…

It really sounds like AI is a bubble if people ask how they can cram AI into their workflow rather than coming up with real problems they want to automate. I suspect that a very large number of applications that could've been "normal" programs are going to be AI'd with no clear pros but many cons.

My 2 cents, this is like the early days of PCs or the internet. It's obvious to all that there is immense value, but it's unclear where that value is going to stick. Compaq ended up going bust after figuring out how to get around IBM bios licensing.

In hindsight, the advent of pc, mobile, and the internet were economically transformative. However PC vendors generally faired poorly, Mobile was dominated by a small number of behemoths - and the internet is dominated by giant consumer tech firms and a dizzying array of B2B firms.

It's pretty tough to pick out the winners today, I thought consumer plays were fools errands up until the phi-1.5/WebLLM papers. Now it's looking like we'll have GPT-3.5 like behavior in the browser, on common consumer hardware by year end.

Re: Lessons from YC AI Startups

#73

Post by beambot »

epolanski wrote: post #42
noduerme wrote: post #34

Most of my dev work is in logistics for a very staid industry which doesn't even make this list, that would have a difficult time finding a use for LLMs, because most of the day-to-day jobs involve manual labor. That said, I've been asked "how can AI help us" quite a bit (the unsaid ending to that sentence being, "...help us lay off workers"). Just as a thought experiment, I've considered the pros and cons of automat…

It really sounds like AI is a bubble if people ask how they can cram AI into their workflow rather than coming up with real problems they want to automate. I suspect that a very large number of applications that could've been "normal" programs are going to be AI'd with no clear pros but many cons.

That's an unnecessarily dismissive take.

Let's assume for a moment that you're a non-technical 55-70yo manager or owner of a business -- perhaps someone like your mom, dad, uncle, or grandparents.

What they're really asking, "There's a whole lot of lip service right now about big leaps in AI capabilities. I've tried ChatGPT, and it's pretty cool. I have no idea what the limitations are, or how practical any given application is. You are technically inclined. Do you think any part of our business could benefit?"

Re: Lessons from YC AI Startups

#74

Post by IKantRead »

> AI is (still) eating the world.

Citation needed.

I work in this space so am fairly optimistic, but it's worth pointing out we're still mostly talking about AI hype. Nothing has really been eaten at all yet from what I've seen.

The article claims that there are tons of startups in this space, which is true, but that doesn't mean any of these startups have actually solved any major problems yet.

As a reminder, we still haven't "solved" autonomous driving quite yet and we were much further along that road 5 years ago.

Working on shipping LLM driven products everyday, I'm becoming increasingly concerned that there's no way the products proposed can possibly match the hype for them. Which is a bit of a bummer since these models have a lot of potential in the sub-hype space, but I fear backlash in the future will lead us to squander that potential.

Re: Lessons from YC AI Startups

#75

Post by norir »

ekanes wrote: post #68
Gerardo1 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep bringing this up, but this launch HN post about Roundtable: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36865625 still shocks me. It's a company that uses AI to produce survey results. I'll let you read their pitch/description and decide for yourself, but I think it's very fair to say that this is a service to fabricate survey results to validate whatever idea it is you had beforehand. But even side-stepping that, th…

> an individual's project to provide an AI therapist and while people here and there did mention the cons of having a program provide medical treatment, the overall sentiment wasn't at all negative. Sorta. You're forgetting to compare it to an alternative. Compared to a licensed therapist that you can find, schedule, travel to and afford... for some people an imperfect something is better than the nothing they have n…

For me, the idea of robots being necessary to provide needed therapy that otherwise would be unavailable is enough to induce existential despair. I really can't imagine it as a viable long term treatment. Much of the point of therapy is just having a human advocate who is invested in your wellbeing. AI therapy sends the message that human problems are not worthy of human attention.

Re: Lessons from YC AI Startups

#76

Post by malux85 »

sinman wrote: post #65
malux85 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, created by hand, lots of techniques are required to get a well running system, GoT (graph of thought) RAG (retrieval augmented generation), Ko detection, dynamic problem decomposition, and a few more techniques I have invented but dont really have names for. Its also quite a bit more complicated than the simplistic answer I gave before because you have to do things like experiments in abstraction laddering to ge…

Random question for you: How feasible is it for someone with a software/ML background to get into this space? I'd like to get into learning a new domain through ML, but it feels very daunting.

It sounds cliche but the old advice “do something you’re passionate about” applies. I have loved chemistry since I was a teenager because I had an inspiring teacher, without this passion I would have given up when I got to the very hard parts of math.

Personally I had to level up my math game a lot, when I started I had to keep pausing looking up terms, then write tiny prototypes, then keep learning. At the start it took me a month to read and understand a paper, now I can skim read them in minutes, without a passion for chemistry and the self discipline to keep at it I would have given up.

Take extensive notes, actually review them frequently, and refractor them as you learn.

Find mentors in the space, while reading papers I took names and reached out, I offered free programming to anyone who I found inspiring, and this built relationships with some pretty amazing professors and students around the world.

Hope that helps! <3

Re: Lessons from YC AI Startups

#77

Post by monero-xmr »

IKantRead wrote: post #74

> AI is (still) eating the world. Citation needed. I work in this space so am fairly optimistic, but it's worth pointing out we're still mostly talking about AI hype. Nothing has really been eaten at all yet from what I've seen. The article claims that there are tons of startups in this space, which is true, but that doesn't mean any of these startups have actually solved any major problems yet. As a reminder, we sti…

Any task in 2023 that requires paying a human in an expensive western country, despite all of the rules and regulations and legal liability and on and on, means someone tried to automate it already and failed. For whatever reason - the ambiguity, the physical dexterity, maybe it’s even union or government rules - it cannot be automated easily.

So in comes LLMs. The developer thinks, “I know, I will just take all the input coming into the screen and put it in a magic LLM box and get the right answer!” Like so many AI startups before them, the failure is written before they even started.

Re: Lessons from YC AI Startups

#78

Post by moritzwarhier »

ekanes wrote: post #68
Gerardo1 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep bringing this up, but this launch HN post about Roundtable: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36865625 still shocks me. It's a company that uses AI to produce survey results. I'll let you read their pitch/description and decide for yourself, but I think it's very fair to say that this is a service to fabricate survey results to validate whatever idea it is you had beforehand. But even side-stepping that, th…

> an individual's project to provide an AI therapist and while people here and there did mention the cons of having a program provide medical treatment, the overall sentiment wasn't at all negative. Sorta. You're forgetting to compare it to an alternative. Compared to a licensed therapist that you can find, schedule, travel to and afford... for some people an imperfect something is better than the nothing they have n…

This is really the only part of the post where I too started pondering.

Wholeheartedly agree with the rest and am thankful for the link compilation.

IMHO, the thing with therapy for mental health problems is that it's mostly in such a sorry state that it's an insult to GPs point to call it a medical treatment. I only make that bold claim because of my own experience. As always, YMMV.

Doesn't make the AI thing less creepy, but I'd still carefully consider there's some real potential here.

Re: Lessons from YC AI Startups

#79

Post by Hermitian909 »

epolanski wrote: post #43
Hermitian909 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Previously worked on the intersection of ML and Material Science (specifically batteries). I think the link to osium-ai[0] tells the story pretty well. Material science is plagued by long, expensive, exploration phases - even in places you wouldn't expect them. ML ends up being really good at cutting the expense of these phases by >50% by making you just a little smarter in your exploration. [0] https://www.ycombinat…

But this isn't new, isn't it? I remember, e.g, Italy and Brazil had projects more than ten years ago where they used some sort of machine learning to find hidden historical buildings under terrain or jungle by looking at patterns in satellite/aerial image and it was successful in finding archeological sites in both countries.

Very similar in nature yes - we had a few rather spectacular results using only techniques from the 80s and earlier.

A lot of the revolution is coming from material scientists doing the work of creating data sets that encode their knowledge, better computational techniques in the field (e.g. DFT[0]), and democratization of petabyte scale data pipelines.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Density_functional_theory

Re: Lessons from YC AI Startups

#80

Post by Balgair »

IKantRead wrote: post #74

> AI is (still) eating the world. Citation needed. I work in this space so am fairly optimistic, but it's worth pointing out we're still mostly talking about AI hype. Nothing has really been eaten at all yet from what I've seen. The article claims that there are tons of startups in this space, which is true, but that doesn't mean any of these startups have actually solved any major problems yet. As a reminder, we sti…

Consumer of LLMs for a F500 here.

We know it's all hype (We do the same to our customers too, by the by).

The LLMs still give us huge savings and (hopefully soon) some advantages in the marketplace. 15x time savings seems common. Our copy-editing teams are maaaaaybe going to be able to be on track for like the first time ever. Our customer support teams, in test cases, really love the LLMs and their concerns are being worked on (no, actually, really this time!). Field people are also really liking them for rubber ducky exercises. Customers and stock holders are demanding that we have some sort of LLM to interact with.

For such a new tech, I've seen pretty widespread adoption inside the company at honestly record rates. We had issues where our IT banned most of the LLMs internally but there were too many people just grabbing a personal computer/mobile to use them anyways. I want to repeat this: People were going around IT to get more work done. Not playing games, not watching Netflix. Actual real honest work.

I've never even heard of something like that in many years of working in corporate America. All for tens of dollars a month per seat.

Keep doing what you're doing with these things. We can't get enough of them.

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