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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

#81
For the examples mentioned in the article no, you don't need statistical analysis but these are simple cases (which most cases are).

Late orders, biggest orders etc. etc. sure, those are all SQL queries.

However if you want to make statistical predictions or looks for the non obvious, these simple types of queries aren't going to do it. So it's an apples to oranges comparison.

There are a lot of cases where people don't know what they are after. And also lots of cases were orgs don't have a grasp on the simple things, but somehow think more complex things (especially buzzword things) are magically going to solve a lack of organization and insight.

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

#82

Who on earth are these people describing ? I've never heard of anyone hiring expensive Data Scientists, spinning up Spark/H2O clusters, building a data lake, doing a database offload to S3/HDFS all for a "select from orders table where basket size is the biggest" query. AI/ML doesn't even work like this. It's simply not designed for giving 100% accurate answers to highly structured queries.

Maybe they're describing a case where the systems have been well designed so they already have the data they need in a useful format and don't need to do any of that bullshit to make it usable.

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

#83

Write me a SQL query that labels images, produces a transcript from sounds, recognizes handwritten text, does facial recognition or recommends items. See the point? Welcome to 2018.

Most companies don't have anything like that.

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

#84
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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].

Ah! Sorry, forgot to paste the link in. It's here: http://www.maariv.co.il/news/world/Article-633899

Sending a screenshot by e-mail now.

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

#85
post #64

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?

The VCs is this case were probably looking for some tech that had a higher barrier to entry.

Whether it is true or not in this case they may have perceived that if it was based on a ML approach it might be harder for the competition to replicate if it was successful.

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

#86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sent…

Super helpful, thanks!

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

#88

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…

Thank you for your work on Beeline. I've been using it for several months and it definitely helps when diving into large Wikipedia articles, research papers, blog posts, etc. I found that it facilitates my reaching flow quickly when investigating large problems.

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

#89

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…

I have been playing around with the reader, and it doesn't seem to play well with mathjax-enabled pages.. Is it a known issue?

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

#90
post #89

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…

I have been playing around with the reader, and it doesn't seem to play well with mathjax-enabled pages.. Is it a known issue?

Not before now — thanks for flagging! A couple questions: what do you mean by not play well? Does it undercolor (not color the text you want to have colored), overcolor (accidentally color text that should not be colored), or something else? Thanks for sharing this feedback. As another HNer pointed out via email, we need to have a contact/help link in the Settings panel so that we can gather more feedback like this.
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