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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

#91

Post by gnicholas »

nefitty wrote: post #88
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…

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.

I'm curious to know where you heard about BeeLine a few months ago. We haven't had press in a long time, and most HNers who know about us found out from our Show HN way back in 2013.

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

#93

Post by snaily »

gnicholas wrote: post #77
joewee wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

For corporate VCs, s/LPs/board/

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

#94

Post by brod »

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…

I posted that link in slack and it's twitter:* meta content is really strange:

    Parade of Fans for Houston’s Funeral

    NEWARK - The guest list and parade of limousines with celebrities emerging from them seemed more suited to a red carpet event in Hollywood or New York than than a gritty stretch of Sussex Avenue near the former site of the James M. Baxter Terrace public housing project here.
I found an example [1] with the same content so I guess you just haven't updated it.

1: https://gist.github.com/blairanderson/85cc961295fd03a6c4b3

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

#95

Post by Someone »

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…

If your code has even a single magical constant (I guess it likely has, if only because your code has to figure out whether a period is sentence-ending), you can and, now that it is cheap and easy, probably should use machine learning (a moniker that includes such algorithms as gradient descent) to optimize that constant.

Also, if you ever have considered two code variants where one is a bit better in situation A and the other in situation B, you can use machine learning to combine the two methods, (e.g. using a random forest (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random_forest)

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

#96

Post by payasr »

gnicholas wrote: post #90
payasr wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The coloring is correct, but the chrome extension 'undoes' the equations rendered on the mathjax-enabled pages. In other words, without the beelinereader extension I can see the equations, with it I see only the latex source code. You should be able to check this on any Springer article.

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

#97

Post by manigandham »

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?

Yes, due diligence is rare. This is portfolio theory in action, investing in many losing bets because the 1% will win big and create the returns.

Disqualify the easy "no", then everything else is a "maybe". Invest and move on.

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

#98

Post by sbhn »

You can even make do with plain old client side JavaScript object arrays. After looking at your site, I can see your company has very good presentation skills. It very effectively appears to sell a simple algorithm that nearly anybody on earth with a little bit of experience, could do themselves. What the investor wants, is can you sell AI/ML as successfully as some text coloured blue, white and red. If this HN post is anything to go by, it certainly generated a lot of interest and maybe I could hire your company to polish my A href link algorithm with some AI/ML gloss

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

#99

Post by wellboy »

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 are very stupid most of the time. They don't understand even how ML works orh blockchain or any new trend.

But their manager told them ML, ML, so they need to invest in ML. This is not a joke.

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

#100

Post by nl »

gnicholas wrote: post #71
parmesan wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wa…

I do ML/NLP, and recently have been doing color related things.

I think you are underestimating how useful NLP could be in your application.

I tried out one of your test cases, and I did find it useful. However, I think that blending colors based on entity recognition along with your line based system could focus attention on important parts.

Have a look at [1] (sorry for the long URL) and imagine the colors blending with yours, so entities were slightly brighter than the rest of the text.

[1] https://explosion.ai/demos/displacy-ent?text=John%20Fitzgera...

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