Ask HN: How much should you worry about patents when developing a product?

If you're developing a product which uses advanced technology (developed by yourself), how much should you be worried that a part of what you are developing could already be patented by somebody else?

I'm not at all an expert regarding patents and my understanding is that they only apply in very specific/constrained situations, making an overlap with any other situation really unlikely. However, a search for keywords related to what I'm creating results in hundreds of patents with vaguely similar concepts and/or technologies.

The product that I'm developing is indeed based on somewhat advanced and technical AI and NLP stuff, but 90% of it is already described in publicly accessible scientific research articles. All things considered, I'm pretty sure that we're on the safe side here, but my cofounder expressed some concerns about this so I would like to make sure what the best course of action is, also considering that going through hundred of patents is a huge time sink not really a feasible task for a small startup with no revenue.