Hacker News Reader

I had a boss not so long ago who kept selling our customers our "Conversational AI Bot". What we gave them was a fairly dumb keyword search of a library of questions the customer would type in along with answers - wrapped in some html widgets displaying cartoon robot heads.

It still astounds me that not only did none of those customers sue us for blatant misrepresentation, but most of them were delighted with what they'd bought.

View on HN

There are a couple of lessons in that anecdote.

Yep. Still learning them...

I had a similar cognitive dissonance when doing "R&D Grant applications" a long time back. I kept on thinking "Research" was the sort of rigorous academic work you do to earn a PhD. In the government/business world, it seems pretty much spending time or money to learn how to do anything not 100% required for your business previously counts. Including things like "selling our widgets, only via the internet" being valid and acceptable thing to get government rebates for "R&D". I still feel dirty everytime I draft one of those grant applications... :shrug:

The government only cares if you're developing something that will make more money, which presumably selling via the internet will.

It doesn't have to change the world, as long as it moves the needle.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com