1,855 karma · joined November 28, 2020
1. What problem is the app specifically solving?
2. What do the users of the app stand to gain by using it? (value proposition)
3. What requirements, design and interfaces are necessary to achieve the value demanded by the users?
4. Specific to the usage: a. salary economics are hyper-local. $75k in northern New Jersey is different from $75k in southern NJ. b. lifestyle plays a major role in salary requirements--"survival" is not a well-defined requirement for all people c. UI and visualizations are user-dependent. Your graph might be completely useless to a 21 year old art student. d. you have to talk to lots of people to learn who your real customer is and what they really need.
Good luck and have fun.
Pension funds: - U.S. has over 5,000 independent municipal, state, and corporate pension systems that invest aggressively. - EU pension capital is in national funds.
University Endowments: - U.S. has over 800 active endowments (with 130+ exceeding $1 billion) - EU universities are state funded, with little or no endowment funds
Corporate Financing: - U.S. businesses get > 70% of funding from VC, PE, mutual funds - EU companies favor banks
Family Offices: - U.S. system has created over 10,000 single-family offices that invest aggressively - EU has ~2,000
State investment: - U.S. moves .16% of GDP into small business with no equity ownership -- free market VC takes equity - EU moves < .08% of GDP into small business with full equity ownership.
- detection: just separating signal from background with confidence
- classification: confidently separating different signals in noise (e.g. PCA)
- identification: requires ground truth (perfect example), but still difficult to do with confidence
If the scientists have ground truth, e.g. "this call means [xyz]", then it’s a signal processing problem to do identification.
If there is no ground truth, then AI would have to have a lot of background data on whale activity at different locations including visual and audio content to try to infer (and that's about it) what the vocalization might mean. And this is where science starts to leave the building.
It's kinda' like inventing the Rosetta Stone using AI: probably not going to be very accurate or repeatable.
URL-->user request--> answer & visualization.
No more static menus, buttons, lists, etc.
There's probably some good work out there helping small businesses adapt to this change? If done right, the real-time token use to generate dynamic pages can be minimized.
https://artificialanalysis.ai/
https://www.vellum.ai/llm-leaderboard
Are there any projects out there for doing something similar?
The entire human scientific community has been shown recently on average to be generating "slop" and calling it science.
My bottom line: humans generate a lot of BS--and LLM's are just averaging it and giving it back to us.
https://www.cwu.edu/about/directory/geological-sciences/nico...
Carl Sagan's books "Broca's Brain" and "The Dragons of Eden" from the 70's-80's are good initial reads on brain composition and evolution. The Sapolsky lectures and books are also great resources.
There is no doubt that AI will be helping to run businesses. But, there is also little doubt that existing businesses will have the wherewithal to develop the proprietary tools they need to do this work--without needing to buy it from others.
With respect to scope, it is not an overstatement to say that developing trust in AI tools enough to allow them free reign over critical business workflows may be a bridge too far. Look at self-driving car technology--that last 10% is really, really hard. So adoption will be slow and methodical.
There are no secrets. The basic model for starting and running a business (or a project) is straightforward. I like many of you have developed my own models (using AI assistance) for doing this and have been testing for months. And I like many of you have 30+ years of small business experience to back up my models.
This says nothing about the R&D happening at every major corporate & professional software services company in the world right now using the same AI tools to build their own solutions--let alone the enterprises who would be customers doing exactly the same thing.
So there is an enormous amount of competition and what I am calling a "race condition" between the crowd trying to disrupt professional services with AI-developed software and the crowd already in professional services software e.g. SAP and business in general that is doing the exact same thing--with more capable tools, more staff and much more R&D funding.
For the big companies, it's a race to survive.
Investors in startups have a tough decision to make on these small startups that have so little moat and so little prior knowledge and experience.
As an angel investor myself, I am skeptical of investing in any kind of software right now--and maybe forever.
On the plus side, every freelancer now has the power (and responsibility) to optimize their own offerings.
It's going to be very, very interesting...
From the article:
>I can’t really blame anyone who’s just gone along with things
Whst is this supposed to mean "blame"? Do you "blame" people for driving cars instead of riding horses? Do you "blame" software engineers for eliminating entire industries?
Folks, writing software can be fun and satisfying. Do it for the enjoyment. But suck it up, because the technology wave you rode to a well-paying job was always going to be short-lived for the majority of programmers.
Just like the engineers who built steam engines, or living room radios, or tube TV's, or Internet dial-up modems and long distance phone networks, or whatever other technology that has come and gone: just move on, because you helped to put those people out of work--and they moved on.
You're going to drive yourselves crazy with the constant re-hashing and sobbing over the obvious changes that are happening. Figure out how you go forward and start going forward.
I'll step up to the mic and give my opinion:
There was a time when most jobs were physically demanding in one way or another. Working on a factory production line doesn't allow much opportunity for adding creativity into your work. The answer: avocations.
My dad was a machinist--which can be a very creative job--but he always preached to me the need to have activities (creative or otherwise) outside of work. He played music, built projects in the garage, and played around with drawing and painting at home.
We are likely transitioning away (once again) from a majority of jobs that include opportunities for creativity to a majority of jobs that are just plain "work." So it's a good idea to remember that time outside of work can be the opportunity to be creative.
I can hear the comments already about no time outside of work: family, commute, etc. But remember, if you want something bad enough, you will make time for it.
I'm just as likely to neglect this fact as anyone else: we only get one chance to live. If it’s important, then make time for it.
I yield the floor.
Tierney:
"The Reign of..." https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/04/opinion/sunday/the-reign-...
Kinnaman:
"Is it Time to..." https://www.vox.com/2016/2/13/10972986/recycling
Kinnaman, Thomas C. "Determining the Socially Optimal Recycling Rate." Resources, Conservation and Recycling, vol. 85, 2014, pp. 5–10, doi:10.1016/j.resconrec.2013.11.002.
The most important lessons for students include: realistic expectations, a new vocabulary, and a real-world understanding of the complexities of building a startup.
I've worked at other universities where startups are treated more like sports to get interest and social media attention: competitions, events, socializing, etc. Those are nice things, but they are superficial in my opinion.
My advice for students would be to find opportunities to get in the trenches and experience the challenges and hardships faced by founders--those are the most important lessons.
Automation (software and mass-production equipment) has transformed our world and our lives.
I'm just some guy watching what's happened over the past 50 years. But this trend is only accelerating. There will be many more industries that are "transformed" by technology.