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I feel the business model of artificial artificial intelligence / fake it until you make it, is a valid business model, unless you obfuscate your progress to investors. If you can either hire an AWS cluster or an army of cheap human contractors for the same money, and your AI-process relies more on common sense over easy calculations, why would you not hire the human contractors? They are basically taking Searle's Room, but instead of a robot, they are filling it with necktops/meatbags. If it works, it works. Why reverse the argument? The room is filled with humans, and not a robot, so it can't be (artificially) intelligent? Even if the humans do nothing more than following a tree-script? I would ask them to write out/sketch out a complete project, from inception, to code delivery, which steps require humans and which steps already have automation. They should already have this. If suspect, walk through it in person. Remember, the AI hype is a market for suckers. VC's who lose their mind over the AI hype, while they were level-headed when dealing with traditional software companies, deserve this. From what it sounds like, it is a traditional IT outsourcing (sweatshop) company, with more focus on automation and structuring the process. If they can unify software building blocks (pagination, REST api's, user profiles, ...) and better match experts with glueing these building blocks together, they can be very efficient and low-margin. Forward-thinking: In 10-20 years, there will be an outsourcing company that is highly reliant on decision and data science. Funding and market fit decides if it is this AI startup or another. |
> With respect to communication, the goal is to make information easy to find and publish. ... When enough narrowly intelligent experts are added to the network, you should not care (or may prefer) that your conversation be with machines rather than humans.
http://mattmahoney.net/agi2.html