PaulDavisThe1st 2 days ago

The age old question: do people get what they want, or do they want what they (can) get?

Put differently, is "the market" shaped by the desires of consumers, or by the machinations of producers?

easyThrowaway 2 days ago

> when the market is telling you loud and clear they want X

Does it tho? Articles like [1] or [2] seem to be at odd with this interpretation. If it were any different we wouldn't be talking about the "AI bubble" after all.

[1]https://www.pcmag.com/news/microsoft-exec-asks-why-arent-mor...

[2]https://fortune.com/2025/08/18/mit-report-95-percent-generat...

  • Glemkloksdjf 2 days ago

    He is right though:

    "Jeez there so many cynics! It cracks me up when I hear people call AI underwhelming,”

    ChatGPT can listen to you in real time, understands multiply languages very well and responds in a very natural way. This is breath taking and not on the horizon just a few years ago.

    AI Transcription of Videos is now a really cool and helpful feature in MS Teams.

    Segment Anything literaly leapfroged progress on image segmentation.

    You can generate any image you want in high quality in just a few seconds.

    There are already human beings being shitier in their daily job than a LLM is.

  • simianwords 2 days ago

    1) it was failure of specific implementation

    2) if you had read the paper you wouldn’t use it as an example here.

    Good faith discussion on what the market feels about LLMs would include Gemini, ChatGPT numbers. Overall market cap of these companies. And not cherry picked misunderstood articles.

    • easyThrowaway 2 days ago

      No, I picked those specifically. When Pets.com[1] went down in early 2000 it wasn't neither the idea, nor the tech stack that brought the company down, it was the speculative business dynamics that caused its collapse. The fact we've swapped technology underneath doesn't mean we're not basically falling into ".com Bubble - Remastered HD Edition".

      I bet a few Pets.com exec were also wondering why people weren't impressed with their website.

      [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pets.com

      • simianwords 2 days ago

        Do you actually want to get into the details on how frequently do markers get things right vs get things wrong? It would make the priors a bit more lucid so we can be on the same page.

  • classified 2 days ago

    Exactly. Microsoft for instance got a noticeable backlash for cramming AI everywhere, and their future plans in that direction.

nothrabannosir 2 days ago

[flagged]

  • clickety_clack 2 days ago

    This is a YC forum. That guy is giving pretty honest feedback about a business decision in the context of what the market is looking for. The most unkind thing you can do to a founder is tell them they’re right when you see something they might be wrong about.

    • brazukadev 2 days ago

      Which founder is wrong? Not only the brainwashed here are entrepreneurs

  • simianwords 2 days ago

    What you (and others in this thread) are also doing is a sort of maximalist dismissal of AI itself as if it is everything that is evil and to be on the right side of things, one must fight against AI.

    This might sound a bit ridiculous but this is what I think a lot of people's real positions on AI are.

    • nothrabannosir 2 days ago

      That's definitely not what I am doing, nor implying, and while you're free to think it, please don't put words in my mouth.

    • techpression 2 days ago

      Yet to see anything good come from it, and I’m not talking about machine learning for specific use cases.

      And if we look at the players who are the winners in the AI race, do you see anyone particularly good participating?

      • simianwords 2 days ago

        800 million weekly active users for ChatGPT. My position on things like this is that if enough people use a service, I must defer to their judgement that they benefit from it. To do the contrary would be highly egoistic and suggest that I am somehow more intelligent than all those people and I know more about what they want for themselves.

        I could obviously give you examples where LLMs have concrete usecases but that's besides the larger point.

  • senordevnyc 2 days ago

    Are you going to hire him?

    If not, for the purpose of paying his bills, your giving a shit is irrelevant. That’s what I mean.

    • nothrabannosir 2 days ago

      You mean, when evaluating suppliers, do I push for those who don't use AI?

      Yes.

      I'm not going to be childish and dunk on you for having to update your priors now, but this is exactly the problem with this speaking in aphorisms and glib dismissals. You don't know anyone here, you speak in authoritative tone for others, and redefine what "matters" and what is worthy of conversation as if this is up to you.

      > Don’t write a blog post whining about your morals,

      why on earth not?

      I wrote a blog post about a toilet brush. Can the man write a blog post about his struggle with morality and a changing market?

DonHopkins 2 days ago

Some people maintain that JavaScript is evil too, and make a big deal out of telling everyone they avoid it on moral grounds as often as they can work it into the conversation, as if they were vegans who wanted everyone to know that and respect them for it.

So is it rational for a web design company to take a moral stance that they won't use JavaScript?

Is there a market for that, with enough clients who want their JavaScript-free work?

Are there really enough companies that morally hate JavaScript enough to hire them, at the expense of their web site's usability and functionality, and their own users who aren't as laser focused on performatively not using JavaScript and letting everyone know about it as they are?