For me its 2 things. Firstly, I mean the posts are always a fun read but it feels like just that, not much deeper insight. Secondly, its very self promotion-y. This account is almost exclusively posting / interacting with Andon content, which afaik is against HN guidelines. These two in combination makes the content feel more like marketing than contribution to discussions. I feel like some other companies manage to share interesting work and market. But maybe its just my taste :^)
Hey! Yes, part of it is obviosuly that we get publicity, but part of it is also that HN comments are, from my experience, the most useful sources of feedback.
How are you adjusting for the general feedback people are giving of "this is proving to be an unpopular idea and people hate the fundamental premise of it"?
I think they get a lot of hate because they are doing something that a lot of people here don't like -- trying to run entire businesses without humans.
I think that's part of it, but not necessarily the whole story. I haven't criticized them in the thread yet... so here goes.
Previously, I posted critically not because they were running businesses without humans, but because their post just described going through the motions without actually discussing if it really was effective or not. Sure the AI got through the day, checked off tasks on the list, but did it actually do that effectively or efficiently in any important way? Who knows... wasn't discussed.
I think where I come down now is that repeats of this same gimmick feel like just that: they're just playing a gimmick for attention. I can't tell that they're really demonstrating any special or significant capability... but man, just the story of trying to run a business without humans will get you that sweet, sweet attention.
Unfortunately, looking at least the first post, I stopped reading their "we let AI run X" posts. I think the only thing I really came away with is how thoughtless and mundane are most aspects of running a small business actually is; something I knew, but it really drove the point home. I didn't learn anything unexpected about AI tools or their products that seemed compelling or unexpected.
This is their third publicity stunt in the past couple of months. It follows the exact same pattern of attention seeking at the expense of the commons.
At this point they seem like a bunch of low empathy jerks. They are gleefully describing their progress in developing yet new frontiers in AI slop. I’m sure they are all very pleased to think that they will be profiting from a future where ai slop is everywhere. I could go on but it’s tedious.
Yes, our experiments get attention, but I wouldn't call them publicity stunts. The point is to give the world more data points of what happens when you put AI out in the world and let democracy do its thing. Soon, a lot more people will do this at large scale because it will be easy. I hope we decide where we want AI in society before that.
Personally, I'm very much pro a pause on large AI training for example. I hope our data could be useful as a grounding in such discussions.
Assuming that this is a good faith response and not merely a bot (and I have very little reason to believe this given your history of spewing AI slop):
I think this is a lot of bullshit. You're either lying to me or you're lying to yourself.
>>Yes, our experiments get attention, but I wouldn't call them publicity stunts.
It sure looks a lot like your startup's publicity stunt. There is nothing wrong with marketing a product that people want.
>>The point is to give the world more data points of what happens when you put AI out in the world and let democracy do its thing.
How generous. I suppose you can justify any poor behavior as raising awareness about the consequences of said behavior. Littering trash to raise awareness of pollution? Even oil companies don't try to pull such a line on pollution. The public opinion on this stuff is pretty decisively negative: the institutions just haven't caught up yet to make fines for it but I don't see any reason to force an acceleration here. (more useful applications of AI will experience a blowback from the more anti-social applications).
>>Soon, a lot more people will do this at large scale because it will be easy. I hope we decide where we want AI in society before that.
We're all looking forward to this future. Other people doing something is not an excuse to do it; especially since they haven't even done it yet. From the look of things you have very clearly made your choice about how you want to use AI in society. I would point out that you're not particularly hard up for cash. You clearly have lots of talent and ability. You could be putting this to a better use. I would be happy to offer you a job. You really don't need to be doing this.
>>Personally, I'm very much pro a pause on large AI training for example. I hope our data could be useful as a grounding in such discussions.
This would be a more convincing line if you weren't actively trying to profit off using AI for the destruction of the commons. Using AI to cure cancer or male pattern baldness gives us something new that we can be excited about. This just gives us something crappier than what we had at someone else's expense. Putting people out of work with AI is going to cause problems. Maybe it's inevitable and maybe it can be good in other ways, but I strongly doubt it is the path to minimize p(doom). If you believe in a pause, then simply stop. Yes you will lose money: ask me how I know. What hope does a Pause have if smart and talented people are all so excited to be blitzing to an undesirable Nash equilibrium? You don't need to do this. You know it's not the right thing to do and that people don't like it. You don't need to run an experiment to know this, but you have now run three with the predictable outcome. There really isn't much excuse left. Please focus your talents and abilities on something better. AI can do some many things that are simply impossible today. We really could achieve new heights but this project really doesn't feel like the dawning of a golden age.
> This is our latest project at Andon Labs, where we’re exploring what happens when AI runs real businesses autonomously.
What did I misunderstand? What they did or why they did it? It seems to me that I understood it perfectly or they've explained it terribly.
> Now, though, we wanted to see if they could run a company in the media sector.
It's amazing how many people think doing one job is "running a company." I've worked in radio. What happens in the studio is 5% of it. The staff in that room certainly gets less than 5% of the revenue.
The most popular formats are news and talk. For a reason. It's almost as if the people at this lab lack a fundamental understanding of how the world around them works. I would solve that immediate problem before I go about imagining ways "AI" can replace anything in any capacity.
Finally, I apologize, I'm just not willing to suspend basic disbelief because "AI" is unaccountably involved.
keep hacking, Andon!