[HN Gopher] Why YC went to DC
___________________________________________________________________
Why YC went to DC
Author : todsacerdoti
Score : 122 points
Date : 2024-06-03 17:00 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ycombinator.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ycombinator.com)
| 7e wrote:
| Rich person goes to Washington to advocate for policies to make
| them richer. Meanwhile the exploited founders of YC slave away in
| the sweatshop, almost all on companies which were doomed to fail
| from the beginning. Classy.
| hn8305823 wrote:
| If you are going to play the founders game (get rich slow, then
| all of a sudden), then you should not be surprised by the slow
| and painful part.
| tptacek wrote:
| No, you cannot craft an exploitation narrative out of _tech
| startup founders_. We have to draw the line somewhere. Say
| their directors of engineering and customer success are
| suffering under the lash of founders and investors, fine, but
| not one level of seniority higher than that.
| datadrivenangel wrote:
| Same reason we all do: lobbying.
| AlexErrant wrote:
| > Open source AI models allow for greater transparency,
| collaboration, and innovation by making the underlying code
| publicly accessible and modifiable.
|
| I feel like open models do virtually _nothing_ for transparency,
| collaboration, or innovation, and are only modifiable in that
| they can be fine-tuned. It 's "open source" training processes
| and data that will lead to "transparency, collaboration, and
| innovation", and I'm unaware of any large company that does this.
|
| Am I wrong?
| dbish wrote:
| Correct. Worse is that there are models being touted as "open
| source" that don't allow for a bunch of different uses and
| specify their own custom licensing (look at what Falcon
| originally had, Meta's models with specific commercial
| carveouts, etc.), we need an rms of the new age to call these
| fake OSS approaches out as they feel more like they are being
| done to get the OSS marketing shine, without actually being
| free and open.
|
| Your "source" is not open nor is it transparent if training
| code, original dataset, model architecture details, and
| training methodology are not all there.
| Xunjin wrote:
| As someone layman in that field I do agree with you, would love
| inputs from specialists in the area.
| lolinder wrote:
| You're correct if you're focused exclusively on the work
| surrounding building foundation models to begin with. But if
| you take a broader view, having open models that we can legally
| fine tune and hack with locally has created a large and ever-
| growing community of builders and innovators that could not
| exist without these open models. Just take a look at projects
| like InvokeAI [0] in the image space or especially llama.cpp
| [1] in the text generation space. These projects are large,
| have lots of contributors, move very fast, and drive a lot of
| innovation and collaboration in _applying_ AI to various
| domains in a way that simply wouldn 't be possible without the
| open models.
|
| [0] https://github.com/invoke-ai/InvokeAI
|
| [1] https://github.com/ggerganov/llama.cpp
| no_wizard wrote:
| Taking the broader view of this nature feels like an attempt
| to change the narrative.
|
| The entire point of having transparency is around building
| those foundations so they don't inherit the biases of humans,
| for starters. Right now, we have zero introspection into this
| and no ability to improve upon it with the widely deployed
| models being used today, and that has already created
| problematic situations, let alone situations that are
| problematic and not known yet.
|
| Transparency around this is a very good thing to prevent AI
| from inheriting negative human ideas and biases, and broadens
| access to improve training data that benefits everyone
| lolinder wrote:
| I'm a big believer in not allowing the pursuit of
| perfection to cause us to lose sight of the good things
| that we have.
|
| Yes, these open models could stand to be more open and I
| hope that we'll see that in the future. But at the same
| time I'm extremely grateful to the companies who have
| released their weights under reasonable terms. Them doing
| so has undeniably led to an enormous amount of innovation
| and collaboration that would not have been possible without
| the weights.
|
| If we constantly downplay and disparage the real efforts
| that companies make to release IP to the world because they
| don't go as far as we'd like, we're setting ourselves up
| for a world where companies don't release anything at all.
| no_wizard wrote:
| >Yes, these open models could stand to be more open and I
| hope that we'll see that in the future
|
| The most operative word here is _hope_. Which means we
| may not see more get open sourced over time. Especially,
| if there is no _pressure_ for companies to do so.
|
| >If we constantly downplay and disparage the real efforts
| that companies make to release IP to the world because
| they don't go as far as we'd like, we're setting
| ourselves up for a world where companies don't release
| anything at all.
|
| I don't mean anything as disparagement or downplay, but
| companies aren't releasing this stuff because it makes
| everyone feel good. Its a tactic. They're only open
| sourcing something because they expect to get _something_
| out of it. That 's fine, I'm all for that. That's a valid
| reason, and often it can be a 2 way street.
|
| What it isn't though, is an attempt at any company saying
| "we are open sourcing this today because we want to
| encourage more transparency and auditability as AI takes
| on more critical roles in society, to ensure in the
| domains its being applied, to the best of our ability and
| the ability of our community, that it does not inherit
| negative human biases"
| lolinder wrote:
| > companies aren't releasing this stuff because it makes
| everyone feel good. Its a tactic.
|
| It's a tactic, but one of the primary reasons to expect
| it to be effective is building goodwill in the community.
| If the goodwill dries up then most of the reason to open
| anything up is gone.
| throwup238 wrote:
| I think they're parallel concerns and everyone has their
| own priorities. Openness of the models and their training
| is important but for most people, it wouldn't really matter
| anyway because they can't afford the computing power to do
| their own training.
|
| I care about all that in the abstract but what I can
| download and use on my computer is more concrete and
| immediate.
| reaperman wrote:
| Closest to this would be https://www.eleuther.ai whose training
| data is largely public and training processes are openly
| discussed, planned, and evaluated on their Discord server. Much
| of their training dataset is available at https://the-eye.eu
| (their onion link is considered "primary", however, due to
| copyright concerns)
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| Is our dataset still available? I thought it was taken
| offline.
|
| Where do you go under that link to get it?
|
| E.g. https://the-eye.eu/public/AI/pile/readme.txt says it's
| gone (and "old news"? I disagree).
| wongarsu wrote:
| There are still plenty of reliably sources for magnet links
| to The Pile, e.g. [1]. The DMCA takedowns are just a minor
| inconvenience.
|
| 1: https://web.archive.org/web/20230820001113/https://acade
| mict...
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| Thank you. How'd you dig this one up?
| wongarsu wrote:
| [1] is the first result if I google "the pile torrent".
| It doesn't link to the torrent because of a DMCA notice,
| so I just used the wayback machine to retrieve a version
| from before the date of that notice. Don't tell the
| publisher.
|
| 1: https://academictorrents.com/details/0d366035664fdf51c
| fbe9f7...
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| Frustratingly, they scan my comments, so hopefully they
| won't bother filing a DMCA for that.
|
| (Seeing "sillysaurusx" appear in print on official court
| documents was pretty amusing out of context, though.)
| robertk wrote:
| Shawn, there is a mildly redacted version available at
| https://huggingface.co/datasets/monology/pile-uncopyrighted
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| Thank you.
| siliconc0w wrote:
| If you need more things to fix:
|
| * Software R&D Amortization - taxes on make-believe profits
|
| * Patent law - protect small businesses from patent trolls
|
| * Automate government-driven compliance standards - enable small
| businesses to sell into large companies/government entities,
| automatic certification when using pre-approved cloud solutions.
|
| * Healthcare insurance - employees of SMBs automatically get
| access to medicare
| superfrank wrote:
| Can you remind me what the issue with software R&D amortization
| (or point me to something that explains it)? I remember reading
| about the issue in the past and thinking it was a problem, but
| I've forgotten all the details.
| romanhn wrote:
| I assume they're referring to Section 174 changes. Here's a
| primer: https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/section-174
| candiddevmike wrote:
| > * Automate government-driven compliance standards - enable
| small businesses to sell into large companies/government
| entities, automatic certification when using pre-approved cloud
| solutions.
|
| I don't see how this will end well. I appreciate the reasoning
| behind it, but this is not a good solution.
|
| I'd prefer to see more "startup friendly" compliance frameworks
| that don't require tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars and
| make both the startup and their customers satisfied with the
| outcome. Something like a SOC2-lite that isn't so onerous but
| still provides a decent snapshot of their current situation
| from a third party's perspective.
| SR2Z wrote:
| Yeah, the only thing worse than the current status quo would
| be giving some SV startups a privileged position as
| gatekeepers for regulatory compliance (the Watershed
| strategy).
| cj wrote:
| This is (kind of) starting to happen. See Vanta ($100m+
| funding), Secureframe ($50m+ funding), etc.
| stackskipton wrote:
| I'd also prefer to see these standards go away. I haven't
| seen any proof they are providing meaningful security at any
| company I've been at and several of them have had massive
| hacks despite being SOC2 on paper. They also eat up InfoSec
| time instead of being productive on meaningful stuff like
| "Hey, are patching everything?"
|
| Most of these compliance just seem like barber licenses. A
| way for existing entities entrench themselves.
| jacobr1 wrote:
| Vanta/Drata and other are starting to build solutions that
| are somewhere in-between checkbox compliance and real
| security. To the extent they integrate with your cloud
| providers and security tools, they can validate you have
| secure settings, active monitoring, and have remediated the
| things that have been flagged in a timely manner. Doesn't
| mean you are secure, but does ensure some baseline
| tablestakes.
| neilv wrote:
| > _To the extent they integrate with your cloud providers
| and security tools,_
|
| What happens when Vanta/Drata are compromised?
|
| A mass-exploit of their customers?
| jacobr1 wrote:
| They are goldmine of enumerated attack surface. But it
| would likely require some kind of secondary exploit of
| the identified vulns. The API connections are generally
| scoped to read-only access of security settings. Though
| it wouldn't surprise me if there was some way to get
| lateral movement from the access these tools have to
| monitor an environment.
| stackskipton wrote:
| At $LastCompany, someone gave them Contributor
| (Create/Read/Update/Delete) access to Azure because it
| was easier than scoping to 5 roles they required. I
| wouldn't be shocked if we were not only ones.
|
| Edit: Their software should really check and refuse to
| work if someone does that but obviously Vanta doesn't
| care. They can begin scanning and billing.
| nurple wrote:
| Here here. The only thing SOC2 has done in my opinion is to
| create a multibillion dollar business that mainly just
| drains resources from companies that may not have them,
| with no guarantees you're actually secure. This usually
| devolves into security theatre where the CISO and
| underlings are putting in tools that drown teams with so
| much noise it's hard to detect the signal.
|
| The people running these programs rarely understand the
| security space well enough to even tell you what a lot of
| the hits even mean, which ramps up disdain and division
| between the groups. This is arguably more detrimental to
| security as the scanners give execs/management a false
| sense of security while the noise makes it incredibly
| difficult to run a holistic security strategy.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| (It's "hear hear," since you want people to hear it.
| Honestly I have no idea whether to say something or not.
| But I'd want to know, so, just in case it's helpful.)
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Try ISO 27001. Everyone says it's more onerous, but for
| startups, it's actually a lighter lift. It is a lot worse for
| big companies than SOC2, but it's a lot easier for startups.
| jrockway wrote:
| Did we even fix Section 174 yet?
| 1auralynn wrote:
| No.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| Of these, the Section 174 debacle (software R&D amortization)
| is arguably the problem that needs to be addressed most
| urgently.
| guyfromfargo wrote:
| Completely agree. I am a bootstrapped SaaS owner and we
| cleared about $1M in revenue, $1,200 in profit, and $90k in
| taxes.
|
| Bootstrapping a tech company in a post Section 174 world
| doesn't even seem feasible. I can't believe this issue isn't
| being taken more seriously.
| nurple wrote:
| Couldn't agree more. In the SMEs that I've been involved
| with, this has had a huge chilling effect on both hiring and
| innovation. I think that the change is a primary contributing
| factor to the layoffs and offshoring that have seized the
| market ever since.
|
| I'm not convinced that this wasn't the intent of the change
| in the first place.
| hosh wrote:
| It's kinda nuts how little this is taken seriously on HN.
|
| When combined with:
|
| - Pressure to make use of office spaces again, away from
| remote work
|
| - The AI bubble
|
| - The layoffs that started before section 174 that
| demonstrated how headcounts had inflated
|
| - The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank last year
|
| ... it is not looking good for software engineers in the US.
| downrightmike wrote:
| Healthcare insurance - employees of SMBs automatically get
| access to medicare
|
| This puts you in the same company of abusing the system as
| Walmart, the nation's biggest welfare queen.
|
| Employers should just have to give health benefits. You want
| workers, you pay benefits. Period. Maybe then you all will get
| on board for a single payer system. Its what you want, but only
| in fits and starts. quit fucking around already.
| stetrain wrote:
| I really don't want my at-will employment status to be the
| arbiter of whether an unforeseen health issue will bankrupt
| me. Tying either private insurance or public insurance
| eligibility to your employer seems like a bad pattern we
| should be trying to get away from.
| readyman wrote:
| Good luck convincing employers of that.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| Indeed, that's why we need the government to step in.
| nurple wrote:
| It's a bad pattern for the employee, but a good pattern for
| employers and the healthcare industrial complex. The
| possibility that you could be bankrupt if you let your
| insurance lapse is an enormous concern for employees that
| may want to leave but can't; much more powerful, and
| cheaper, than golden handcuffs.
|
| COBRA is a joke, as if most could afford multi-thousand
| dollar a month bill when unemployed.
|
| What that communicates to me is that those in power, both
| of the gov and of businesses, are primarily concerned with
| forcing productivity to make line go up than they are with
| incentivizing treating people humanely. But really I don't
| think that's so surprising considering the timeline we find
| ourselves in.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| IME, COBRA is almost always a better deal than the
| marketplace offerings typically, unless you qualify for
| marketplace-only subsidies. COBRA premiums for whatever
| reason are hundreds of dollars (or more) cheaper than
| marketplace plans.
| dheera wrote:
| Not only that, but very often health issues are the cause,
| not result of, bad employment performance.
| luma wrote:
| Why should healthcare be tied to employment?
|
| "Quit fucking around" and institute a national, single-payer
| plan that covers everyone, like every other modern
| industrialized country.
| bumby wrote:
| > _" Quit fucking around" and institute a national, single-
| payer plan that covers everyone, like every other modern
| industrialized country._
|
| Except we're not starting from a blank slate. So short of
| heavy-handed, dictatorial decisions how would you propose
| to get to a single-payer plan that covers everyone? You'll
| have to work with the existing hospital infrastructure,
| insurance companies, and citizens who don't want a single-
| payer system. They all get a say, too. People who act like
| its a straightforward solution don't really understand the
| problem. But to avoid sounding overly cynical, I'll throw
| out a couple of recommendations.
|
| 1) Expand the VA system to cover all vets, regardless of
| whether it's a service-connected health issue or not,
| without insurance. This is politically possibly the easiest
| step because its hard for a politician to stand up and say
| they aren't an advocate for better care for the troops.
| However, the VA is entwined with medical schools and you'd
| have ensure you expand the funding proportionately to avoid
| pissing off that constituency.
|
| 2) Gradually ratchet down the age for medicare, over
| decades.
|
| (I'd also argue you'd have to get money out of politics
| first for any really change to have a chance)
| luma wrote:
| 3) Medicare for all, starting today.
|
| Stroke of a pen I just fixed everything.
|
| > existing hospital infrastructure
|
| Hospitals already deal with medicare.
|
| > insurance companies
|
| Oh no the vultures in the system will go hungry whatever
| shall we do
|
| > citizens who don't want a single-payer system
|
| Buy premium insurance above and beyond the public option,
| same as every other modern industrialized country. If you
| don't like the offering for free, the market can cover
| whatever gap exists.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| Remove employer healthcare plans and allow everyone to
| enroll in Medicare or private insurance directly.
| bko wrote:
| What if someone doesn't offer enough to his employer to
| justify the healthcare coverage? They should just not be able
| to work legally?
| jaypeg25 wrote:
| Amortization (174) probably isn't getting fixed this year.
| reducesuffering wrote:
| > to disastrous effects, in the form of social media harms
|
| > There are many reasons to be optimistic about AI
|
| Without a modicum of awareness.
|
| Paul G [0] and Sam Altman both have recognized the potential
| dangers.[1]
|
| [0] https://x.com/paulg/status/1651613807779667968
|
| [1] https://blog.samaltman.com/machine-intelligence-part-1
| alexfromapex wrote:
| It was funny how the closing statement was admiring rugged
| individualism too when that philosophy is encouraging a lot of
| the damaging effects similar to how social media has been
| harming the world.
| simonw wrote:
| This new essay by Jack Clark, who was at OpenAI when they made
| the decision not to release GPT-2 for safety reasons five years
| ago, feels relevant: https://importai.substack.com/p/import-
| ai-375-gpt-2-five-yea...
|
| > [...] history shows that once we assign power to governments,
| they're loathe to subsequently give that power back to the
| people. Policy is a ratchet and things tend to accrete over time.
| That means whatever power we assign governments today represents
| the floor of their power in the future - so we should be
| extremely cautious in assigning them power because I guarantee we
| will not be able to take it back.
| ralegh wrote:
| Well said, also applies to many human dynamics - friendships,
| relationships, work relationships, etc. Ceding power is a
| ratchet and you either put your foot down to start with or it
| grinds away.
| redserk wrote:
| Hard disagree.
|
| Healthy relationships include negotiating when potential
| boundaries are in question, or if things change that require
| re-aligning boundaries.
|
| It's reasonable to give more to the other party from time-to-
| time, and reasonable to discuss with the other party if it
| becomes a point where it feels unfair.
|
| Instead we (Americans) take an unnecessarily adversarial
| stance against what our government could do, ensuring it is
| perpetually unprepared.
| LeafItAlone wrote:
| > Healthy relationships
|
| In reality, the vast majority of relationships aren't
| actually healthy in this way. Most people get that only
| from their parent and family, if that. So parent's advice
| is important.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > the vast majority of relationships aren't actually
| healthy in this way
|
| The vast majority? I'd love to see data backing that
| claim up.
| ralegh wrote:
| I love to give more. That's what life's about. But it
| should be done freely and without expectation. What I'm
| talking about is taking - do this or I'll be annoyed. It's
| overt vs covert contracts. I ask you to do X because it
| would be helpful/make me happy. Versus I ask you to do X
| because it's helpful and also I want to feel in control of
| you, and maybe you'll be more willing to do Y later.
|
| I don't agree with the last comment, maybe I am a cynic.
| no_wizard wrote:
| I don't disagree with this assessment but it's also a narrow
| view[0] that allows the problem to persist in the first place.
|
| Rather, I'd like to see what positive oversight would look
| like, but that has _not_ been put forth by any of these
| organizations thus far. It all comes down to "trust us" which
| is also hard to stomach
|
| [0]: most often but not exclusively held by Americans (of which
| i am one). We collectively fail to imagine government being a
| positive force and what that would look like.
| vundercind wrote:
| This is a relatively new and carefully cultivated state of
| things.
|
| I mean, the early phases of this era are a half-century old
| at this point, but it's not like it's a law of nature that at
| least half the population of the US and about half the
| politicians must regard government as rarely-useful. It
| didn't used to be that way. It's not an _American_ trait in
| some holistic historical sense.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| perhaps our government has become less competent? Having
| worked in the federal government briefly (and growing up in
| a place with lots of feds), it makes perfect sense that our
| government is generally incompetent/low-capacity.
|
| In the wake of the civil rights movement, lots of
| government civil service exams became presumptively
| illegal. The pay bands are also pretty trash.
|
| If we wanted a competent government, we should have far
| fewer people paid a lot more and hired in a more
| aggressively merit-based process. Our current government is
| from an era without computerization where you needed lots
| of grunts to process things like SS claims, etc. That is
| simply not this era.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| > _If we wanted a competent government, we should have
| far fewer people paid a lot more and hired in a more
| aggressively merit-based process. Our current government
| is from an era without computerization where you needed
| lots of grunts to process things like SS claims, etc.
| That is simply not this era._
|
| This.
|
| IMHO, the military's regular reassignment also solves a
| lot of bureaucracy-at-scale problems (even if it creates
| different ones around competency and long-duration
| projects).
|
| Preventing people from becoming entrenched in a single
| role/office is important to ensuring a healthy overall
| system and providing space for new ideas.
| bumby wrote:
| What makes you believe the military is immune to
| "bureaucracy-at-scale" problems? From my vantage point,
| it may have both large bureaucratic issues and massive
| churn. (And it's not immediately clear to me that the
| former isn't partially a result of the latter.)
| whimsicalism wrote:
| The military has lots of waste and graft, but it is also
| not terrible at hiring very competent/smart people
| through their commission system (unlike a lot of the rest
| of government). I am skeptical that churn is a cause of
| problems, almost everywhere I have worked in government
| has by far the opposite problem.
|
| The smartest people I've met either have plum book
| positions, military officers, or work as prosecutors.
| bumby wrote:
| (by plum brook, do you mean NASA? If so, I've met some
| smart people from there and other NASA posts, but also
| met some of the worst employees that epitomize some of
| what the discussion is against - very toxic, against any
| new ideas, refusing to retire, shirking duties etc. at
| one point one org had an average age of 59+, that's very
| indicative of a refusal to move on).
|
| > _it is also not terrible at hiring very competent
| /smart people through their commission system_
|
| I suspect you would get a very different perspective if
| you talked to enlisted servicemembers (or subordinate
| officers). I would argue the commissioning system is
| better than the previous aristocratic commissioning
| system, but still relatively poor at mating skills to
| positions.
|
| I think churn is a couple of problems for a couple of
| different potential reasons:
|
| 1) constantly moving positions tends to leave the more
| complicated problems unsolved. For one, it's difficult to
| truly understand the dynamics of a complicated system in
| a short period. Secondly, if someone is concerned with
| promotion, attacking small problems tends to get you a
| win during your tenure, while it's unlikely you'll make
| much headway on a really difficult or complicated
| problem. Even worse is the commander who has all kinds of
| great ideas they want implemented even before they really
| understand the problem (ie the 'good idea fairy' dilemma)
|
| 2) military churn can bias toward giving people
| responsibility beyond their capability, simply because
| they need someone to fill that role. This is especially
| with younger organizations (and the military definitely
| biases young). Meaning you tend to people with a lot of
| power/responsibility before their frontal lobe is even
| fully developed.
|
| Now I do think the military does a pretty good job at
| accountability, which can mitigate some of those factors.
| But if that's the case, we should be trying to optimize
| for "accountability" and not "churn".
|
| The better military organizations seem to have "churn" in
| the uniformed services in charge but a steady cadre of
| professional civilian staff supporting them.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| The mandatory rotating post system is an effective
| redress to the "in this job until I die" problem and the
| ills it creates.
|
| That's not to say there aren't other ills, but that's a
| pretty major one of large bureaucracies and causes
| serious effectiveness issues downstream.
| bumby wrote:
| I don't disagree that it solves the "in this job until I
| die". But as you allude to, it creates its own issues and
| it's not clear to me if, on balance, its better. Churn
| can also create an ineffective (or superficially
| effective) organization because the hardest problems
| can't really be solved in a short tenure. (If it could
| the Executive Branch would be considered highly effective
| because it has churn every 4-8 years).
| ethbr1 wrote:
| The USAF would certainly agree with you! ;)
|
| On the whole, I think it's still a net positive. The drag
| of unmotivated, apathetic, and/or inflexible employees is
| incredibly high, and then there's the additional
| efficiency drag of the systems that must put in place to
| ensure they meet minimum performance (i.e. filling out
| make-work forms to track performance).
|
| Better to simply create a system by which they're weeded
| out.
|
| Which I guess dovetails with the military "up or out"
| process.
|
| From a giant organization perspective, there's a lot to
| admire in militaries. They're the worst systems, except
| for all the other ways organizations as large as them
| could be organized...
| bumby wrote:
| > _Better to simply create a system by which they 're
| weeded out._
|
| I agree with this. It's really just another way to say
| there should be mechanisms to hold people accountable.
|
| > _Which I guess dovetails with the military "up or out"
| process._
|
| I don't think the military does a great job of this. From
| what I could see, it only forces out the absolute absymal
| performers (e.g., those who can't pass a PFT or have
| multiple DUIs etc.) I would argue it takes far too long
| (often only implemented once they've been in a decade or
| more and haven't made SNCO). This does a disservice to
| both the organization (the person is still around for a
| decade) and also the service member (they have now
| dedicated over a decade to a career that is a dead end,
| and usually over halfway to retirement).
| vundercind wrote:
| The rotating post thing is mostly to avoid empire-
| building and disrupt personal loyalty to leadership,
| because standing armies are incredibly dangerous things
| to keep around and that reduces the risk.
|
| It has side-benefits particular to the military mostly
| related to how adaptable the organization is when lots of
| its members are being killed and disabled at a high rate.
|
| I don't think you'd find a lot of takers for a rotating-
| post offer in the broader public sector, without far
| higher wages. I think most of the folks willing to do
| that for low wages are already in the military or the
| foreign service.
| martin293 wrote:
| Why did they decide not to release GPT-2? I haven't heard about
| it.
| yqx wrote:
| I'm curious what history Jack Clark is referring to here.
|
| If I think of the last thirty years of policy in most of Europe
| and the US I'm thinking of a strong trend of deregulation and
| giving more powers to markets, removing international trade
| barriers and so on.
|
| That seems to be a dynamic opposite to the one the quoted
| article is suggesting.
| rurp wrote:
| Right, and many of those deregulation moves turned out poorly
| in hindsight. Governments have ratcheted up control in some
| cases, but stating that it is a universal law is patently
| false, although it sounds good as a quip.
|
| Regulations are kind of like security practices. When done
| well they are often taken for granted, but poor ones get a
| lot of negative attention. I'm glad that I don't have to
| wonder if the cereal I buy at a store is filled with rat
| poison. I'm fine if the government never relinquishes the
| power to oversee that.
|
| Unfortunately the current leaders in the latest AI craze have
| not inspired much confidence that they will act responsibly
| in the future. Maybe if different people were running these
| companies it would make sense for the government to keep out
| of it, but in this world we're going to need some reasonable
| regulation.
| nurple wrote:
| Deregulation is not returning power to the people, it's
| bestowing carte blanche privatization of profits to corpos,
| in the wake of near complete regulatory capture, while they
| dump the negative externalities on the public.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| You know the other thing that is a ratchet?
|
| Experience.
|
| It is true that sometimes you learn something at time T2 that
| invalidates something you learned at time T1 (T2 > T1), and
| thus you do need a de-ratcheting system of some sort.
|
| But what actually drives the ratchet is experience with current
| policy (or lack thereof). "Oh, we had no plans to deal with X,
| and we got screwed, so lets add policy for X".
|
| The ratcheting aspect of policy reflects the ratcheting aspect
| of societal experience accumulation.
| mrb wrote:
| _" This year, we'll fund more than 500 companies out of 50,000
| applications, and almost all of them are related to AI in some
| way."_
|
| So, what this means: that in 2024, if you want to get VC capital,
| your startup _must_ be related to AI.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| It's like VR in 2018. I'd love to see a Silicon Valley season
| for the current tech environment.
| jrockway wrote:
| I think 2018 was the year of FinTech, which translates mostly
| to "altcoins".
|
| I was looking for a job in the summer of 2018 and that's what
| all the ads were for. Ended up working for an ISP though,
| which was nice.
| pram wrote:
| Haven't seen any "Web 3" shills for a long time, gone right
| out of style it has!
| jrockway wrote:
| Everyone spent the cash they were going to invest into
| startups on NFTs, I guess.
| reducesuffering wrote:
| Didn't stop YC from funding almost 100 of them[0]
| including signal boosting[1] this obvious scam that
| blatantly ripped off another's website and company
| too.[2]
|
| [0] https://www.ycombinator.com/companies?tags=Crypto%20%
| 2F%20We...
|
| [1] https://x.com/ycombinator/status/1517556338750074881?
| lang=en
|
| [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31686140
| rshah_45 wrote:
| Season 9 Erlich: "Oh my god. It's an AI play. That's the
| frothiest space in the Valley right now. Nobody understands
| it but everyone wants in. Any idiot could walk into a fucking
| room, utter the letters A and I, and VCs would hurl bricks of
| cash at them.".
| triyambakam wrote:
| That was well done
| rshah_45 wrote:
| It's literally a quote from season 4 with VR replaced
| with AI.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Season 9 Erlich = an actual GenAI Erlich Botman.
| sneak wrote:
| VR won't touch every aspect of society and government and
| corporate operations in five years.
|
| AI will.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| That's like saying computing will.
|
| Yes, but...
| AlexandrB wrote:
| I remember people saying the same about blockchain and, a
| little later, "the metaverse". A prominent, large tech
| company even changed its name to show its commitment to
| this promising technology!
| thisgoesnowhere wrote:
| I mean there is absolutely no reason to think that AI
| (broadly) and blockchain are going to follow similar
| trajectories.
|
| I agree that every company becoming an "AI company" is
| not in the cards. However, I think there is going to be a
| slow ramp where every startup just throws a few annoying
| problems at a LLM instead of hiring ML people.
|
| And kinda like the internet it's just a tool that you use
| when appropriate, but the things where it's appropriate
| will continue to expand.
| mypalmike wrote:
| Sure, but it was fairly obvious to the critical eye that
| neither blockchain nor VR/metaverse were likely to have
| much impact beyond a few niches. Neither solves problems
| many people actually have. And a lot of the tech world
| rightly scoffed at the whole Facebook/Meta
| "transformation".
|
| But machine learning has been used for years behind the
| scenes in things like recommendations and clarification.
| And LLMs specifically, even in their current infancy,
| have shown immediate value in some cases (e.g. coding
| assistants) and obvious potential across a vast number of
| domains.
| fnalelal wrote:
| "Apple Computer CEO Steve Jobs, who got a sneak preview,
| said Kamen's creation was as big a deal as the PC, and that
| it would change the ways cities were designed. Renowned
| Silicon Valley venture capitalist John Doerr said it might
| be "bigger than the Internet" and invested millions in it."
| dylan604 wrote:
| Hasn't this been true for several years now in practice if not
| in writing?
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| Definitely not, there are several other topical areas that
| currently have significant VC appetite.
|
| If anything, the enormous amount of social media attention on
| AI has made it easier to raise VC in other trending areas
| because all of the low-quality "me too" startups have gotten
| pulled into the fashionable AI orbit. This has significantly
| improved the signal-to-noise ratio in these non-AI areas
| because the legions of trend-jumping founders are all doing AI,
| the startups that remain tend to be founded by people with
| substantial investment and expertise in their domain without
| regard for fashion. This is good for VCs and for founders.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > made it easier to raise VC in other trending areas because
| all of the low-quality "me too" startups have gotten pulled
| into the fashionable AI orbit
|
| You are trying to say "adding IA to the pitch won't improve a
| founder's chances", but what you are saying is "granting
| money to founders that didn't add AI to their pitch improves
| a smart VC's chances".
| waprin wrote:
| What's ironic is that Michael Seibel has discussed many times
| on the YC podcast that you should avoid building whatever's hot
| for VCs because their attention tends to change every year but
| you'll be stuck building for a decade.
|
| 2020 was remote work, 2021 was web3, now we have the big LLM
| boom.
|
| Honestly it seems there's a lot of advantages to "riding a
| wave" and a lot of advantages to being contrarian. But if
| raising money is your priority I do think you should ride the
| wave. Being contrarian sounds romantic, but don't expect
| funding from people who disagree with you.
|
| The most charitable thing I'd say about YCs AI focus is it's
| hard to think of a startup idea that couldn't benefit from AI
| in some way.
| serial_dev wrote:
| On the other hand, I can see how basically any product can
| have _some_ useful features backed by AI. I never felt that
| with web3.
| bko wrote:
| I love the constant flex of their tiny acceptance rate. "We
| only accept 1% of applicants. Btw everyone should apply!"
|
| The collective man hours wasted on appe every year for what is
| essentially a lottery is insane.
| xyst wrote:
| Gary is out of touch.
| thisgoesnowhere wrote:
| He's not just out of touch he's actively pushing pretty
| horrific shit like the abolition of the state. He also
| agrees with Balaji about everything and therefore should
| not be trusted.
| xyst wrote:
| yup, just throw the term AI into your deck and the VC fund
| grinders will at least give it a second look.
| eganist wrote:
| I was hopeful YC coming to DC would've meant YC would've been
| tapping into DC's startup scene.
|
| Wishful thinking. Linked is the more common reason (lobbying),
| but I'm looking forward to more institutions recognizing the
| talent we have in the DC region.
| tptacek wrote:
| There's talent in every region, and I think it should be a
| priority to figure out ways to unlock it without re-siting
| companies in SFBA and NYC, but it's worth noting here that YC's
| SFBA-centricity is not an outcome of their belief that there's
| no talent outside SFBA. It's the opposite: they assume they're
| importing that talent to the area.
|
| The YC SFBA thing is about network effects from companies
| working in close proximity, and about the investor market (1)
| believing the same thing and (2) having themselves an even more
| significant network effect that keeps them all in the same
| area.
| stackskipton wrote:
| As someone who was in DC area but isn't any more, talent in DC
| area is not anything to write home about. We have a ton of
| talent on paper because government requires gobs of tech
| workers and prefers they have advanced degrees but since it's
| just boring enterprise work, the spark of innovation is snuffed
| out quickly.
|
| Most of startups in the area are catering to the government.
| There are already VC/PE/Startup accelerators more equipped for
| the unique market.
| benslavin wrote:
| Having lived in the DC area for almost two decades, I don't
| agree. There are absolutely pockets that match your
| description but, if that's all you see I think you might be
| stuck in a bubble. I see so much more. There are cool
| companies that have been and are being built here (I was
| going to list them, but the Washingtonian "DC Tech Titans"
| list has lots of good examples), many not B2G... and people
| who still have 'the spark' (and many more who I think could
| rekindle it).
|
| There's also a hugely educated workforce, many of whom don't
| love their daily grind (hiring opportunity). There's a
| creative community in DC and even more so if you include the
| greater DMV or mid-Atlantic. A ton of compute and
| infrastructure (including us-east-1) is based here, which has
| its own benefits for businesses.
|
| In my opinion, one of the things that would benefit the
| region is a less conservative (read: more risk-tolerant)
| investment community. YC isn't the only way to get that done,
| but I think it would be a helpful catalyst.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| everyone is moving away from us-east, the talent is mostly
| in northern virginia and focused on defense not actual tech
| talent,
|
| i took a brief look at that "Tech Titans" list and frankly
| it is not that impressive, compared to an actual hub like
| SF, NYC, Seattle or even compared to tier 2 hubs like
| Boston or LA.
|
| i mean they're counting "Vox Media" as a tech startup...
| which is very DC, I guess. many of the others also are due
| to regulatory reasons, like Revature or Wirewheel.
|
| i lived in DC for 20 years.
| stackskipton wrote:
| Washingtonian is very pay to play. However, I'll point some
| that appear private like Cvent are in DC area because their
| early customers were trade groups that put on big
| conferences. These trade groups are here because they lobby
| the government. So doesn't appear government focused at
| first but is.
|
| Others may have private sector customers but do huge amount
| of business with government. Appian, looking at you.
|
| Yes, almost all my work in DC area was with companies
| nowhere near the government but it was very difficult and I
| stayed with jobs longer than I wanted. Also, hiring was
| very very difficult. We would churn through tech resumes
| and interviews because either inflated salary due to
| clearance or just people who wanted to push button and get
| paid well for it. It was always very frustrating.
|
| Also, why do people seem to think there is tech hubs around
| big cloud datacenter? When did people start caring about
| being close to their workloads?
| whimsicalism wrote:
| I grew up in DC. Are we pretending like its a tech hotspot now?
| I missed the memo
| benslavin wrote:
| There's still movement in the region. Anzu-Green today
| announced a $100 million fund [1] and two weeks ago Andreessen
| Horowitz announced they're opening a DC office this quarter
| [2].
|
| Both seem to be targeting B2G investments.
|
| [1] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/dc-tech-lobbying-shop-
| raising... [2]
| https://www.bizjournals.com/washington/news/2024/05/22/andre...
| (sorry about the paywall, but it's the original reporting)
| eganist wrote:
| Thanks, this is still awesome to read.
| willsmith72 wrote:
| little tech? i don't buy it. the entire point of YC is growth
| dang wrote:
| Growth starts little.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Save for elephants and blue whales ;-)
| dbish wrote:
| It is interesting that you have current YC head lobbying for
| small and open, while previous lobbies for large and private
| and is a big driver in why the government wants to regulate so
| much already.
|
| Thought experiment, if YC had not allowed for or jump started
| OpenAI would they even have to be lobbying now for openness and
| "little tech" (at least for AI side of things)?
|
| Is this the appropriate saying now
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoist_with_his_own_petard
| zh3 wrote:
| Somewhat with you on this one, I assumed the title was YC
| (being big tech) were upping their lobbying game - it was after
| reading it that I came to your point of view.
| gpsx wrote:
| I am assuming YC will be lobbying on their own interests,
| which, at least for typical VCs is getting some of their small
| companies to go big, rather than promoting success among all
| their companies. They probably won't be lobbying for the
| companies that do not get/take VC funding, which are the less
| capatilized ones that probably need more representation. And,
| their interests with go big or go bust doesn't always align
| with the funded companies' interests, since optimizing for
| their portfolio of many is different from optimizing for the
| founders' portifolio of one.
| kemitchell wrote:
| The line about being _the_ voice of "little tech" rubbed me
| pretty hard the wrong way. Nothing's stopping me or my clients
| from contacting senators, reps, and regulators, joining political
| organizations, or signing open letters. We have our own voices.
| Some of us know enough to use them.
|
| It's hard to tell what, exactly, the position on "open source AI"
| was. It's presented here in glittering generalities. Given the
| many conversations I've had on-theme with not-public-tech-co
| people, I don't think it's fair to say all of "little tech" has
| one view or position, when you really get down to details. I
| rather doubt the whole YC-o-Verse sees it all one way, either,
| given its burgeoning size.
|
| More broadly, I'd expect positioning off as "little tech" to
| flop. Policy players know how to follow the money. They know "Big
| Tech" brings the money that buys startups--they've read about it
| in exec summaries of the committee reports. They're also plenty
| aware that startups get founded by, and recruit from, a lot of
| the same pools of people. They've been lobbied by various policy
| groups speaking for smaller tech companies, often funded by the
| bigger tech companies, for years. If they dig just a little bit,
| they'll see the barriers to entry, and resulting big-co
| dependencies, for small-cos doing AI work.
|
| There's bipartisan support for "going after Big Tech"
| competition-wise. I don't think the pols need a tech-co splinter
| group as reinforcement there. Unless and until IPO becomes the
| main path of successful ascent again--perpetually private isn't
| popular--I don't have great arguments against generalizing
| startups to Big Tech Farm League. There are plenty of gripes up
| from startups against the Great Houses, especially from
| investors. But that's feudalism for you.
|
| Compare, say, DHH's lobbying. 37signals had the Bezos investment,
| but it was an unusual deal, not within the usual system. Speaking
| from a different place.
| Bjorkbat wrote:
| I'm tempted to be cynical about this, especially since me and
| Garry Tan really don't seem to have the same political alignment,
| but I'm honestly pretty glad this happened. The tech community
| (outside of big tech) ought to be more politically active rather
| than complain when senile politicians get behind a law that
| doesn't make sense. I want to say there are about as many
| software developers in the US as there are farmers, and yet the
| latter has enormous political power, while we have virtually
| none. I mean, imagine if we could get the federal government to
| subsidize us in the same way it subsidizes corn farmers.
|
| Don't get me wrong, I kind of fear what laws and legislation a
| tech voting bloc would pass, but I'm also optimistic that we
| could push forward some genuinely progressive legislation as
| well. Maybe we could pass laws that encourage more housing
| development. Perhaps some bureaucratic reforms similar to the
| ones that occurred in Estonia, the kind that result in major cost
| reductions without any loss in quality of service. Universal
| healthcare? Those slightly strange policy ideas we like to talk
| about that are clearly progressive, even "socialist", but are
| also palatable to libertarians?
|
| Mixed feelings about lobby for open source AI, but nonetheless,
| glad it happened. Hope to see more of it.
| doron wrote:
| It's well and good to advocate for change within the industry
| (large and small) but realistically, all of this is missing the
| forest for trees, or equating symptom with the cause.
|
| The only way out of this long term, is to take money out of
| politics, repeal citizens united, revolving doors and other
| methods of lining politicians' pockets.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| >repeal citizens united
|
| So you think it should be illegal to make documentaries
| critical of Hillary Clinton? Because that's what Citizens
| United was about, but most people who are against Citizens
| United don't seem to understand what the case was actually
| about.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| I'm pretty unsure about CU, but the context is the film was
| created by a political action committee to get standing so
| they could challenge election law, it's not like they were a
| bona-fide commercial film-maker (which is why the FEC blocked
| the film in the first place)
| downrightmike wrote:
| You don't even get it.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| It is frankly challenging to reconcile 1st amendment
| protections and a CU repeal. I'm not sure what the solution is,
| but think recent events should show that govt can abuse
| campaign finance law to pick winners and losers in the town
| square.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| > _It is frankly challenging to reconcile 1st amendment
| protections and a CU repeal. I 'm not sure what the solution
| is, [...]_
|
| Reconciliation: Companies aren't human entities.
|
| Non-human entities aren't entitled to 1st amendment
| protections.
|
| Campaign finance is equally simple: run your campaign on
| public funding. Give all candidates who meet a threshold
| equal amounts of money.
|
| I have yet to hear a convincing argument about what benefit a
| democracy receives from campaigns having different amounts of
| funding. That feels like the tail wagging the dog (your
| supporters fund you, so you can spend that money to buy more
| supporters).
| whimsicalism wrote:
| I'm not so convinced about that reconciliation! Most media
| in general is not conducted through individual entities.
|
| Even the small film maker or newspaper is usually going to
| be organized as an LLC, even if it is just a single person
| trying to submit their film to a festival or something.
| These should be subject to governmental regulation if they
| touch on political topics? I think this is significantly
| thornier than you're making it out to be.
|
| > Campaign finance is equally simple: run your campaign on
| public funding. Give all candidates who meet a threshold
| equal amounts of money.
|
| Right, where it gets tricky is with unaffiliated
| individuals and what counts as a campaign expense versus
| speech or normal business.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| That's why they're intrinsically linked.
|
| If you mandate that non-human entities have an 1st
| amendment right, you cannot have meaningful campaign
| finance limits.
|
| Ergo, because it's worth having campaign finance limits,
| in the interest of allowing the best candidate / idea to
| win, I think it's worth threshing through stripping 1st
| amendment rights from non-human entities.
|
| Regarding how one weighs what sort of speech would then
| be allowed and disallowed is a difficult problem, but the
| above needs to happen _before_ it can even be started on.
|
| Now, we have a frankensystem where reality (unlimited
| finance) and policy (limited finance) differ, which is
| never a healthy state.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| my point is that stripping non-human entities of 1st
| amendment is effectively repealing the 1st amendment in
| the US, if it allows the government to regulate
| newspapers/printmakers/movies based on political content.
| so your point is essentially that campaign finance trumps
| 1A, which might be true but i am not so sure
| ethbr1 wrote:
| > _stripping non-human entities of 1st amendment is
| effectively repealing the 1st amendment in the US_
|
| Human individuals would still have a right to speak
| whatever they feel.
|
| And arguably, I'd extend that onto platforms above a
| certain size that can verify human identity (ideally
| anonymized after verification).
|
| IMHO, newspapers/printmakers/movies _do_ need to be
| regulated.
|
| They deserve rights, but those rights should look very
| different than individual 1st amendment right.
|
| Which seems reasonable -- nobody would ever confuse
| Alphabet-the-company with me-the-individual-person in
| terms of capability and capital.
| doron wrote:
| It's an interesting point. Whether non-human entities are
| entitled to 1st amendment rights. Since they have the
| potential longevity that far exceeds humans, and also
| can't be punished in same manner for potential wrongdoing
| (i.e. send an entire company or lobby) to prison.
| Matticus_Rex wrote:
| > Non-human entities aren't entitled to 1st amendment
| protections.
|
| The vast majority of speech that needs to remain protected
| for speech to remain meaningfully free happens through non-
| human entities. Removing that protection is an absolutely
| insane step.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Happens via, but starts with individuals (or should!).
|
| What we have now is the worst of both worlds:
|
| - Individual speech is censored at whim by non-government
| platforms that are unavoidable.
|
| - While giant companies are empowered to speak anything
| they want (speaking as the company).
|
| That doesn't seem ass-backwards?
|
| We should be prioritizing individual speech / power, and
| disempowering corporate speech.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| Says who? Even the aspiring indie filmmaker wants limited
| liability not unlimited liability.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| That's backwards reasoning though.
|
| If limited liability is a concern... we can just create
| that _for individuals_.
|
| I'm not convinced that Meta also needs the right to do
| whatever it wants, for the sake of aspiring indie
| filmmakers.
| ajcp wrote:
| While I agree toward the harm it's done, Citizens United v.
| Federal Election Commission is a Supreme Court ruling; you
| can't "repeal" those. It must either be reversed/overturned by
| the Supreme Court or a constitutional amendment be made by the
| states. Those are both _extremely_ hard and rare.
| probably_wrong wrote:
| Apologies for the negative tone:
|
| > _First, let's prioritize open source models and more tailored
| AI applications to shape the competitive landscape and create
| real opportunities for startups._
|
| How does YC square this statement with the fact that their ex-
| president closed their models with the explicit intention of
| slowing down competitors [1]? Or is the argument "we want
| politicians to discourage people like us from doing what we did"?
|
| [1] https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/15/23640180/openai-
| gpt-4-lau...
| jrockway wrote:
| I mean, they parted ways long ago, and pg released a statement
| recently as to the nature of that breakup. People and
| organizations can change their mind.
| probably_wrong wrote:
| Yes. But AFAIK the official reason for the breakup was "we
| wanted him to pick a lane" and not "we disagreed with his
| defintion of the word 'open'".
|
| I cannot say whether YC changed their mind because I don't
| know what their mind is. Therefore I commented with the hope
| of an official answer.
| avarun wrote:
| Link to said statement?
| probably_wrong wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40521657
| benreesman wrote:
| Late is better than never in my view, and in spite of whatever
| happened in the past I will support the people doing the right
| thing today.
|
| I'm likewise a little wary given some of the history, so maybe
| a little "wait and see" is in order, but this sounds like a
| really positive thing to be doing.
| sneak wrote:
| YC isn't one person and organizations don't have to be
| monolithic or consistent.
| Matticus_Rex wrote:
| "How does YC square this statement about the organization's
| current stances with the fact that someone who doesn't work
| there anymore but who had previously communicated similar
| stances has now apparently changed his mind?"
|
| Why would they need to square anything there? There's nothing
| contradictory about a former exec not matching the current
| values of a company.
| sneak wrote:
| > _We need decisive action to compel more interoperability by the
| largest firms and curb self-preferencing so we restore
| competition and innovation, similar to measures called for in the
| American Innovation and Choice Online Act that Big Tech lobbying
| killed at the eleventh hour in 2021. At the end of the day, we
| need an open and neutral app ecosystem where consumers and
| developers can maintain a direct relationship._
|
| Cure this, and the rest will follow. Two companies gating access
| to the app market is what is destroying competition at its core.
| islewis wrote:
| > First, let's prioritize open source models and more tailored AI
| applications to shape the competitive landscape and create real
| opportunities for startups
|
| My read on this is YC believes that small companies will (are?)
| be locked out of the AI arms race, and are pushing for legal
| action to hold the door open for them.
|
| Pushing disruptive technologies has made YC insane hoards of
| wealth- the fact that they feel like they need government
| intervention for this to continue is scary. It feels like a
| canary in the coal mine in regards to who is in control of AI's
| future.
| zer00eyz wrote:
| > And finally, we need more steps like the FTC's recent move to
| ban all employee noncompetes (no carve outs, no limitations, no
| exceptions).
|
| YOU need to be out there beating the drum for a major exception
| to this. With out laws to ban raiding (and we dont have those on
| the federal level) this is a bad policy. It means that google
| doesn't have to aquire-hire your team, they can just poach all of
| them wholesale.
|
| > Second, we need to prioritize forceful remedies to foster
| competition
|
| If history does show us something its that outside a pure
| monopoly (ATT) these business have a shelf life. Roll the clock
| back 60 years, US Steel had the same market share as apple. ATT
| was a thing (and as a monopoly got smacked). But no one talks
| about GE or IBM or RCA as major players in tech... and they were
| tech giants of their day.
|
| I am all for restrictions on these sorts of enterprises. But the
| bigger major step we can take is taxing them appropriately, not
| letting them all get the pass they have. Shift the tax burden to
| the largest players and you make room at the bottom and solve a
| host of other issues.
|
| As for the rest of these proposals, it sounds like a lot of
| bureaucracy. I feel like we need to revisit our history and re-
| read our Orwell desperately, were literally repeating the
| mistakes of the past.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| I would strongly oppose any governmental attempt to ban
| poaching/cold-calling and would see it as a blatant power grab
| for owners against workers. If you want to retain your team,
| match the offer.
| worik wrote:
| No thanks. (I am not in the USA, I am in a country where on-
| competes must be paid for and short)
|
| Exemptions and carve out will be used for (and politically paid
| for, with the mind bending official bribery system the USA runs
| in politics) by the powerful to consolidate their power. Small
| firms have a lot of power over their employees.
|
| Small firms have to give their employees a reason to work for
| them, money is part of the picture, and small companies have to
| be well capitalised to pay competitive salaries. But small
| companies need to be places people want to work.
|
| Giving employees the power to contract an employee into not
| quitting is a recipe for very bad behaviour.
|
| In my experience the best and the worst employers are small
| firms. We need more of the best and fewer of the worst, laws
| that incentivise being bad do not help
| zer00eyz wrote:
| IF your in the EU:
|
| https://www.squirepattonboggs.com/-/media/files/insights/pub.
| ..
|
| Raiding is something they frown on there. They go so far as
| to call it anticompetitive.
| hanniabu wrote:
| > this is a bad policy. It means that google doesn't have to
| aquire-hire your team, they can just poach all of them
| wholesale.
|
| It's called a free market, pay up
| thefaux wrote:
| Please explain how certain players having more or less
| unlimited capital advantage that allows them to snuff out any
| potential competition leads to more aggregate freedom.
| epicureanideal wrote:
| Sounds like something to be handled by anti-trust, not
| suppressing employee freedom.
| luma wrote:
| How does giving my employer exclusive rights to my future
| work lead to MY freedom?
| dlkf wrote:
| > It means that google doesn't have to aquire-hire your team,
| they can just poach all of them wholesale.
|
| Imagine a skilled worker taking a new job that pays better.
| What a nightmare scenario.
| zer00eyz wrote:
| This isnt about workers.
|
| Let's say tomorrow that you find a better way to do search.
| It's going to crush google, and MS.
|
| You hire a team, smart people the VC's throw money at you.
| Everyone is happy. Your growing and the next darling of tech.
|
| Google comes in and offers to buy you out. You decline cause
| you know that they are blockbuster and your Netflix.
|
| In retaliation google hires all your staff, and sends them to
| the roof to rest and vest.
|
| Thats great for the dozen people who got a great deal from
| google. It's bad for the rest of the world.
| maxsilver wrote:
| >. Google comes in and offers to buy you out. You decline
| cause you know that they are blockbuster and your Netflix.
| In retaliation google hires all your staff, and sends them
| to the roof to rest and vest.
|
| If you know for certain that "they are BlockBuster, you are
| Netflix", then why are you not cutting them a deal to make
| it worth them staying?
|
| This is _absolutely_ about workers -- specifically,
| companies not wanting to pay workers _anything close_ to
| what they are worth.
| zer00eyz wrote:
| From a benefit perspective:
|
| When apple uses its dominant position to tax everyone 30
| percent apple benefits, and the market does not.
|
| When apple uses its dominant position to pay your team 30
| percent more and stifle the free market by driving
| competitors out of business. you benefit, Apple benefits
| more and the market does not.
|
| Is apple being a giant market dominating force a good
| thing or a bad thing? Your getting the high salary does
| not reflect your value, or the market value of your
| skill. It reflects apples desire to put your former
| employer out of business.
| janalsncm wrote:
| And importantly, once your old employer is gone, there's
| no need to pay you inflated salaries anymore.
| janalsncm wrote:
| > why are you not cutting them a deal to make it worth
| them staying?
|
| It's a fair question. Workers absolutely deserve a fair
| cut of the pie in that scenario. Non-competes have been
| pretty ridiculous lately, and companies had to provide
| little to no justification.
|
| But the incentives of workers might not be entirely
| aligned with the "Netflix" or even their coworkers.
| Blockbuster wouldn't hire the whole team unless they had
| to: one or two people who understood the core algorithm
| is enough, and for 10x their old salary it would be hard
| to resist. That leaves the startup and everyone else who
| works there out in the cold.
|
| The second thing is that people aren't rational expected
| value maximizers. You can't pay rent with equity, and a
| startup may not have the cash to compete on salary.
|
| Finally, it's possible that allowing the larger incumbent
| to hire all of a competitor's employees is actually not
| in their best interest. After strangling/eliminating the
| competition, an incumbent has no further need for those
| employees it poached.
| zer00eyz wrote:
| > Finally, it's possible that allowing the larger
| incumbent to hire all of a competitor's employees is
| actually not in their best interest. After
| strangling/eliminating the competition, an incumbent has
| no further need for those employees it poached.
|
| And even if the do, it isnt at the inflated pay rate.
|
| The big incumbent crushed the little guy.
| mjewkes wrote:
| If you are truly netflix-to-be, you should be able to
| affordably incentivize your 12 key employees with equity.
|
| An exit for Employee < 50 at a netflix-to be will be in the
| hundreds of millions.
| janalsncm wrote:
| Sure, if you knew you were getting a $100M exit in 5
| years a rational agent would even agree to a $0 salary. A
| bank would gladly give them a $1 million loan for all of
| their life expenses until then, given the certainty of
| being repaid.
|
| Unfortunately, these things aren't certain and are
| contingent on many things including those that have
| nothing to do with technology.
|
| It's unfortunate because people have a bias towards
| guaranteed present value (cash) over expected future
| value (equity) which gives incumbents a natural
| advantage.
| avmich wrote:
| > In retaliation google hires all your staff, and sends
| them to the roof to rest and vest.
|
| That's the choice of your staff and the reality you have to
| deal with, isn't it? I'm sure you as worker would prefer to
| have such an option.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| >Google comes in and offers to buy you out. You decline
| cause you know that they are blockbuster and your Netflix.
|
| What percentage of the company did you share with your
| workers? What is their upside if you really are a
| blockbuster?
|
| If the workers really had an upside, then they might stick
| with you.
| zarathustreal wrote:
| If a dozen people worked hard enough to gain the knowledge
| that gets them "rest and vest" at Google, they deserve it.
| Monetary reward is the reason we're working at all. It's
| not for the greater good. You're certainly not going to
| convince anyone to give the government power to deny them
| their right to take the money and run
| zer00eyz wrote:
| It's not about the workers. It's not about the market.
|
| Hiring all the staff at an inflated rate to put a
| competitor out of business is good for the staff that got
| hired.
|
| Without competition the dominant player makes more,
| without other places to work dominant player pays less.
|
| > It's not for the greater good.
|
| Your not getting paid because your valuable your getting
| paid out because its anti-competitive. Paying you more to
| bankrupt a competitor is no different than dumping
| product to put them out of business ... Secure your
| market position and then jack up the prices and lower the
| salary.
| zarathustreal wrote:
| You're absolutely getting paid because you're valuable,
| otherwise Google wouldn't need to buy you out to enact
| their anti-competitive behavior. You wouldn't be a threat
| in the first place.
| tcgv wrote:
| An individual's immediate remuneration is not the only
| variable in the discussion. There's a balance of power in
| play, in which smaller companies are on the weaker side when
| large corporations are left unchecked. Sure, in the short
| term, it's always better to get a higher paycheck. But we
| also need to see if this is sustainable in the long run. If
| Big Corps can easily undermine competition progress will be
| impaired, the market will eventually become less diverse,
| leading to fewer jobs and lower salary pressure.
| biftek wrote:
| > It means that google doesn't have to aquire-hire your team,
| they can just poach all of them wholesale.
|
| Doesn't California already ban non competes? The industry has
| seemingly thrived there and I've never heard of it being a
| problem.
| zer00eyz wrote:
| In CA there is also a ban on raiding:
|
| "California law protects employers from raiding by
| competitors. An employee or competitor may not take a large
| proportion of your employees with the intent of driving you
| out of business. You must prove the employee or competitor
| had bad intent. Evidence of intent includes emails, texts,
| and witness testimony about what the bad employee or
| competitor did or said when soliciting your employees."
|
| From: https://www.hg.org/legal-articles/stealing-employees-
| in-cali....
| asoneth wrote:
| I'm curious how you define "raiding"? I could imagine cases
| where a well-capitalized company hires all the members of a
| competitor's team at 2x salary only to fire them six months
| later with the goal of destroying their competition.
|
| But other than that I'm not sure I see a problem. If a company
| "can just poach all of [your team] wholesale" then they were
| probably being under-compensated to begin with and are better
| off at their new company. After all, the primary point of
| banning noncompetes is to protect employees from employers who
| use noncompetes to suppress their wages. The increased
| competition is a nice ancillary benefit, not the primary
| motivation.
| animal_spirits wrote:
| lots of small companies are reliant on the cheap prices big
| tech companies offer. by taxing big companies all that does is
| shift the burden of costs to the small business, making it
| harder for them to grow.
| JohnFen wrote:
| The race to the bottom in terms of pricing is destroying a
| lot of value in many industries and in the longer term is
| harmful to everyone who isn't already a big company.
|
| People and small companies kicking that addiction will be
| painful, yes, but important to everyone having a healthier
| life.
| rurp wrote:
| I'm not sure what I was expecting, but I had a surprisingly
| positive reaction to this piece. It will be hard to avoid, but I
| think that preventing GenAI from turning into yet another tech
| oligopoly is hugely important.
|
| For one, it absolutely will stifle innovation if one or a few
| companies can control the market. Just look at what Google has
| done with their money printing monopoly money over the past
| decade.
|
| Competition will be doubly important if modern AI can fullfill
| much of the current hype. That kind of power in the hands of a
| sophisticated used car salesman like Sam Altman will be bad in so
| many ways.
| xyst wrote:
| > This country is built on the idea of rugged individualism,
| ingenuity, and grit.
|
| > It's also built on the idea of equal opportunity
|
| Anybody else get "out of touch" vibes from this post?
| SOLAR_FIELDS wrote:
| I didn't even get to that point, I got that when Tan referred
| to himself as a representative of "little tech"
| JohnFen wrote:
| Yeah, that was where I got off the PR train, too.
| xyst wrote:
| yea, definitely some narcissism in the post. Very off
| putting.
|
| Have very little confidence this is going to do anything. But
| I really hope I'm wrong and we get it right, this time.
| preinheimer wrote:
| What about prioritizing paying the people who made the content
| these models are using without consent?
| reducesuffering wrote:
| Remember when YC leadership yelled on Twitter about how DC should
| have _more_ regulation and should guarantee FDIC funds _past_
| 250k for wealthy VC 's and startups when their Silicon Valley
| Bank collapsed? This obviously had the effect of entrenching
| large banks, because people now know that big banks are too-big-
| to-fail and have infinite FDIC insurance, while the little guys
| can kick rocks because they're not systemic enough. So they
| effectively lobbied for big financial business.
|
| Now they want to lobby for _less_ regulation of their own
| industry in favor of the _little_ guy? Personally, I 'm a more
| principled libertarian-leaning type than "government for me, free
| market for thee."
| omskrin wrote:
| I wonder if Garry Tan went to scream threats at public servants
| like he does in San Francisco.
| austin-cheney wrote:
| I call bullshit.
|
| YC is not interested in fixing any of these problem despite their
| words and actions. Real solutions are bitter pills to this
| industry, poison pills to investors and venture capitalists.
|
| The two universal solutions that work for every other industry:
|
| * Liability
|
| * Licensing
|
| When I say liability and I mean both personal liability, as in
| suing the developer(s) for harms of the software, as well as
| business liability. When I say licensing I do not mean product
| licensing. I mean human professional licensing. There is an
| astonishing lack of professionalism and ethics in software. None
| of this is fixed with band-aids or wishful thinking. Go directly
| to the problem: the money funnel and the often absurd absence of
| competence.
|
| Yes, this is scary. Get over it. You cannot both be an entitled
| child free from the harms of the world and simultaneously be
| absent from the harms that result. The upside, though, is that
| increased risk and liability, in financial and compensatory
| terms, means fewer people doing the work each owning a fair share
| of the rewards that otherwise just go to investors and not even
| as dividends.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| This article is light on organizational and financial details.
| You don't just go to DC once, have some meetings, and announce
| what has to be done, if you're serious.
|
| You open a permanent office, meet with people on the Hill
| regularly, and spread campaign contributions around liberally. DC
| is crawling with people whose life it is to help you do that.
| Just drive around Chevy Chase and see all the luxury shops
| catering to those people.
|
| Is that slimy and disgusting? You bet it is.
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