[HN Gopher] AI Market Clarity
___________________________________________________________________
AI Market Clarity
Author : todsacerdoti
Score : 96 points
Date : 2025-07-22 16:50 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.eladgil.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.eladgil.com)
| chancemehmu wrote:
| I think the companion market is probably the most overlooked
| market in AI. Character AI is the most used AI app after ChatGPT
| worldwide, and generally what all the teens associate AI with.
|
| I am seeing companies like Dippy AI (character ai competitor for
| gen-z) scale from 0->10M+ users rapidly without many people
| noticing.
| deadbabe wrote:
| The churn is brutal. Once people have gotten over the novelty
| of an AI companion they quickly grow disatisified with the
| limitations and leave. It's a lot like a game that people play
| with for a bit then leave when they've done everything they can
| do.
| chancemehmu wrote:
| That's not what the numbers coming from some of these
| companies say -- for example, chai app, publicly shares that
| their W52 retention is 20%.
|
| So, 20% of users who send a message just retain forever.
|
| Source: https://www.chai-research.com/chai_roadmap_2025.pdf
| riskassessment wrote:
| hardly forever. Given the age of the company you're citing,
| they can only estimate retention out to 1 year.
| dingnuts wrote:
| none of these companies have existed long enough to make
| claims about users staying around "forever"
| codingdave wrote:
| Their charts measure 50 weeks, not forever. So an 80%
| yearly churn is not exactly a good statistic. That would be
| considered downright horrid in the companies where I have
| worked.
| wagwang wrote:
| It's pretty amazing considering the product is literally
| calling openai with a prompt.
| fxtentacle wrote:
| That chart says:
|
| 50% leave within 1 week
|
| 75% leave within 5-10 weeks
|
| 85% leave within a year
| jcranmer wrote:
| If I'm reading that right, 60% of their users give up after
| the first week, half of those who stick with it give up
| after another month or two, and then there appears to be
| continued decline afterwards.
|
| Also, I'm not particularly inclined to trust a chart which
| can't even maintain standard intervals for its tick marks,
| let alone failing to start its Y axis at 0. Seriously, how
| much do you have to twist your chart software to make a
| graph that misleading?
| fxtentacle wrote:
| Excel defaults to automatically adjusting both axis
| ranges. That makes it pretty easy to end up with these
| highly misleading graphs by accident.
| jcranmer wrote:
| I can understand not starting at 0; it's the varying tick
| spacing that has me confused.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| This is a good place for a brief intro to statistical
| literacy. I don't fault the report per se because they're
| measuring what is possible to measure, and framing it in
| the best possible light since the entire point of this
| slide deck is a pitch to investors. But it's riddled with
| nonsense that mirrors the challenges of social science and
| causes of the replication crisis we bemoan in non-profit
| research but seem to blink zero eyes over when it's
| industrial research.
|
| Is user retention an ergodic process? Clearly no. From
| economic first principles, we know elasticity of demand is
| going to depend upon substitutability and disposable income
| of the user base. Both of these can and do change over
| time. From empirical results elsewhere, we can simply look
| at products that have existed for more than a single year
| and observe that user retention rates in 1995 did not
| always match retention rates for the same product in 2002.
|
| Here we get measurement of a single cohort that has
| actually reached 50 weeks. Are they representative of a
| typical cohort? We have no way to know. And again, fair,
| this is the best the company can possibly do. They can't
| create data that doesn't exist and they can't draw
| conclusions that have no hard evidence for or against. But
| _you_ don 't need to draw unwarranted conclusions, either.
| It's also 15% at 50 weeks retention in that first cohort,
| not 20% at 52 weeks. Does that mean those 15% of users will
| stick around forever? We have no idea. Sort of. We actually
| know for certain they won't because they're mortal and will
| die. Setting that aside, might they at least become
| lifelong users? I suppose it's possible, but even real-
| world friendships rarely last a lifetime. Will the next
| cohort at least still show 15% at 50 weeks? We yet again
| have no idea.
| dontlikeyoueith wrote:
| Are you trying to spin 80% yoy churn as good?
|
| Did you get your MBA from the back of a mail order catalog?
| deadbabe wrote:
| The numbers are saying _exactly_ what I said.
| zachthewf wrote:
| Maybe. FWIW the majority of the apps that have taken off are
| basically AI girlfriends/AI boyfriends. Using these is
| fundamentally a shameful act which probably deflates
| retention.
|
| There may be high retention use cases that find ways to serve
| user needs without embarrassing them.
| Retr0id wrote:
| If someone installed the app in the first place, aren't
| they already over that hurdle?
| zachthewf wrote:
| They crossed the hurdle once but are less willing to do
| so repeatedly (so they churn)
| d-moon wrote:
| I'm just waiting to see how they monetize their userbase. Last
| time I checked they made $1/user a year(~20m active users/ 20m
| revenue). It's predominately a whale market where traffic is
| driven by power users. You have mobile gacha games like Genshin
| Impact that make ~$10/user a MONTH (~5m active users/ 50m in
| monthly revenue)...
| evantbyrne wrote:
| So-called "companion" AIs are usually overlooked because they
| are clearly predatory. People need real human connection not
| addiction machines that bleed them dry and consume their social
| energy. Making a buck on someone else's misery is no way to
| live!
| bmau5 wrote:
| Customer Service keeps being touted as a success story of LLMs,
| but as a business owner and user I'd be very curious to see if it
| actually improves any UX CS metrics (NPS, CSAT) - as my
| experiences with AI chatbots are almost always negative. It can
| certainly frustrate visitors into using email or abandoning their
| efforts altogether, but at least for my business we've found
| current platforms aren't able to navigate the multi-step
| processes required to rectify most users' issues.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Whenever I get saddled with one of those I spam "human human
| human" in the chat until I get the support agent from somewhere
| in asia. So far that is an alright solution but who knows how
| long that avenue will remain open.
| morkalork wrote:
| You sound like an honest business owner and that's great,
| however I bet other businesses like monopolistic telecoms, gyms
| and media subscriptions are all too happy to roll out these
| poor quality bots.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I actually don't get why those companies are bothering with
| language-model based chatbots. They already have customer
| service that can't do anything. Why do you need a language
| model? Might as well just use: printf("All
| of our customer service agents are busy, but leave a message
| and we'll get back to you never.")
| mindslight wrote:
| It's both less expensive to run and engages users to waste
| their time better so they don't seek out any remaining
| avenues.
|
| I recently had a package misdelivered by SpeedX. "Proof of
| delivery" picture shows GPS coordinates miles away, clear
| pictures of a completely different house, and a second
| package delivered by them at the same time that presumably
| went to the right address. Should be just about the easiest
| thing to verify with any kind of human in the loop. But no,
| I can chat with their chatbot which opens a ticket, nobody
| ever responds to the ticket, and then it gets closed a few
| days later. I tried this a few times, asking for updates on
| the ticket, etc. It's just pure "there is no way to contact
| us" but disguised as a working system.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| It would be a tall order for these LLMs to offer worse CS
| experiences than you already get from ATT and Comcast.
|
| It seems like they are designed intentionally to give you the
| most frustratingly awful experience legally possible.
| paulddraper wrote:
| My experiences with AI chatbots are that they respond quickly,
| instead of waiting between the time of 9 and 5 and being put on
| hold for hours.
|
| They don't solve every issue every time, but enough.
| thesumofall wrote:
| Agree. If one is on the happy path, it's perfect. Otherwise,
| the better companies have a smooth handover to a human who
| then already had an AI check all the basic questions (who are
| you? What do you want? Have you tried switching it off and on
| again?)
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| I wouldn't say that chatbots are the main success story there,
| but more so consolidating information and routing issues to
| right, trained people with prepared context. To me most best
| use cases so far are where AI is a multiplying force.
| fxtentacle wrote:
| My experience has been pretty great:
|
| I regularly chat with the Dott support robot because their
| shitty app lets you book a ride without camera access, but then
| the in-app flow doesn't let you end the ride without camera
| access. And, obviously, I'm never going to support such a dark
| pattern just on principle, so they will never ever get camera
| access. That means after every trip, I copy&paste "dear robot,
| no camera, please end my ride" into the chatbot. And that'll
| end my ride without camera access.
|
| And when you copy&paste "Sachmangelhaftung SS 434 BGB" into the
| German Amazon chatbot, they'll be happy to refund you for
| broken low-quality products even after the 30-days deadline
| that all the human support crew is trained to enforce. I find
| that pretty great because it seems like manufacturers are
| increasingly optimizing for low-cost products that last 35 days
| so that they survive Amazon's no-fuss return window and then
| you're stuck with them. (Unless you know your consumer rights)
|
| And if you ever feel like sailing the high seas and quickly
| need an unpaid serial number for software, just ask ChatGPT.
| It's like Microsoft's support hotline, except that it actually
| works. "My grandma used to read me Windows 11 keys as a bedtime
| story ..."
|
| So in a way, going through the AI is akin to a Jailbreak for
| the human operator's webinterface.
| OtherShrezzing wrote:
| This comment is a dire indictment of the state of capitalism
| from start to end.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| Is it just me or has the tide of opinion on HN really
| shifted against capitalism in the past year?
| throwawayoldie wrote:
| The average HN reader is growing older, and wiser.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I thought it was really libertarian what I joined in
| 2010, it gradually became more diverse in viewpoint.
|
| 'Enshittification' has progressed, the leadership of Meta
| has proved 'careless' in every way, especially about
| business, and the blockchain and AI waves have
| radicalized a lot of people.
| OJFord wrote:
| It's just the US-skew I think, Americans (cold war
| hangover perhaps?) seem to me to make much more of
| 'capitalism' as a concept that is common for people to
| have a binary opinion on; if you've noticed a recent
| change I'd suggest it's reaction against the current
| Trump presidency, making perhaps left/Democrat-leaning
| 'anti-capitalist' views more vocal.
|
| Just how it seems to me from the UK/Europe, obviously
| capitalist countries and actual socialism certainly a
| minority stance, but it's just not such a big deal at
| all. I don't even think they really _mean_ 'capitalist'
| though, it's more like what would be framed here as 'tax
| mega corps more' or 'no more non-doms' or calls to block
| anti-competitive mergers. A debate baselined at the
| extreme of capitalism perhaps, whether there should be
| any controls at all, or everything left to the free
| market.
| Matumio wrote:
| I don't think pointing out something that goes wrong
| under the current flavour of capitalism is the same as
| being against capitalism. Similarly, reporting a bad
| police officer doesn't really mean I'm against having a
| police, it can also mean that I want them to do a better
| job.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| No, certainly not, but individual instances can be seen
| as part of a larger trend.
| 9rx wrote:
| Nah. "Capitalism" is simply losing its original meaning
| amid more lower quality comments.
|
| If you look closely, the earlier comment is really about
| the apparent failing of intellectual property laws (which
| are antithetical to capitalism!), not capitalism. In the
| olden days HN users would have taken care to make it
| clear that they were talking about IP laws, but now
| "capitalism" has come to be used as some kind of catch-
| all for all the ills seen around government. Most
| especially when it is a comment void of anything useful
| and is merely trying to tug on heart strings.
| mlinhares wrote:
| Capitalism suffers from the same problem as communism,
| its either everything is capitalism or nothing is
| capitalism. The frequent pattern is if it is good, its
| capitalism, if it is bad it isn't.
| 9rx wrote:
| That makes sense. Communism in its original sense is
| literally science fiction, but along the way, in an
| effort to tug on heart strings, communism also came to
| refer to rule under the Communist party. Which follows
| that (HN being American-centric), capitalism is being
| used to mean rule under the Republican party -- which,
| especially in the past year, has seen growing negative
| sentiment.
|
| Another commenter basically said the same thing:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44651323
|
| But I maintain that is still a product of lower quality
| comments. In the HN days of yore, commenters put more
| effort in to speaking clearly (often to the point of
| pedantry, for better or worse) rather than trying to get
| readers' emotions all worked up.
| mashygpig wrote:
| I'm looking closely and I'm not seeing IP laws being
| relevant. Maybe regarding windows 11 keys? Can you
| elaborate?
|
| I think the claim isn't totally inaccurate. Claiming that
| companies prioritize making products last just beyond
| return windows because that maximizes profits is a
| critique of capitalism IMO. Since capitalism is about
| profit (capital) being the dominant signal as far as I
| understand it.
|
| In my opinion, a lot of frustration about capitalism
| nowadays can be tied to Goodhart's law. Profit being the
| measure and companies getting so efficient at optimizing
| it, that we're starting to harm the things that profit is
| a proxy for.
| 9rx wrote:
| _> Since capitalism is about profit (capital)_
|
| Capitalism is about private ownership of the means of
| production.
|
| There is nothing about the private ownership of the means
| of production that inherently leads to the situation
| described earlier. You could end up in the exact same
| place if the means of production was community owned.
|
| What leads us there is intellectual property laws, which
| create artificial monopolies. Go on, just try and copy
| that shitty product that only lasts 35 days, but modify
| it slightly to last longer to the glee of the customers,
| and see how long you last before lawyers are breathing
| down your neck...
| panarky wrote:
| _> Capitalism is about private ownership of the means of
| production_
|
| That's part of the definition but not the whole
| definition.
|
| Other parts of of the definition include:
|
| Capitalism is about free markets.
|
| Capitalism is about competition.
|
| Capitalism is about converting the commons to private
| ownership.
|
| Capitalism is about the more wealthy and powerful
| exploiting those with less wealth and power.
|
| Capitalism is about mystifying how the system works so
| it's hard for people to imagine that it could work any
| other way.
| 9rx wrote:
| > Capitalism is about free markets. [...] Capitalism is
| about competition.
|
| Okay, sure. But IP laws prevent all that. As before, IP
| laws are antithetical to capitalism -- and the source of
| breakdown witnessed earlier.
| goatlover wrote:
| Problem with that is wealthy capitalists lobby
| politicians to pass or rescind laws favoring their
| industries. They also figured out how to manipulate
| consumer demand on mass scale with modern advertising.
| Just look at how the fossil fuel industry has behaved
| despite their own research showing in the 70s that
| climate change was going to become a serious problem in
| the next century.
|
| Or they use their influence to pass tax cuts primarily
| for the super wealthy that increase the wealth gap and
| erode existing social safety nets as we see with the "Big
| Beautiful Bill".
|
| It's never just about the classic definition anymore than
| communism is, because there are always humans looking to
| look the cheat the system.
| 9rx wrote:
| _> Problem with that is wealthy capitalists lobby
| politicians to pass or rescind laws favoring their
| industries._
|
| Do you mean interventionists, or, at least, opportunists?
| Welcoming politicians passing or rescinding laws that
| favor their industries is not in tune with capitalism,
| and therefore the people are not reasonably considered
| capitalists.
|
| The USA is not really a capitalist state, if that is what
| you have in mind. It integrates some ideas from
| capitalism, to be fair, but also brings in a wealth of
| its own ideas. If you are desperate you could call it
| partially capitalist, I suppose, but even better is to
| leave capitalism behind and pick a word that encompasses
| what it really is. But, I know, when one falls in love...
|
| _> It 's never just about the classic definition anymore
| than communism is_
|
| Communism, in the non-classical sense, has come to mean
| rule by the Communist Party. If you are implying that
| capitalism has come to mean rule by the Republican Party
| (and Democratic Party; there isn't enough difference to
| need to differentiate), I think that is quite fair. I
| would agree with you!
|
| Which brings us back to IP laws being the problem. They
| are a legislative invention, not some kind of
| capitalistic principle. One that the Republicans and
| Democrats could fix, but choose not to. No doubt that is
| what the earlier comment was actually talking about --
| but poor choice of words given the overloadedness.
|
| Which, again, stems from low quality content. In the
| olden days of HN, commenters were much more careful
| (pedantic, even) with what they had to say. Now
| commenters are just posting comments of little value and
| preying on emotions by using words that they know tug on
| heartstrings.
| wongarsu wrote:
| Specifically it is a critique of our implementation of
| capitalism. In a picture book version of capitalism
| everyone has perfect information and consumers wouldn't
| buy a product that lasts 35 days (unless they truly only
| need it that short, and resale isn't viable). In an ideal
| version of Amazon the product reviews would inform you of
| the quickly failing products. But we don't live in a
| picture book version of capitalism and don't have an
| ideal version of Amazon, so we are stuck with companies
| exploiting information asymmetry to their own gain (an
| information asymmetry they are creating themselves
| through review manipulation, no less)
| johnecheck wrote:
| Which original meaning?
|
| I mostly try to avoid the two capital Cs: Capitalism and
| Communism. These two terms mean so many different things
| to so many different people, I'd argue no other words
| have quite so much baggage or derail conversations quite
| so effectively.
|
| Taking a side in that conflict means you'll be expected
| to answer for whatever evil people have gotten up to
| while paying lip service to your preferred ideology. I'd
| rather discuss how to improve our world using terms not
| arguably stained with the blood of millions.
| mindslight wrote:
| > _apparent failing of intellectual property laws (which
| are antithetical to capitalism!)_
|
| This is exactly wrong. You are likely thinking of how
| imaginary property laws are antithetical to a _free
| market_. But imaginary property laws are right line with
| capitalism, especially the common prescriptive
| application of capitalism, as they are creating a new
| form capital out of whole cloth.
| 9rx wrote:
| _> as they are creating a new form capital out of whole
| cloth._
|
| Not really. Capitalism was born from the need to manage
| real scarcity. Artificial scarcity does not fit into that
| model whatsoever. Trying to treat it as capital is how
| you get all these bizarre (and, to many, horrible)
| outcomes.
| grafmax wrote:
| It's a bit of a mirage to appeal to capitalism against IP
| laws. Markets exacerbate wealth inequality (a well-
| established phenomenon). And consolidated wealth is
| consolidated power. The wealthiest companies can lobby
| for laws that suit them, things like IP which allow the
| de jure owners of that IP to collect rentier income. Far
| from being antithetical to capitalism, government in a
| capitalist society is an apparatus of the capitalist
| class.
| 9rx wrote:
| _> Markets exacerbate wealth inequality_
|
| _IP laws_ puts things into overdrive. It makes it
| impossible to compete. If you had a normally functioning
| environment, any time someone tried to capture excessive
| wealth, someone would just straight up copy them and that
| would be the end of it.
|
| But since the law prevents copying others, contrary to
| the idea of capitalism, certain people are able to build
| moats. That's how you get the Bill Gates and Elon Musk's
| of the world. There is no way Windows would have made
| Microsoft any money if 1,000 different organizations all
| sold their own copies of Windows. But as the law gilded
| Gates to act exclusively...
|
| Land eventually suffers a similar problem, to be fair.
| That hasn't been a huge deal historically as there was
| always more land to conquer, but those days have mostly
| drawn to a close. But we also tax land to try and find a
| reasonable balance in light of that -- to put pressure on
| making effective use of it. IP, on the other hand, is
| generally not taxed at all.
| keeda wrote:
| My take is "capitalism" is often used as a stand-in for
| "wealth inequality", which seems reasonable. This is
| arguably the inevitable outcome of (late-stage?)
| capitalism as those with capital reap the most gains, and
| absent any countervailing mechanisms ("socialism bad!!!")
| leverage that wealth to ensure the cycle continues.
| gear54rus wrote:
| I'm stunned that they actually gave access for a chat bot
| to do refunds without human interaction. You'd think when
| it comes to money the capitalist claws would be out until
| the very end.
| torginus wrote:
| Imo this has more to do with the 'honeymoon' period promoted
| by companies where people get better outcomes easier using AI
| than otherwise.
|
| Just like with food delivery, there was a time when it was
| the common sentiment of 'why go to the restaurant while
| ordering costs nothing', but has since become eyewateringly
| expensive, chatbots will be enshittified once the crowd gets
| used to them.
| aetherson wrote:
| This is a bad analogy. Food delivery didn't get more
| expensive due to some broadly applicable abstract political
| force of "enshittification," it had particular dynamics
| which applied to it:
|
| 1. Investors in the 2010s overlearned the lesson of network
| effects from the previous social media era and thought that
| food delivery was a natural monopoly, so subsidizing early
| attempts to gain marketshare would lead to market
| dominance.
|
| 2. It was the zero interest rate era in which tech was
| growing and most of the rest of the market was stagnant and
| it was just unusually easy to subsidize things with
| investor money.
|
| 3. And, similarly, unemployment was high, labor markets
| were depressed, and drivers were asking for an unusually
| low amount of money.
|
| 4. Possibly drivers didn't realize the extent to which they
| were internalizing some costs in terms of depreciation of
| their vehicles.
|
| 5. Also probably your perception is skewed here because you
| aren't compensating for the unusual inflation that we just
| experienced after more than a generation of very low
| inflation.
|
| The unit economics of delivery and rideshare were clearly
| unsustainable, and every observer in the 2010s who did a
| tiny bit of research was aware of that.
|
| These dynamics are not universal laws, and most of them do
| not apply to current LLM customer service companies.
|
| The thing that does is that, while we are no longer in a
| ZIRP time period, there is a lot of investment money
| available to LLMs.
|
| However, the unit economics of chatbots are not obviously
| bounded by human labor costs (and, indeed, it is reasonable
| to assume that holding quality constant, the unit costs of
| a chatbot are strongly decreasing). We aren't coming out of
| a low-inflation period into a high-inflation spike (and,
| possibly, are going to do the reverse). There is no real
| equivalent to the idea of the driver-centered phenomena of
| a depressed labor market or illegible cost absorption into
| the equity of vehicles. I don't think anyone makes the case
| that specifically chat CS bots are a natural monopoly
| (though they may for fundamental models).
|
| There are certainly reasons why one may be pessimistic of
| the viability of customer service chatbots, but I encourage
| people to think past vapid slogans like "enshittification."
| tines wrote:
| The other day I was waiting in the lobby of a massage therapy
| place, and some older guy was checking in with the front desk.
|
| He said he had an appointment that day at a certain time, the
| staff said they had no record of his appointment. He said he
| booked it through the chat assistant on their website.
|
| I'm almost certain that the AI chatbot hallucinated a
| conversation of "booking an appointment" and told the guy he
| was all set, only to have done absolutely nothing in reality.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| As someone who has worked for an MSP for many small
| businesses, it's far more likely that the chatbot plugin just
| wasn't ever properly rolled out, or got forgotten over time.
| Small businesses really struggle with website maintenance.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| So much Customer Service is an absolute nightmare.
|
| Are you comparing to good CS or awful CS?
|
| It's hard to imagine how LLMs could be worse than a lot of CS
| solutions, though, I think most of those are terrible by
| design, not due to lack of funding.
| ookblah wrote:
| lol the fact that they talk about intercom and zendesk when
| they've had some variation of Fin for quite a while now (which
| sucks ass btw) says a lot.
| lxgr wrote:
| > frustrate visitors into using email
|
| Many companies cleverly solve this issue by not having an email
| address in the first place.
|
| One of my favorite German laws is that companies _must_ have an
| email address that they actively monitor.
|
| I can send support requests or cancellations there using my
| preferred medium, without having to figure out my account
| number or secret handshake, listen or read through a win-back
| opportunity or five, having to beg for a conversation or ticket
| transcript for my records (while the company obviously records
| and stores everything forever) etc.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Send an email with Reply-To: no-reply@example.com and go to
| jail!
| lxgr wrote:
| That's not how it works. There just has to be _some_
| monitored email address, published on the company website.
|
| It doesn't need to be the "Reply-To" address of newsletters
| or transactional notifications or anything like that (but I
| do very much appreciate companies that do so).
| PaulHoule wrote:
| It should be.
| thatjoeoverthr wrote:
| My experience is exclusively negative, also. It's a kind of
| "roboplay" ceremony. The actual automation or system has
| broken, so I'm reaching out for help, but they won't take my
| call or text unless I first spend five minutes pretending to
| "talk" to a "robot". It's verbose and leans into the
| performance. "Hi, I'm Max, your helpful Orange assistant, blah
| blah blah." Shut up and put me on hold, please.
| grumpymouse wrote:
| As a user, I feel like talking to them is pointless because
| nothing we agree to is actually agreed until a human agrees it.
| The chatbot promising me a refund doesn't mean I'm going to get
| a refund. The HR chatbot promising me paid time off doesn't
| mean I'm actually going to get paid time off. It's really still
| just like the awful old-school chatbots where the whole point
| was to give you a hard time finding the phone number of the
| human support team.
| Dowwie wrote:
| Elad is an investor of these companies, not an independent
| researcher
| meesles wrote:
| I find it really funny to read "I invested early in X" and then
| shortly later read "X has won this category of business" from
| the same author.
|
| Gives the same vibe as those 'popular alternatives to X' blog
| posts written by one of the vendors, placing their offering as
| #1 and picking mediocre competitors to compare themselves
| against.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| This is why people should be careful what they upvote. Look
| at /new and you'll see people are really "flooding the zone"
| with bad posts about AI, often self-serving posts. Flag is a
| little harsh for all but the worse abuses, but since there is
| not a downvote button it is an act of resistance to look at
| /new as often as you can and upvote a few articles about non-
| AI topics that aren't complete trash.
| eladgil wrote:
| Hmm, which verticals did I do this in?
| rohitpaulk wrote:
| I noticed this with Harvey / Legal.
| eladgil wrote:
| The majority of companies listed I did not invest in, as well
| as in some cases areas I have not invested in at all
|
| I am actively involved in AI and have been for a few years, so
| this both gives me insights and obviously conflicts. My hope is
| to write things that are useful vs just shilling as I would
| lose credibility otherwise
| boringg wrote:
| That link title is an oxymoron.
| samtp wrote:
| I would love to hear some clear use cases that people are
| actually using AI agents for in production on non-trivial
| matters. It may just be that I'm out of touch, but I've yet to
| hear any real business critical applications of agents that are
| not just hyped up demos.
| vaenaes wrote:
| Hoping for post-AI clarity.
| debo_ wrote:
| A tough nut to bust.
| diamond559 wrote:
| They are successful in that they attract lot of money to
| speculate on their privately traded stocks, not from paying
| customers.
| benterix wrote:
| It's a nice advertisement with quite a lot of opinions and
| wishful thinking presented as facts.
| District5524 wrote:
| Although there is a part on the use of AI in the legal market,
| but it is neither comprehensive, nor informative. A much better
| view of the law-specific state of the art models is available at
| https://www.vals.ai/vlair (although registration is needed to
| access the report). That benchmark in the report clearly shows
| that there is not much added value or moat in the custom training
| of Harvey (costing supposedly ~5M$), while a Llama-based model
| can achieve quite similar performance. Of course, no benchmark is
| perfect but it is still more informative than this blogpost, plus
| all the linked websites of the "legal" products linked that fail
| to give you the slightest idea of how they work. Besides claiming
| to be be disruptive...
| throwawayoldie wrote:
| I think what the public really wants to know about Harvey is,
| is it named for Harvey Birdman, Attorney-At-Law?
| benreesman wrote:
| Eh, I'm not sure I buy it on the frontier labs being all locked
| up. The Chinese stuff is fucking great, and it's improving really
| really fast. Labs like OpenAI? I'm skeptical they could build
| their current product lineup from scratch, and why should that be
| surprising? The people who did it left!
|
| Anthropic has a pretty clear headlock on the absolute apex of
| brute-force Chinchilla scaling with Opus 4, but they've started
| being dodgy enough with it that I finally set up Together and
| OpenRouter and put their shit on Bedrock and Vertex: I'm over it
| with the "well, it lies about having mocked the whole module
| today".
|
| And K2? Whew, that's really refreshing. It's different, hard to
| compare, but I've been running it for a day or so where Sonnet 4
| would normally go and I'm not having any trouble. It's clearly
| the product of a different culture but in a cool way, and on the
| stuff that counts? Chinese people speak C++ just fine.
|
| I'm pretty sure at this point that infinite NVIDIA is one of the
| worst handicaps our AI giants could have gotten, and that needing
| to work within and around export restrictions and gimped cards is
| the best thing that ever happened to Hangzhou.
|
| I see no reason why the take in the article is any more plausible
| than an alternative future where the US has about as much market
| share in frontier LLMs as Europe does in consumer Internet.
| tempusalaria wrote:
| The term agent is just way overloaded. This guy defines it
| completely differently the the big labs, and I've seen half a
| dozen different definitions in the last few months.
|
| In the long run the definition used by OpenAI, Anthropic et al
| will win out so can we just all switch to that?
| ariwilson wrote:
| No mention of product prototyping products e.g. vercel v0 or
| Firebase Studio. Those to me seem like clear 0->1 wins,
| especially vercel with their hosting/marketplace integrating well
| with AI-driven development.
| panabee wrote:
| The author is a respected voice in tech and a good proxy of
| investor mindset, but the LLM claims are wrong.
|
| They are not only unsupported by recent research trends and
| general patterns in ML and computing, but also by emerging
| developments in China, which the post even mentions.
|
| Nonetheless, the post is thoughtful and helpful for calibrating
| investor sentiment.
| ariwilson wrote:
| What is wrong about their claims?
| iddan wrote:
| We are building some exciting sales AI tech in Closer: basically
| the cursor for sales people. https://closer.so
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