AI stands for "actually indians"?

100%, but i dont think that will stay true for too long.

Always Infosys

In the meantime. This is a valid business model.

OracleMaker was too problematic.

Simple Storage Service

E: I agree that their names are shit though. But S3 makes sense (once you know what it means). Just like boto3 makes sense (once you know what it means)

I built some of the components that went in to the test locations. Amazon had absurdly tight tolerances for the parts they were buying. They effectively wanted a shelf that was also a scale, and the tolerances they demanded weren't really necessary. So it was an insane expense but they paid it and wouldn't hear otherwise.

My company also made most of the lockers they're using in places like Whole Foods, and Amazon insisted on controlling the entire design process themselves. They sent us prints, we made parts. They made it very clear that that was the relationship they wanted, so we complied. No test runs, THAT would be too expensive. Let's just make ten thousand parts and put them together.

I would like to be very clear that in an industrial setting, this is unusual. You need something specific, you call a company that makes things like it and see if they can make what you need. You have a conversation about what you need it for and how many you want. The relationship is personal, you get to know the people around the region that you need stuff from.

Amazon swooping in with a heavy purse and a list of demands is weird, when someone kicks in your door with a stack of prints and enough money to keep the entire plant in overtime all year, it's hard to say no to that.

So the first batch of prints they send is wrong. Parts do not line up right and the doors don't even fit. We didn't discover this until 70% of the components had already been painted.

Second batch they assure us addresses the problem, we need to start over.

My friends, it did not address the problem. Half the changes they needed to make they didn't. The doors still did not fit.

3rd try, we lied and said we needed some extra time because a different client had elbowed in with a large order while they were redesigning. We had an intern recreate every print in CAD and test fit it, we ran a single batch of test pieces to assemble one row of lockers and as we were doing that they sent a revision.

They finally got their lockers, and asked for basically book dividers but insisted again on insanely tight tolerances.

After the dividers went out we stopped taking their calls.

Is there any other way?

Probably inspired by the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company, or 3m for short

People have been scamming AI for way longer than 8 years. Eight years ago I had a colleague who used to work for an AI start-up that he said was actually a room full of old ladies.

What do you mean the new llm I invested in is just 700 Indians in a trench coat?!

AI is way older than the public release of ChatGPT. GPT-1, OpenAI's first version of what would become ChatGPT, was released in 2018, for example, and OpenAI itself was founded in 2015, DeepMind was founded 2010, and IBM Watson competed on Jeopardy! in 2011. Furthermore, Alan Turing wrote about a lot of the ideas that are now being used in AI research in the 1940s, fuzzy logic and natural language processing were developed in the 1960s, and so on. This stuff didn't come out of nowhere, you just didn't know about it before ChatGPT.

Depends what you mean by "valid". If you mean "profitable", sure: Fraud has always been a profitable business model.

But if you mean "valid" in terms of what Microsoft got out of their $455M investment, not so much, as they wanted a great new AI model, not the output that the "human-powered" model produced pretending to be an AI.

Sometimes you have a run in with a customer that ain't worth having-- no matter how much money they pay.

Oh my god I miss peak dogelore so much. I wasted so much time making those memes, and I miss it

I worked as an associate for a public accounting firm that does not ever advertise itself, because we specialized serving ultra wealthy individuals and you could only engage us if you knew of us through such circles.

One day, our office got a call from the personal assistant to someone very wealthy who is known for abusing ketamine, asking for an engagement on a very unusual and complex tax situation. A call was set up to discuss the scope of the engagement, because the partners have always been very particular about what clients they will take on, because really wealthy individuals are often very unpleasant, stressful, & frustrating to work with.

Apparently during the call the assistant was patronizing, like we should feel flattered that we were chosen by m'lord, and demanded non-negotiable terms that we would conduct our work exactly as told with no questions asked. They had even sent their own engagement letter for us to sign with them ahead of the call, and it was completely absurd.

The partners patiently explained that is not possible, as that is not how this type of professional relationship works, and declined the engagement.

The assistant was losing their mind, shocked we would turn such an opportunity down. They offered even more money and even some compromise, but the way they initiated the interaction set the tone to expect throughout the professional relationship.

I was very impressed by the partners in the sense that I knew they were incredibly greedy people, but they are so fucking intelligent and had such a great instinct to avoid clients that were going to end up costing way more money than they brought in, because us associates would absolutely refuse to deal with bullshit because it was already a super stressful job, and we were way too talented and incredibly expensive to replace if we walked off.

The self restraint must have been legendary, and exactly the right call, because all the professionals that do end up accepting end up getting embroiled in costly lawsuits and getting thrown under the bus.

Anyway, I hated that job and I wish I that quit sooner than I did. I got such bad burnout, I developed PTSD and now I prefer just living like a hobo rather than go back out there.

PS: Fuck capitalism and fuck Amazon. I refuse to buy anything from them ever again. Cancelled my credit card and told them to go fuck themselves. Fascists.

It was a simpler time 🥲

You mean the 40 horsepower is actually 40 Indians under the hood??

But all sharing the same keyboard? I need to understand the logistics behind that feat