

The Intricate and Peculiar Torture of Taking One's Tech Company Bankrupt - seregine
http://www.goertzel.org/benzine/WakingUpFromTheEconomyOfDreams.htm

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shiro
It's a great read, though I'm not sure how to take his words in the
engineering domain (e.g. what does "3/4 complete" exactly mean?). I don't
doubt he is a vary smart guy and also had amazing people; but many years of
software _engineering_ have made me quite conservative in terms of estimate.

If all the planned components are written, and you can feed the real data into
the system and get the reasonable final result out of it, then I'd call it,
say, 50% complete; there'd be tedious works after that to make things robust,
or find users have unusual settings and you have to adapt to it, etc.
Borrowing his rocket metaphor, the rocket without the nosecone is less than
half way in terms of development...

Of course it really depends on the nature of the product; maybe things like AI
engines you can convince the client to pay in the state of "it basically
works" and then gradually adapt it to the client's needs afterwards. Also his
writing is sometimes sarcastic (which makes the writing enjoyable), so I'm not
sure he uses "3/4" or "almost finsihed" in ironic way (that he knows it wasn't
"almost finished", but he thought so back then).

Anyway, it's so easy to criticize retrospectively. I still respect them for
having tackled to such a big problem.

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gscott
I have a friend with an AI investing system <http://www.neuralinvesting.com/>.
He is a smart guy, too smart. I have found the smarter the person the harder
it is to make money because they want to solve problems all of the time. If
you are solving problems when do you stop and say "this is enough!" and just
start pushing what you have made?

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maxklein
Problems that seem easy in theory are so much harder in practise. Like the
other day I thought I'd write a quick piece of software in java to
automatically navigate from one spot to another and avoid obstructions.
Sounded like a 15 minute job, lasted 3 days. It's the same problem all AI
creators have, but with them, it sounds like 15 minutes, lasts 3 years and
still doesn't work.

~~~
noonespecial
AI is especially funny that way. You always feel like you're _almost there_.
Since 1965 I think.

In reality, AI is like jumping across the Grand Canyon. You either jump all of
the way, or Wile E. Coyote it.

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allenbrunson
long, but worth the read.

if the author is to be believed, they were pretty close to having something
that would have been a breakthrough for AI. i wonder what happened to the
source code, and why it wasn't pursued further.

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danx0r
amazing this has no comments. Everyone thinking about starting a company
should read it.

Better to have tried and failed, than never to have tried at all.

