
Ask HN: If future is AI – how can a company overtake Google/Facebook/Baidu? - samblr
Recent raise of AI to mainstream has also meant companies with large amounts of text&#x2F;audio&#x2F;video data are &#x27;only&#x27; capable of having significant impact&#x2F;progress. Google&#x2F;Facebook&#x2F;Baidu are way ahead in these. Any AI company would want to be with Google&#x2F;Facebook etc for the data. There is a little paradox in this like a zen koan.<p>So if future belongs to AI - how should &#x27;young turks coming out of school&#x27; plan to make impact or overtake likes of Google&#x2F;Facebook.
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therealmarv
Why do people think so? They have definitely more manpower for leading certain
areas (like internet search results)... but their AIs certainly don't cover
every aspect of life. Imagine a very specific "field of your choice" where AI
can improve... so you take one of the many open source AI libraries and
train/retrain that thing to your specific needs and voila, you have your own
AI which solves your problem pretty good. The bigger problem is more that this
sort of development is new for most developers... but I think this will change
over time. <\- this is a very good area where young people can be better than
old developers. It's like a new chance maybe (like web development in the
past).

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samblr
Although I do agree for a niche field AI. My original question is how do you
get ahead of giants in a generic way once you come out of that niche. If we
imagine internet as a book - google has that complete book in its servers with
more understanding than any one. A niche field might be equivalent to a line
in that book.

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therealmarv
You're underexpecting your possibilities I would say. This is like saying: I
will stop trying because the big companies are always better than me. Just go
a little beside what they are focusing and then you will be better than them,
for sure. Do it different etc.. Of course you will not beat them in their main
game (search engine, personal assistant AI with searches etc.) but saying that
this niche is only a line in the book is a huge underestimation... there are
whole industries living in that niche. Google is not the world. For sure not.

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samblr
Sorry I could not make myself clear on this - I am with you on Google is not
the world. There will be a 'niche thing' in future which will overtake it.
Just like Google over took Microsoft. Read any tech book during late 90s and
even Bill Gates own books. He has predicted all billion dollar companies in
his book 'Road Ahead' but nowhere is Microsoft created those billion dollar
companies/markets. Hence my point is: With AI dependent on large amounts of
data - what could be that which will be grow bigger than Google in AI. We have
to come out of logic to see this.

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billconan
Andrew Ng said the current need for massive data is due to the naiveness of
current ai. Human doesn't need to see that many pictures to do classification.
So one shouldn't focus on "brute force" ai in order to compete.

