Just curious since it seems everyone is mentioning AI in some form in majority of what I see posted here (maybe just the Reddit “algorithm” at work?). It’s almost like not doing AI is enough of a differentiator at this point to stand out in the market. Is there some crossover between Reddit and AI specifically, or is it a bigger trend that everyone is hopping on the AI bandwagon? Feels like “ai” is a rebrand of “machine learning”/“ml” buzzwords from recent past - a lot of fudging the edges of the actual definition, in what I think is an attempt to seem attractive in the funding market. Is anyone concerned about that backfiring?
I appreciate the sentiment but respectfully disagree.
Starting an ai company has not been gated to the release of chat gpt. Using chat gpt as your ai has been available for the past year, enabling a magnitude of early movers in the chat gpt space. Before chat gpt we had other “ai” - machine learning (outside of an llm context), and a trend of startups claiming to use AI/ML whether it was accurate or not. I’m genuinely pleased to see the representation of non ai startups. I’m not working on an ai start up.
My day job is at a start up that doesn’t use chat gpt (in our product, employees are definitely personally using it), but does have bespoke ML applications that are indeed legitimate and solving real issues and opening up opportunities for us. I have friends, yes believe it or not lol, in the real world, and a handful of them are working on ai projects or companies. Important to note they aren’t chat gpt based projects. My real world experience of ai applications is not skewed toward gpt based projects. With the high volume of content focused on ai, often a code word for chat gpt/open ai, I’m curious if people see the lack of differentiation and barriers to achieving a true competitive advantage are a concern. Or if I just didn’t drink the look aid and missed something.
Reddit is a great place for some founders to connect with potential customers. It’s got dedicated self selecting groups generally willing to interact and engage with authentic content. Acting like social media isn’t a huge marketplace is a bit dismissive. Like anything, context is important. Doom scrolling might not generate revenue but access to well defined groups of people that self identify with something is objectively valuable. Social media strategies don’t work for everyone, and that’s ok.