site banner
PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   4250 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 10, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

3
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

In a somewhat recent speech Andrew Ng describes the "long tail of 5M$ projects". The idea being that software projects of the recent past were either very cheap or very expensive, and the long tail of projects in the middle were ignored because they were not worth time/money whatever. However new generative AI tech opens up that long tail because things that would have been very expensive or impossible are now cheap and possible, and there is opportunity for those who want to address that long tail.

How do I tap into those projects?

I've been fortunate enough to work with building LLM based projects that run in prod and I think I can start taking freelance and contract work now. My USP isn't being able to stich together openais API with exponential backoff and a vector db, any joe can do that. I genuinely think I can see some very creative uses of llms and embeddings that others just aren't, I can't find any papers or blogs on using llms for what I am using them for. But how do I sell my service? I obviously have NDAs and can't leak my employers trade secrets. Also I've only recently started working and don't have much industry connections.

Making yet another b2b SaaS around openais api is not appealing to me. I want to do contract work where I go to a shop and automate parts of it. Basically I want to move from project to project.

Are you in the Eleuther AI discord server? If not, I suggest you join, because I strongly expect you'll find a lot more in the way of practical/helpful suggestions there than you will here (though there are some people who can certainly assist).

Thanks, I'll check it out.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats