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146 points MaysonL | 9 comments | | HN request time: 0.766s | source | bottom
1. lenerdenator ◴[] No.43963202[source]
Industry determines everything by the impact it will have on its financial state in ninety days. That's it. That's what matters. We redefined competence as the ability to have that financial state be better with regard to nothing else.

Academic research rarely produces anything in 90 days.

Therefore, there will be little in the way of standing for academic research.

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2. hall0ween ◴[] No.43963325[source]
That’s a tough take but I think fair. There’s also a common thought in industry that nothing gets done in academia (e.g., credentials are often weighed less from a university than from employment). Or at least anecdotally for me.
3. bilbo0s ◴[] No.43963426[source]
Yep.

Better bet for mankind at this point is for Europe or China to take up that research mantle.

(Actually, maybe best bet is for both to take up the mantle?)

4. dandanua ◴[] No.43963499[source]
This is why the human race has approximately zero chances against AI machines of the future. Their plans are not limited by the human life-long timescale.
5. coolsuds420 ◴[] No.43963688[source]
There are so many obvious counter examples you should be ashamed of yourself. Consider Pratt & Whitney working on geared turbofans for decades, they made that investment privately.

Or consider Tesla, they brought the roadster to market purely off private investment. That’s a lot of r&d for things like battery management systems, motors, and power electronics which took years.

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6. telotortium ◴[] No.43963771[source]
Yet somehow, despite strictly speaking only predicting the next token greedily according to the highest probability, LLMs are able to write coherent text across many pages now. Reflecting on why that is the case might give you an answer as to how businesses can plan over the many-year timescale.
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7. lenerdenator ◴[] No.43964371[source]
> There are so many obvious counter examples you should be ashamed of yourself. Consider Pratt & Whitney working on geared turbofans for decades, they made that investment privately. Or consider Tesla, they brought the roadster to market purely off private investment. That’s a lot of r&d for things like battery management systems, motors, and power electronics which took years.

Both happened before the redefinition of competence to making the most money in 90 days. This is a relatively recent shift; and while its roots start in the 1950s, its completion has only happened recently, within the last decade or so.

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8. lenerdenator ◴[] No.43964466[source]
"Planning" and "research" are two very, very different things.

I can "plan" to sell off the majority of my company's holdings and give all of the proceeds to shareholders over the next few years. I'd be considered a genius and have a business school somewhere named after me.

Coming up with a hypothesis, testing it, and creating a product/service based off of it with no guarantee of even a penny of monetary return is far riskier, and that's what "research" is.

9. coolsuds420 ◴[] No.43966347{3}[source]
Pratt and Whitney brought their geared turbo fan to market in 2019 and Tesla brought the roadster to market in 2008.

Meta’s investment in oculus also defies a 90 day payback period edict.