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Comment by jpeg_hero | Hacker News Reader

This looks like a really easy marker that we've topped out on unicorn/big secondary market.

When the smart big players start to take their chips off the table you can be sure this thing has peaked.

Nah. We were talking to lowercase three years ago and Mazzeo was already running the day to day for Sacca to spend more time with his family. This is a personal thing and has been a long time coming.

Or it could have nothing to do with that, and be exactly what he says - he achieved what he set out to do and realizes that he now wants to do something else with his life, and has the time and resources to do so.

Many times it's both: personal circumstances will make someone want to retire, but if things look good in the markets, they'll hold on for a year or two, and if things start looking tapped out that'll give them permission to step back. He's 2 years late, after all.

After having founded a number of startup, I know how it is to be in an all consuming thing. I would imagine as a conscience VC you would have to feel all in on many projects.

These types of comments are always hilarious. Really? You think we've topped out on 1bn dollar companies in the year 2017? AI, Self Driving Cars, Improvements to Flying, SPACE!? You honestly think there's nothing left to invest in?

I think it's more likely that the current hype cycle may be coming to a close. The items you mentioned will all be part of the next one.

Useful AI and SAE 5 cars are multiple years away, and this leg of the business cycle is already 9 years old.

As for the other two categories, only SpaceX is relevant in the spacelaunch world, and I don't think they're going public anytime soon. I don't know of any startups that I would say have a decent chance in commercial aviation.

"Useful AI" is vague enough that you can probably make any sort of statement about it. If you mean things like an Echo that can take "understand" and take actions on the level of a slightly dull personal assistant, you're probably right. (Which is at least correlated with SAE 5.)

Of course, there's all sorts of machine learning and related AI-ish things that are potentially useful in the interim.

Fully agree on the other points.

The Amazon Echo having a 60-item case statement is not how "AI" is typically promoted.

You may have misunderstood my point. I'm saying that being able to interact with a digital assistant (I only used Echo as an example) the way I would with a human admin and have it take appropriate actions is many years away. It would be an interesting application for many of us, but it's not close.

I agree that it is many years away.

I'll believe AI is good for something other than YouTube recommending Top 40 music for me to play next, when Google News stops showing pictures of unrelated celebrities next to political stories (e.g.).

ML/AI is used all the time. Every check deposited via mobile phone uses character recognition. Every letter or package mailed also.

If OCR is now considered to be AI, then that's a perfect example of my point that "AI" is defined downwards in practice.

People just have different interests. Why do you think only 1 person would leave if it was topped out as you say? All the other ones just want to waste money?

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