Friendly reminder: the strategy here is to invest in the founders, not the ideas. So great founders right now create AI startups. So either AI solves problems or they arent great founders.
Actually, it says something much deeper about the world than whatever YC's partners' opinions are. YC funds founders, not ideas, so the reason that so many companies in S23 are AI startups is that that's what founders want to work on right now. It's an emergent phenomenon, like stock prices in the market.
One thing that's interesting is that there have been many hype cycles between 2006 and now (chatbots, several waves of crypto, VR, online-to-offline, etc). YC funded a few companies in each of those hype cycles but never anything like the current %.
I was hyped about Bitcoin when it came out, but the only truly revolutionary thing that happened after Bitcoin in that field was Ethereum, and there really wasn't anything to be hyped about besides that in the decade since even though people kept hyping it.
This hype is so different, it's as powerful as web 2.0 was. I felt like I missed out on building something epic then, and now I get another shot so I'm not gonna miss it. I bet there's thousands of people who feel this way.
Maybe YC isn't investing in the right founders, and that's why it has so many AI startups.
your statement fails to consider the possibility that the pool of applicants to YC are not great and the demographic of such founders are bad founders who are easily swayed by hype into fragile and failing topics such as "AI" and crypto.
in the situation where the applicant pool of ideas is in fact incredibly diverse, then it supports the thesis even moreso because it would show YC went with "AI" founders over other founders, regardless of their quality as potential business owners.
So being wrong one time means you're not a great founder?