danicgross

YouTube and Gmail exist, yet Google Search is faster than ever.

Great feedback. Clarified. Thanks wool_gather and gnud!

AI Grant | Engineer | San Francisco, CA | Full-time | REMOTE/ONSITE | aigrant.org

AI Grant is an AI research lab. Our goal is to invest in promising people around the world working on AI. We think the world is filled with extraordinarily productive people that don't come from a traditional background. We're making software that screens for them and supports them with a community. We're a very small team. We'll remain small for a long time. We're looking for a generalist who can build web and mobile products without much detailed guidance. ML experience a plus.

Lack of a credentialed resume is fine. The only thing we'll be looking for is experience building lots of stuff. Even a bunch of side-projects on Github. We like working with people on-site, but we're happy to start remote if there's a path towards eventual relocation.

Just email us to apply: team@aigrant.org. Include your resume and an example of something you built that you’re proud of.

AI Grant | Engineer | San Francisco, CA | Full-time | REMOTE/ONSITE | aigrant.org

AI Grant is an AI research lab. Our goal is to invest in promising people around the world working on AI. We think the world is filled with extraordinarily productive people that don't come from a traditional background. We're making software that screens for them and supports them with a community. We're a very small team. We'll remain small for a long time. We're looking for a generalist who can build web and mobile products without much detailed guidance. ML experience a plus.

Lack of a credentialed resume is fine. The only thing we'll be looking for is experience building lots of stuff. Even a bunch of side-projects on Github. We like working with people on-site, but we're happy to start remote if there's a path towards eventual relocation.

Just email us to apply: team@aigrant.org. Include your resume and let us know if you're already in the Bay Area.

Back up! Sorry.

Back up! Sorry.

Yes! In many ways, all your initial idea needs to be is a launch pad. Once you get your foot in the door, you can always refine based on what users tell you.

Per your point, it's important to learn from their workflow, not ask them what they want. When you ask someone what they want, they often perform attribute substitution (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attribute_substitution) and answer a different question.

Sigh.

It’s a non profit! The IP you develop is yours!

Sigh. Hacker News is a suspicious place these days. We have no rights to anything you produce, or datasets you use. We just want to help budding scientists.

We are asking people to do a 30 minute quiz once the application is filled out. It’s 100% experimental, but the long term goal is to try and see if there are any ways we can scale this program one day. For example: if it turned out that all the Fellows we funded did terribly on the test, we’d know the test is bad. If they did really well on one question, we’d know we found something that would help us find more people in the future.

We’re not going to sell the applications in any way. Please email me if you have any concerns: daniel@aigrant.org.

Which is precisely why we’re not making decisions based on that test for now. We’re just experimenting with it to see what data we get. We’re still going to grade applications manually for now.

We’re trying not to fall into the “just IQ” trap, but learn the broader picture of what makes great Fellows great.

Great idea, and something we’re considering for future batches. We may even do it this batch, depending on the final mix.

Thanks for the feedback. Will make the upfront time investment more clear.

Thanks for the feedback! Your application progress does save when you advance. You should have a link in your email to restore it. Please email me if you don’t: daniel@aigrant.org.

We will also communicate the upfront time investment more clearly.

Hi laythea! That is an incredibly cynical take. Why are you so default cynical? Anyway, I’ll share my hidden motivations with you, if you like. It’s twofold:

1. I am intellectually curious about AI research. I enjoy talking to researchers. I do it in my spare time. For fun. I would like to do more of that.

2. I was accepted by YC when I was an uncredentialed 18 year old. It changed my life. I’ve since been fascinated by systems that find promising outsiders and bring them into the fold. YC does a great job at this for companies. I’m wondering if it would be useful to do it for research ideas as well.

Lastly, I completely disagree that GPU training time is “of variable value”. It’s a big deal for many researchers.

Hi DrNuke! A few thoughts:

> surrendering their AI ideas

Nobody is surrendering anything. The money is literally a gift. We have no rights in whatever they produce.

> private psychometric data

We have a personality test we’re experimenting with for future batches. We’re still making funding decisions based on the application for this batch. If you’d prefer to avoid filling it out, by all means!

> unnecessary services

I disagree! Money and $20,000 in GPU training time is worth a lot. Most of our prior Fellows put it to good use.

> Come on YC

This non-profit is unrelated to my role at YC. Please direct any frustration at me, not YC!

Correct! Most importantly, there are no strings attached in terms of any IP rights on whatever you create.

Thanks for that feedback! Since we’re hoping to scale the program one day, we’re looking for better ways to identify scientists we should support. That additional test is just an experiment.

We need to do a better job communicating that upfront. Will fix now. Thanks again. Some things you can only learn from talking to your users...

Thanks for the feedback! Some extra context: Since we’re hoping to scale the program one day, we’re looking for better ways to identify scientists we should support. Per the description, it’s very experimental and we’re open to any feedback you have.

No! I don't know anything about Cyc, but AI Grant is very real. I run YC AI (http://ycombinator.com/ai). Nat is the VP of Developer Services at Microsoft. We're not doing this to sell info to recruiters. We're doing this because we're passionate about AI research. And because we think the best ideas often come from the fringe. We want to encourage others to take their side projects more seriously.

Feel free to message any of our existing Fellows and ask about their experience.

Try visiting the site, I think you'll be pleased!

Could you email me so that I could learn more about providing this? daniel@aigrant.org. Thanks!

As long as you can articulate why your project would be useful, we're interested. Theoretical or not. It just needs to be useful to other humans. Or AGIs. (Kidding. Mostly.)

We hope to do a few more, but don't know exactly when. When in doubt, just apply! At the very least the process will sharpen your thinking on the project you're considering.

Focus helps one make a great product (for example, domain-specific content and community). In time, we'll expand. If this strategy works, it can be an accelerant to almost all areas of research.

We're liberal with the definition of AI.

You can always decide not to take the grant if you're accepted. At the very least, the application process will serve as a potential way to validate your idea.

Sorry, our DNS provider was having issues. Please take another look now. Thanks!

Who are you to judge? Did you win the Putnam or something?

We really need passchange.js: an open source collection of headless JS scripts that can programmatically change your password on a given website. Then you would continuously rotate _all_ your managed passwords as well as your master.

Not a panacea, but significantly minimizes the length of a theoretical breach.

Agreed. There are many flavors of moats. I originally wrote something more complex but it quickly turned into an amateur HBS study about Google. I hope the point is interpreted more metaphorically.