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I can’t speak for other startups, but I applied to the most recent YC batch with my idea for making AI proactive instead of reactive, and pre-being selected I’ve published a paper on recursive self-improvement mapped to the Epoch AI data. I contacted a professor from a university in the UK and he responded since he was working on similar work, then asked me if I wanted to meet with him. We talked for about an hour since we had overlapping results and different methods, specifically different assumptions. I say all that to say, as a physics student getting my undergrad, simply doing independent research and speaking to experts about it enabled me to network with someone I otherwise likely wouldn’t know. For young people getting into any business, research is a great way to meet new people.
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That's also a reason the big labs stopped. Publishing is most valuable to people who have no other way to get the attention of smart strangers. Once you can hire nearly anyone and everyone already returns your calls, the main remaining effect of publishing is to tell your competitors which things worked. This is what happens to every field as it turns from a science into an industry. Chemists published freely until dyes started being worth money, and then the interesting work moved into company labs and stopped coming out.
What exactly makes it proactive? I created a similar system that ran on a ticker, but then could also set itself to run in n seconds in the future. RSI came from the actions available to the system and granting the ability to modify itself. The prompt was a string of messages made from static and dynamically generated sections (like memories or plans of tasks or outputs from actions taken on the previous turn). It worked really well
I agree with your point of view we need more research papers specially Breakthroughs AI is acheiving must be published and verified with sound mathematical backings, At our startup we are also moving in this direction perhaps I have already onboarded an Applied Math Phd from Germany to help me in researching.
Yes! And, whether it stems from research or not, putting yourself out there and talking to other people is one of the most fundamentally important things you can do for your career and your personal development as a human being.
FWIW, several YC startups have also published ML research--there were several of us at the last NeurIPS. So perhaps this is a niche that startups can occupy if the big labs don't.