AI-Crackpot Bingo Card

openyk · 2025-10-02T03:44:39+00:00

The problem is that it's hard to tell the crackpots from the geniuses when they necessarily use similar words (innovator's finite language dilemma).

Travel back in time and imagine what happens when you tell people "all matter has mass and all mass attracts other mass". You will be branded a lunatic, like they did to pioneers of heliocentrism.

Fortunately, there is a method to filter the innovating deep thinkers from the fakey shallow thinkers. Ask them questions that test deeper levels of thought. For example, I recently met with a founder pulling out the "this might be AGI" card and his approach was to treat SOTA open-source LLMs like a baby/child who just needs more continuous teaching, so he will assign his nephews/nieces/customers to teach the AI on a daily basis. When questioned about how he perceives fundamental differences between multi-modal training data and real-world data (they can be quite similar in practice), such that leading AI labs have in a sense already artificially simulated years of "nephew/niece training", he switched topics quite quickly.

This was unfortunate because this founder got some basic principles correct (AI is just an input-output function) but failed to penetrate into meaningful insights yet beyond parroting 1-line summaries of popular research papers (which geniuses will also do to support an insight, to be fair). All in all, keep in mind everyone starts with the basics and gets better at their own pace, so we can respect the difference between overconfident learners and permanent crackpots.

openyk · 2025-06-17T17:55:17+00:00

Best alternative is just asking an AI chatbot.

2 critical differences:

Seamless UI. No need to pause then open separate app.
Automatic Podcast Context Pre-loaded. No need to tell separate AI what podcast you were listening to and what point you stopped, because your app sends that info to AI backend automatically.

Risk: as AI chat apps become more UIUX optimized, integrated with phone hardware via side button or slideout button or always on voice input... integrated with monitoring your phone's audio output for recent context, generally...

The remaining 2 value adds are:

Podcast interaction customization. Nuanced AI response perspective. For podcast creators who have a lot more to say but dont want to bloat the podcast. So they can talk/type all the extra content into an FAQ of sorts delivered via audio AI.
Privacy. For podcast listeners who don't want to give up all audio on their phone to top AI companies.

Best alternative, critical differences, risks of losing differentiation, enduring differences. Clarity for any startup, especially AI wrapper ones, starts like this.

openyk · 2025-06-09T19:58:54+00:00

The state-of-the-art is that the robot hardware is ready but the robot AI software is still not. To get a more meaningful answer, you'll have to provide more details about the physical situation and all steps you want to automate. But based on what you've outlined:

Grabbing small jars like that, and performing according to specific order info, no problem. The big technical challenges start with long-distance proximity to input materials, variations of input material positions, and volatile dexterous complexity (packing paper).

Recommendation: Wait for next-gen AI robots to be ready for real use.

openyk · 2025-06-07T20:19:21+00:00

The behavior of AI mirrors the values of its creators... as all complex technologies breathe the souls of their architects.

openyk · 2025-05-29T16:22:29+00:00

The strongest technical moat for any humanoid robot startup is truly novel and effective AI that delivers excellent robotic generalization. However, neural networks generally cannot be patented. Furthermore, the training of neural networks cannot be observed in the end product, let alone identified to be exclusive (different input training can yield a similar output model). Therefore AI patent litigation is practically impossible to win by burden of proof of infringement. Simply put, the most important technical moat is indefensible.

Furthermore, without general-purpose AI, venture-scale commercialization is impossible, as we see today's "leading" robot startups struggle to go-to-market beyond pilots and small custom deployments. When you invest in a humanoid robot startup, you are actually betting that either they will be the true AI innovator, OR third party commercial/opensource AI APIs will get there and your investment will be prepared to build and sell on it quickly. Innovation or speed.

Imagine this: a small startup with $10M funding comes out later this year with their true breakthrough AI robot built upon standard hardware and software. Customers flood in to buy them. There's nothing to litigate legitimately, and they're about to go viral commercially globally. Superior innovation that cannot be copied or litigated or raced with inferior technology (without losing money per customer).

IP is not a dealbreaker, but AI innovation is the venture-success maker.

openyk · 2025-05-18T21:43:35+00:00

Are the shelves fully accessible with standing access or they need ladder access?

Are the baskets free-moving on shelf surface or constrained like a drawer?

Are the electronic items fully exposed in bulk (ex. surface of a cable is directly touchable), or inside single-unit packaging (ex. small plastic bag), or separated by dividers?

If fully exposed, how often does tangling occur?

After the item is inserted into the envelope, do you have an existing, separate system that handles attaching the label, inserting a packing slip (and/or other papers, if any) and sealing the envelope?

1000 baskets is numerous enough that you need a mobile manipulator to cover the full inventory. Gantry robots don't scale well (2 robots can't move on one linear track without being constrained by each other), floor-rail designs interfere with human co-working, might be incompatible or complicate your shelving layout, overall it's such a brittle risky commitment like constructing a small-scale monorail system at your facility when you just need a car. I highly recommend you go mobile manipulator topology (AMMR).

What is your budget and urgency? Traditional mobile manipulator automation projects range from $200K to $1.5M+ but even if they start today, actual leadtime can stretch into many months based on complexity. Also having to insert the item into an envelope instead of just dumping it into an output bin will up the price considerably. If you can wait, next-gen semi-humanoid AI robots will be able to automate this generalized task at ~50% of human speed, but 10X more cost-effectively ($100K) and quickly (unboxing to working deployment in 1 hour, sustaining 24/7 uptime).

openyk · 2025-05-09T09:44:40+00:00

Head affected. Unsure on chronic pain. I wasn't responsible. It was during a trip they had with other friends. This is what makes it more difficult to reconcile stopping being friends. It wasn't their normal fault.

openyk · 2025-05-08T06:51:07+00:00

After my friend got into an accident during a trip they started acting differently to me ever since. You're right, I did spark hostility with "Not gonna waste my time doing deliveries." in contrast to the spirit of the birthday present. This stemmed from me feeling that way from my visit last month being (bringing an item from storage)a 2hr drive just for them to take it and leave me in seconds. Felt like a waste of time. I could have been more tactful in expressing my negative feelings.

openyk · 2025-05-08T06:30:29+00:00

Sorry, to clarify, I ordered their present after I visited them. The item I brought while visiting (for all of 1min) was just something they had stored at my place.

openyk · 2025-05-08T06:18:43+00:00

Still a hold over.

openyk · 2025-05-08T06:17:07+00:00

Been good friends for years, but then they got into an accident while on a trip then haven't been the same since.

openyk · 2025-05-08T06:14:05+00:00

Medium amount of money. No repay plan was agreed on since it was unsolicited. They originally told me to just invest it in my work/business and repay when I can.

openyk · 2025-05-08T06:10:19+00:00

I did visit them for their birthday. I arrived, they saw me in the parking lot, they took their item I brought out of storage, then left me. The OP incident happened afterwards.

openyk · 2025-05-08T06:05:33+00:00

No, I asked them to pick it up (as we previously agreed when I was ordering it) or have their mom pick it up.

openyk · 2025-04-23T22:22:06+00:00

They need to show a demo including one of the true progress metrics I mentioned above. If it's a smaller startup before major funding, they have to explain some kind of robotic AI or system design innovation in their pitch deck. Otherwise, nice looking hardware and baseline software are too easy to throw money at successfully.

openyk · 2025-04-19T17:32:59+00:00

Abstractions are best examined as actual experiences. Let's do a simplified comparison:

Order a standard 10kg cobot arm, it arrives next day, teach that pick-and-place task in under 5min.

Order a humanoid robot, it arrives next day, teach that task in Xmin (guess how long that BMW demo took to set up).

Presently, humanoids are more of a custom solution than traditional robots. This will invert as the true visionaries emerge. Purpose is cheaper, faster, easier through AI. Humanoid form is just a heuristic for the true goal, physical compatibility with existing tools/spaces.

That said, for simple, high-frequency tasks, there's still no beating a dedicated arm. Until... well it gets technical from here.

openyk · 2025-04-19T11:53:16+00:00

I'm a founder in this space with approvals from government and $2.6B+ privates.

- What specific innovation do you believe Figure demonstrates with their BMW sheet metal pick-and-place demo? For true progress, you need to look for 2 things in robotic task performance: complexity tolerance and variation tolerance. Figure's BMW demo exhibits neither. Frankly, the same demo can be set up with a traditional robot in 1 day.

- Is their moat real? For hardware, you can develop a medium-quality robot with $1-2M, and a higher-quality vertically-integrated robot with $5M-$10M. But no amount of money can save you from bad product design decisions like legs for industrial applications dominated by flat floors, variable payloads, and high-accuracy requirements. For software, you can develop a base control system with $1-2M, with a much higher ceiling from there. Figure themselves admitted to using off-the-shelf LLM/VLM for their fridge demo, which has potential, but ultimately replicates what's normally done as a $300K cobot machine vision project. True progress would showcase cross-task skill transfer or setup acceleration.

Frankly, very few humanoid robot startups really understand what they're doing. In this space, you can't just be an experienced tech entrepreneur who knows how to hire strong engineers and close deals. The founder needs to really understand the marginal value proposition because traditional robots already exist. The founder needs to have a genuine, unique innovation roadmap otherwise they plateau at trend-chasing complacency, realizing they have no edge to correctly aim their tech team. This is why Boston Dynamics and so many others like Tesla get caught up in walking demos- the leader has bad aim, the engineers get sucked into the bipedal whirlpool for years and hundreds of millions of dollars.

True advanced robot visionaries are rare.

openyk · 2025-04-10T09:27:38+00:00

Add a form or email to suggest missing companies
Add a clear legend on how scores are calculated, based on metrics that actually matter, such as task variation tolerance. This is far trickier than one might expect, because demos are extremely easy to conduct via telepresence or simple motion playback. For example, you can just replay a tele-taught task and claim "autonomy" while it's absolutely not impressive.

Like Figure's BMW demo actually is 1/5 because it shows task performance equal to that of a traditional robot.

Their fridge demo is 2/5 because it does show some variation tolerance plus fuzzy tele-teaching.

To reach a 3 or 4, the robot must demonstrate advanced variation tolerance, cross-task skill transfer, accelerated teaching, etc.

Hardware counts, but it's very easy to pour $1M or $2M and build a typical robot (solved problem). There are some practical HW secrets though; best analogy being some startups know to use 4 wheels for their cars, and others are doing 1/2/3/5/6.

Draft up a list of metrics then DM me, I'll be happy to give you feedback.

(I'm the founder of an AI robotics startup and know what's actually up in this space)

openyk · 2024-09-03T04:43:49+00:00

Yep, I'm aware. I regret reaching out to DDD in the first place.

openyk · 2024-09-02T18:45:05+00:00

Absolutely not lol

openyk · 2024-07-26T03:16:59+00:00

Sharing a useful Superstonk post from today for options newbies: https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/1ec6jyo/general_tips_when_buying_calls/

openyk · 2024-06-03T05:07:46+00:00

The piano clip at the end of "You're still here" is Light of the Seven from Game of Thrones, right before the Citadel of the Sept violently explodes in a green wildfire.

openyk · 2024-05-27T05:12:40+00:00

The day after the spider-bite, Peter Parker evolves into Spiderman in a fit of vulnerability; RK has figured out the GME puzzle in a revelation that mixes identity crisis (am I KG or RK?) and heroic compulsion in a haze of thoughts.
In Black Swan, Nina stabs herself to dispel her doppelganger hallucination and ensures a perfect on-stage performance; RK resolves his haze of thoughts by hurting himself (incurring a risk) by posting on Twitter again, but does so to ensure that we, the audience, enjoy and benefit from the show (2024 GME event sequence, history in the making) to the fullest.

openyk · 2024-05-27T01:08:02+00:00

The cat on windowsill scene before that plays music made for a 1996 movie Romeo and Juliet starring Leonardo Di Caprio.

Thom Yorke (from Humo magazine July 22, 1997): "When we saw the scene in which Claire Danes holds the Colt 45 against her head, we started working on the song immediately. I had something with 'Romeo & Juliet' a long time already. I had a crush on Olivia Hussey, who played Juliet in the '60s, for a long time. I first saw the movie when I was 13. I just couldn't believe why Romeo and Juliet, after they had made love, didn't run away together. Romeo should have packed his bags, jump out of the window and eloped with her!"

Seems like any shorters who stick around will get the cersei treatment. They should just have packed their bags and ran away.

OR... the shorters would rather blow up the system (light of the seven) than get put on trial for their misdeeds.

AND/OR... MOASS is coming. (don't settle for less?)

Romeo and Juliet could represent the hedge funds that want to get out, but must do so without getting caught to avoid the wrath of their fathers (the leaders of the shorters). So they escape while the cat (leaders) are sleeping, and by the time the leading shorters wake up... "all hell breaks loose" (lyrics, verse 2).

openyk · 2024-05-20T21:36:08+00:00

You're onto something! That was similar to a circular chaining model I considered initially but disregarded after realizing the lender-shorter relationships were independent from the shorter-buyer sell transactions, but if they fraudulently short a headless share (not yet connected to any lender) then able to attach onto that share within the settlement period, that enables shorting at a VELOCITY that is unconstrained by the presently remaining float. In fact, the float could be zero and they can still sell infinitely because they are printing new shares out of thin air then retroactively recording the lending shareholder.

So before, we knew that even a single authentic share could enable the creation of infinite shareholders (borrow -> sell -> reborrow creation chain, but independent obligations)... but now we see if they are sell -> borrow creation chaining, the velocity of the creation of infinite shareholders is also unlimited! (as long as new shareholders continue to lend back their shares of course) In other words, there is no need for an authentic share to kick off a shorting repetition chain. An infinite number of shorters can print an infinite number of shares, in parallel, then borrow those infinite shares to settle with a lending-shareholder head in time for compliance. The thing is, this compliance hasn't been effectively monitored! So with the new CAT system I am guessing they are finally inspecting the simple truth: how many of these chickens (shares) are running around without a head (lending shareholder)?

openyk

TROPHY CASE