Ways YC has changed in the last year
It's a risky investment strategy to put so much emphasis on AI startups. Not only do you have the already volatile nature of early-stage software companies (which YC is of course used to), but this is a bet on whether machine learning, chiefly LLMs, are going to continue to outperform other technologies and become sustainable to run.There's no question in my mind that 'Open'AI is subsidizing the vast majority of LLM research and use today. If the efficacy of LLaMA and its derivatives actually start to approach GPT4+ in any meaningful way, there is quickly going to be a shortage of suitable compute that will completely dwarf the now-subsided Bitcoin mining craze. Plus, untainted training data is going to be harder to find amongst the text contaminated with mountains of early LLM drivel.As a technology expert, I couldn't in all honesty say that I would want to have money in the YC fund right now. But if it pays off, it could be the biggest software windfall since social networking took off at the beginning of the 2010s.