Firshman: Academic ML researchers make poor software users due to six-month cycles
Ben Firshman · A Brief History of the Open Source AI Hacker - with Ben Firshman of Replicate · Feb 28, 2024 · at 28:01
Ben Firshman, CEO of Replicate, explains why early Replicate pivoted away from building model demonstration tools for academic researchers.
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“And they were like, what was funny about that is they were like, not very good users. Like, they were doing great work, obviously, but the way that research worked is that they just made, like, one thing every six months, and they just fired and forgot it. Like, they published this piece of paper and, like, done. I've published it. So they, like, output it to Replicate, and then they just stopped using Replicate. You know, they were, like, once every six monthly users. And that wasn't great for us.”
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