Back to Home11/16/2025, 4:56:47 PM

Three kinds of AI products work

100 points
99 comments

Mood

thoughtful

Sentiment

positive

Category

tech

Key topics

AI

product development

technology adoption

Debate intensity60/100

The article discusses three types of AI products that are effective, providing insights into successful AI product development. The author shares their expertise on what makes AI products work.

Snapshot generated from the HN discussion

Discussion Activity

Light discussion

First comment

11h

Peak period

2

Day 1

Avg / period

2

Comment distribution2 data points

Based on 2 loaded comments

Key moments

  1. 01Story posted

    11/16/2025, 4:56:47 PM

    2d ago

    Step 01
  2. 02First comment

    11/17/2025, 3:49:29 AM

    11h after posting

    Step 02
  3. 03Peak activity

    2 comments in Day 1

    Hottest window of the conversation

    Step 03
  4. 04Latest activity

    11/17/2025, 1:30:24 PM

    1d ago

    Step 04

Generating AI Summary...

Analyzing up to 500 comments to identify key contributors and discussion patterns

Discussion (99 comments)
Showing 2 comments of 99
KurSix
1d ago
To me, this classification overlooks the largest and arguably most profitable class of AI products: models that aren't the interface but are embedded deep within existing systems as infrastructure components, for example:

- Anti-fraud systems in fintech

- Supply chain optimization

- Predictive maintenance for equipment

- Models for medical image analysis

They don't have a "chat," and they aren't "agents", they are just APIs that solve one highly specialized task, but do so with extreme precision and reliability. They don't compete with ChatGPT because they solve completely different problems, and they're the ones that have been bringing in real money for years

sota_pop
2d ago
I could be aging myself, but what about the back-office software that’s been driving business operations for at least two decades that utilize SVMs and other techniques besides the transformer architecture?? I have always felt chat bots, although the most accessible, are the worst application of AI. Why would any business WANT to put layers of abstraction (sic ai chatbots) in between them and people who are potentially interested in paying them money? The famous book series got it right: “Automate the boring stuff” best use-cases for AI are embedded deeply within operational tasks, abstracted away completely, and used in applications where limiting scope/context of information makes traditional software methods overly cumbersome or intractable.

97 more comments available on Hacker News

ID: 45946498Type: storyLast synced: 11/16/2025, 9:42:59 PM

Want the full context?

Jump to the original sources

Read the primary article or dive into the live Hacker News thread when you're ready.