I had a friend who wanted to start a coin counting by mail business. The customer mails the coins in a flat rate package and then you count them and in exchange the people get a gift card to a local restaurant.

  • bassman1805@alien.topB
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    Not quite a “business”, but the kind of get-rich-quick scheme that thematically fits with others here: A former roommate wanted to learn about AI so he could make an algorithm capable of trading stocks and cryptocoins for profit.

    Like, dude.

    1. You have a high school education. That isn’t a slight against you, but you’re talking about something on the frontiers of computer science research (this was years ago when it wasn’t nearly as much of a pop culture phenomenon).

    2. AI is nowhere near as intelligent as you think it is, and isn’t capable of understanding any context apart from what it was trained on.

    3. There are people with masters’ degrees and probably PhDs working for the big financial firms that almost certainly are using AI to inform their decision-making. But they also have actual experience in the finance field to contextualize the info AI produces. What makes you think you’re going to do better than them?

    • Geminii27@alien.topB
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      Banks and investment firms can hire people with multiple doctorates in mathematics and programming, and at least as far as anyone knows no-one’s found a way to game the stock market consistently and regularly using math or AI.

      Admittedly, it would be far less difficult to give the appearance that you’d managed to do so, and sell a line of hooey to a bunch of idiot investors.

      • qookie_puss@alien.topOPB
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        Are you familiar with Renaissance technologies? Former math professor started a hedge fund and only hired math phds. He’s one of the richest ment in the world now.

      • bassman1805@alien.topB
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        I’m 100% certain that no investment firm has “solved” the stock market using AI, but I’m like 80% sure that most of them have AI-trained tools that don’t make decisions themselves, but are used to inform the humans that do.

        There’s just too much information in that job for any human to process, so if you can find a way to “filter the noise” a little bit better than the next firm, you have a competitive edge.

    • LittleMsSavoirFaire@alien.topB
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      That’s a pretty good sign of an entrepreneur though. To see technology unfolding and make a guess where it’s going. I can’t get in on automation or robotics with just little old me, but I did make a guess where e-commerce was going and got in with it.