Re:Google I/O 2017
by killjoywashere on Thursday May 18, 2017 @11:59AM
(#14368348)
I'm not complaining, and I didn't say anything about DARPA. The parent was complaining that it's going to get harder to break into ML as a start-up. My point was to illustrate some of the reasons that big players want to play with other big players.
DARPA is DoD.
Re:Google I/O 2017
by killjoywashere on Sunday May 21, 2017 @05:43PM
(#14389410)
DARPA is a small fraction of DoD: it represents 3.6% of the R&D budget, and less than 0.5% of the total DoD budget.
Enterprise sales takes lots of demos, trials on subsets of data, support arrangements, relationship building etc.
NASA, DoD? FRA, NHTSA? You're looking at a 10 year lead time.
DARPA programs have a fixed, 2 year span, and they aren't allowed to be renewed. It's deliver something in 2 years or fail.
You and I both know that those same two guys working for AFGAM are still the same two guys.
But it's not. Or at least those two people don't deliver a product, they deliver research outcomes, which then takes double the number of people to turn into reliable software, which then takes double that number of people to make deployable and run at scale, which then takes double that number of people to support. And then you need a sales team.