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I really dislike this sort of journalism. Theranos was founded by a 19 year old too. That one didn't work out so well. Was it because the founder was so young? The board so oblivious? (a bit of both if you read the book) What does it really matter how "old" the founder is, does the business have a workable business plan? Can it be profitable? Do people pay enough money for its goods and services to return a net incom…
I like how the investors rationalized this devil's deal and the usurpation of the poor: "If you could be pulling a rickshaw or labeling data in an air-conditioned internet café, the latter is a better job."
Human powered AI for the future! Because artificial intelligence is not.
Hey everyone! I'm Alex, CEO/founder of Scale! I just wanted to chime in that we're a YC company as well (S16), and I'm thankful to the HN community for having been supportive through our whole journey.
How do you plan to make money once the self-driving hype dies down or becomes a solved problem?
Second, self-driving as a problem space will need labels for a very long time. In an application where (1) verifiable model performance is paramount, and (2) the models need to be extremely robust for cars to be safe, the need for labeled data is only magnified.
> It’s built a set of software tools that take a first pass at marking up pictures before handing them off to a network of some 30,000 contract workers, who then perform the finishing touches. Machine learning indeed.
To be clear, there is real machine learning that makes the labeling more efficient. You can see some videos of what this looks like in this Twitter thread: https://twitter.com/BW/status/1158407524216909826
I really dislike this sort of journalism. Theranos was founded by a 19 year old too. That one didn't work out so well. Was it because the founder was so young? The board so oblivious? (a bit of both if you read the book) What does it really matter how "old" the founder is, does the business have a workable business plan? Can it be profitable? Do people pay enough money for its goods and services to return a net incom…
Incidentally this frame is what got the most upvotes, compared to more neutral framing of the new valuation. [3 points] Scale AI (YC S16) raises $100M at $1B+ valuation to go beyond AI data labeling: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20615657 [11 points] Scale (YC S16) Raises $100M from Accel and Founders Fund at $1B Valuation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20614672
In essence, the company pays third worlders a pittance to transfer humanity's skills to the machine. The skill transfer is limited to what can be done with a mouse and screen, but since that's where most human ability is currently manifested, it's hardly a limitation. What happens to the serfs once the transfer is complete? Do they realize they are exchanging temporary wages for eternal futility? I like how the inves…
and this isn't wrong either
"If you could be pulling a rickshaw or labeling data in an air-conditioned internet café, the latter is a better job."
[deleted]
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How do you plan to make money once the self-driving hype dies down or becomes a solved problem?
Self-driving is one of many applications of AI/ML to the real world, each of which likely requires high-quality labeled data to truly be production-ready. This includes other robotics, self-checkout like Amazon Go, natural language understanding, and more. Second, self-driving as a problem space will need labels for a very long time. In an application where (1) verifiable model performance is paramount, and (2) the m…