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Ilya Sutskever's SSI Inc raises $1B

reuters.com

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Re: Ilya Sutskever's SSI Inc raises $1B

#141

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

delusional wrote: post #46
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For these kinds of capital-intensive startups, though, that almost seems like a requirement, and I guess there are really 2 "types" of valuations. In this case, everyone knows it takes hundreds of millions to train models. So I'm investors are essentially rolling the dice on an extremely well-regarded team. And if it takes about a billion just to get off the ground, the valuation would need to at least be in the coup…

This explains what would need to be true for this to make sense, but i doesn't explain how it makes sense right now. How is this going to ever pay the investors back? How is it going to raise more money at such an insane valuation? I just dont see how you justify such a crazy valuation from day 1 financially.

The company's pitch isn't exactly a secret. The one and only thing they're planning to do is build an ML model smarter than a human being, which would be immensely valuable for a wide variety of tasks that currently require human input. You see a lot of commentators jumping through hoops to deny that anyone could believe this is possible in the near future, but clearly they and their investors do.

Re: Ilya Sutskever's SSI Inc raises $1B

#142

Post by redbell »

paxys wrote: post #13

$1B raise, $5B valuation. For a company that is a couple months old and doesn't have a product or even a single line of code in production. Wild.

I'm neither a VC nor in the VC market, but I believe such valuation comes primarily from the name Ilya Sutskever. Having such a high-profile as the founder would give more credibility to the company, unlike what we witnessed in recent years where companies like Theranos et al. that were valued at tens of billions for no obvious reason. Despite having said the above, we might still agree that the AI hype is probably the second generation of the dot-com bubble.

Re: Ilya Sutskever's SSI Inc raises $1B

#143

Post by semiquaver »

davedx wrote: post #70
Yizahi wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is significant possibility that true AI (what Ilia calls superintelligence) is impossible to build using neural networks. So it is closer to some tokenbro project than to nuclear research. Or he will simply shift goalposts, and call some LLM superintelligent.

> There is significant possibility that true AI (what Ilia calls superintelligence) is impossible to build using neural networks What evidence can you provide to back up the statement of this "significant possibility"? Human brains use neural networks...

There’s always a “significant possibility” that something unprecedented will turn out to be infeasible with any particular approach. How could it be otherwise? Smart people have incorrectly believed we were on the precipice of AGI many times in the 80 years that artificial neural networks have been part of the AI toolbox.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_winter

Re: Ilya Sutskever's SSI Inc raises $1B

#144

Post by apwell23 »

xianshou wrote: post #19

Same funding as OpenAI when they started, but SSI explicitly declared their intention not to release a single product until superintelligence is reached. Closest thing we have to a Manhattan Project in the modern era?

> superintelligence is reached

i read the article but I am not sure how they know when this condition will be true.

Is this obvious to ppl reading this article? is it emperor has no clothes type situation ?

Re: Ilya Sutskever's SSI Inc raises $1B

#145

Post by digging »

paxys wrote: post #26
xianshou wrote: post #19

Same funding as OpenAI when they started, but SSI explicitly declared their intention not to release a single product until superintelligence is reached. Closest thing we have to a Manhattan Project in the modern era?

> Closest thing we have to a Manhattan Project in the modern era? Minus the urgency, scientific process, well-defined goals, target dates, public ownership, accountability...

Interesting attributes to mention...

The urgency was faked and less true of the Manhattan Project than it is of AGI safety. There was no nuclear weapons race; once it became clear that Germany had no chance of building atomic bombs, several scientists left the MP in protest, saying it was unnecessary and dangerous. However, the race to develop AGI is very real, and we also have no way of knowing how close anyone is to reaching it.

Likewise, the target dates were pretty meaningless. There was no race, and the atomic bombs weren't necessary to end the war with Japan either. (It can't be said with certainty one way or the other, but there's pretty strong evidence that their existence was not the decisive factor in surrender.)

Public ownership and accountability are also pretty odd things to say! Congress didn't even know about the Manhattan Project. Even Truman didn't know for a long time. Sure, it was run by employees of the government and funded by the government, but it was a secret project with far less public input than any US-based private AI companies today.

Re: Ilya Sutskever's SSI Inc raises $1B

#146

Post by rpozarickij »

moralestapia wrote: post #33
paxys wrote: post #13

$1B raise, $5B valuation. For a company that is a couple months old and doesn't have a product or even a single line of code in production. Wild.

It's because is Ilya. This deal was cooked way back, though, perhaps even before the coup. Now, can they make a product that makes at least $1B + 1 dollar in revenue? Doubt it, I honestly don't see a market for "AI safety/security".

> "AI security"

It looks like the aim of SSI is building safe AI, not just working on safety/security of AI. Both the article and their website [1] state this.

[1] https://ssi.inc

Re: Ilya Sutskever's SSI Inc raises $1B

#147

Post by planetpluta »

avocardio wrote: post #58

I don't understand how "safe" AI can raise that much money. If anything, they will have to spend double the time on red-teaming before releasing anything commercially. "Unsafe" AI seems much more profitable.

We don’t know the counter factual here… maybe if he called it “Unsafe Superintelligence Inc” they would have raised 5x! (though I have doubts about that)

Re: Ilya Sutskever's SSI Inc raises $1B

#149

Post by chii »

Yizahi wrote: post #61
paxys wrote: post #13

$1B raise, $5B valuation. For a company that is a couple months old and doesn't have a product or even a single line of code in production. Wild.

This feels like a situation with a sold out train to a popular destination, where people are already reselling their tickets for some crazy markup, and then suddenly railway decides to add one more train car and opens flash ticket sale. Investors feeling missing out on OpenAI and others are now hoping to catch this last train ticket to the AI.

except in this case, the train driver from the original train was "sacked" (some believe unfairly), and decided to get their own train to drive. Of course, the smoothness of the ride depends on the driver of the train.

Re: Ilya Sutskever's SSI Inc raises $1B

#150

Post by digging »

logicchains wrote: post #132
avocardio wrote: post #58

I don't understand how "safe" AI can raise that much money. If anything, they will have to spend double the time on red-teaming before releasing anything commercially. "Unsafe" AI seems much more profitable.

"Safe" means "aligned with the people controlling it". A powerful superhuman AI that blindly obeys would be incredibly valuable to any wannabe authoritarian or despot.

I mean, no, that's not what it means. It might be what we get, but not because "safety" is defined insanely, only because safety is extremely difficult and might be impossible.
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