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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

#481

Post by TezNoble1988 »

motohagiography wrote: post #472

CFO's here, let's say I raise a round like that. What do you do with $1B in cash to manage it in the short and near term though? Is it just stuck in the money market or t-bills or what? Even if the growth of the company is the main bet, that cash has to exist as something with a better return than cash. I assume that service is what SV bank provided before it tanked, but someone has to manage that cash for the few ye…

Sometimes, these very large rounds are delivered in tranches based on milestones. It's possible that SSI didn't receive the entire $1BN at the close of the fundraise but rather can "call capital," much like a VC fund does, as it needs it based on scaling.

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

#482

Post by mtlmtlmtlmtl »

romeros wrote: post #457
snowwrestler wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The TMV (Total Market Value) of solving AGI is infinity. And furthermore, if AGI is solved, the TMV of pretty much everything else drops to zero. I feel like these extreme numbers are a pretty obvious clue that we’re talking about something that is completely imaginary. Like I could put “perpetual motion machine” into those sentences and the same logic holds.

The intuition is pretty spot on though. We don't need to get to AGI. Just making progress along the way to AGI can do plenty of damage. 1. AI-driven medical procedures: Healthcare Cost = $0. 2. Access to world class education: Cost of education = $0 3. Transportation: Cheap Autonomous vehicles powered by Solar. 4. Scientific research: AI will accelerate scientific progress by coming up with novel hypotheses and then…

Yeah, definitely no magical thinking here. Nothing is free. Computers cost money and energy. Infrastructure costs money and energy. Even if no human is in the loop(who says this is even desirable?), all of the things you mention require infrastructure, computers, materials. Meaning there's a cost. Also, the idea that "AI law enforcement" is somehow perfect just goes to illustrates GP's point. Sure, if we define "AGI" as something which can do anything perfectly at no cost, then it has infinite value. But that's not a reasonable definition of AGI. And it's exactly the AI analogue of a perpetual motion machine.

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

#483

Post by sowbug »

snowwrestler wrote: post #445
jedberg wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The TMV (Total Market Value) of solving AGI is infinity. And furthermore, if AGI is solved, the TMV of pretty much everything else drops to zero. The play here is to basically invest in all possible players who might reach AGI, because if one of them does, you just hit the infinite money hack. And maybe with SSI you've saved the world too.

> The TMV (Total Market Value) of solving AGI is infinity. And furthermore, if AGI is solved, the TMV of pretty much everything else drops to zero. I feel like these extreme numbers are a pretty obvious clue that we’re talking about something that is completely imaginary. Like I could put “perpetual motion machine” into those sentences and the same logic holds.

It's not crazy to believe that capitalizing* human-level intelligence would reap unimaginably large financial rewards.

*Capitalizing as in turning into an owned capital asset that throws off income.

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

#484

Post by philipkglass »

teqsun wrote: post #218

We don't even understand how the brain functions completely, not even close. Until we have a complete understanding of how our own GI works down to the exact bio-mechanical level, we can't achieve AGI. That's the theoretical basis and path for achieving AGI (if it's even possible). I'm tired of all the "we stick enough data in the magic black box blender and ta-da! AGI!" Every giant technological break-through throug…

Every giant technological break-through throughout history has had a massive underpinning of understanding before ever achieving it.

Historically, there have been a lot of cases where technological breakthroughs happened first and conceptual understanding followed later.

The first industrially useful steam engine was invented in 1712 [1] but the classical thermodynamic relationship between heat and work was not developed until 1824 [2].

There was a vast chemical industry before scientists really understood what atoms were, how many distinct kinds of atoms there are, or how they form molecules. It was only 20th century quantum mechanics that properly describes something as simple as a hydrogen molecule. That didn't prevent chemists from developing complex synthetic chemicals [3]. It did mean that they had to rely more on guesses and experiments than on clear theory.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_steam_engine#Ne...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflections_on_the_Motive_Powe...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigo_dye#Chemical_synthesis

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

#485

Post by qeternity »

TezNoble1988 wrote: post #481
motohagiography wrote: post #472

CFO's here, let's say I raise a round like that. What do you do with $1B in cash to manage it in the short and near term though? Is it just stuck in the money market or t-bills or what? Even if the growth of the company is the main bet, that cash has to exist as something with a better return than cash. I assume that service is what SV bank provided before it tanked, but someone has to manage that cash for the few ye…

Sometimes, these very large rounds are delivered in tranches based on milestones. It's possible that SSI didn't receive the entire $1BN at the close of the fundraise but rather can "call capital," much like a VC fund does, as it needs it based on scaling.

> Sometimes, these very large rounds are delivered in tranches based on milestones

Almost always, even not so large rounds.

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

#486

Post by lxgr »

davedx wrote: post #389
aithrowaway1987 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a very good paper in Nature showing this definitively: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41437933 Modern ANN architectures are not actually capable of long-term learning in the same way animals are, even stodgy old dogs that don't learn new tricks. ANNs are not a plausible model for the brain, even if they emulate certain parts of the brain (the cerebellum, but not the cortex) I will add that transformer…

> Modern ANN architectures are not actually capable of long-term learning What do you think training (and fine-tuning) does?

That's not how we (today) practically interact with LLMs, though.

No LLM currently adapts to the tasks its given with an iteration cycle shorter than on the order of months (assuming your conversations serve as future training data; otherwise not at all).

No current LLM can digest its "experiences", form hypotheses (at least outside of being queried), run thought experiments, then actual experiments, and then update based on the outcome.

Not because it's fundamentally impossible (it might or might not be), but because we practically haven't built anything even remotely approaching that type of architecture.

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

#487

Post by lxgr »

jedberg wrote: post #330
gigatexal wrote: post #306

This being ycombinator and as such ostensibly has one or two (if not more) VCs as readers/commentators … can someone please tell me how these companies that are being invested in in the AI space are going to make returns on the money invested? What’s the business plan? (I’m not rich enough to be in these meetings) I just don’t see how the returns will happen. Open source LLMs exist and will get better. Is it just tha…

The TMV (Total Market Value) of solving AGI is infinity. And furthermore, if AGI is solved, the TMV of pretty much everything else drops to zero. The play here is to basically invest in all possible players who might reach AGI, because if one of them does, you just hit the infinite money hack. And maybe with SSI you've saved the world too.

> The TMV (Total Market Value) of solving AGI is infinity.

That's obviously nonsense, given that in a finite observable universe, no market value can be infinite.

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

#488

Post by hyeonwho4 »

jedberg wrote: post #330
gigatexal wrote: post #306

This being ycombinator and as such ostensibly has one or two (if not more) VCs as readers/commentators … can someone please tell me how these companies that are being invested in in the AI space are going to make returns on the money invested? What’s the business plan? (I’m not rich enough to be in these meetings) I just don’t see how the returns will happen. Open source LLMs exist and will get better. Is it just tha…

The TMV (Total Market Value) of solving AGI is infinity. And furthermore, if AGI is solved, the TMV of pretty much everything else drops to zero. The play here is to basically invest in all possible players who might reach AGI, because if one of them does, you just hit the infinite money hack. And maybe with SSI you've saved the world too.

> The TMV (Total Market Value) of solving AGI is infinity. And furthermore, if AGI is solved, the TMV of pretty much everything else drops to zero.

There's a paradox which appears when AI GDP gets to be greater than say 50% of world GDP: we're pumping up all these economic numbers, generating all the electricity and computational substrate, but do actual humans benefit, or is it economic growth for economic growth's sake? Where is the value for actual humans?

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

#489

Post by furyofantares »

steveBK123 wrote: post #440
furyofantares wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a VC so maybe you don't care what I think, I'm not sure. Last night as my 8yo was listening to childrens audio books going to sleep, she asked me to have it alternate book A then B then A then B. I thought, idunno maybe I can work out a way to do this. Maybe the app has playlists and maaaaaaaaaaybe has a way to set a playlist on repeat. Or maybe you just can't do this in the app at all. I just sat there and s…

How is this any different than the (lack of) business model of all the voice assistants? How good does it have to be, how many features does it have to have, how accurate does its need to be.. in order for people to pay anything? And how much are people actually willing to spend against the $XX Billion of investment? Again it just seems like "sell to AAPL/GOOG/MSFT and let them figure it out".

> How is this any different than the (lack of) business model of all the voice assistants?

Voice assistants do a small subset of the things you can already do easily on your phone. Competing with things you can already do easily on your phone is very hard; touch interfaces are extremely accessible, in many ways more accessible than voice. Current voice assistants only being able to do a small subset of that makes them not really very valuable.

And we aren't updating and rewriting all the world's software to expose its functionality to voice assistants because the voice assistant needs to be programmed to do each of those things. Each possible interaction must be planned and implemented invidually.

I think the bet is that we WILL be doing substantially that, updating and rewriting all the software, now that we can make them do things that are NOT easy to do with a phone or with a computer. And we can do so without designing every individual interaction; we can expose the building blocks and common interactions and LLMs may be able to map much more specific user desires onto those.

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

#490

Post by mgfist »

EGreg wrote: post #378
mgfist wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but a private cannot become a general without decades of experience. What we see with ilya is not dissimilar. I don't see why it's bad that people are more hesitant to give a talented 18 year old $1B than the guy who's been at the forefront of AI innovation.

Necessary but not sufficient And sometimes not even necessary. Paris Hilton got a music distribution deal overnight cause of her dad’s capital!

> And sometimes not even necessary. Paris Hilton got a music distribution deal overnight cause of her dad’s capital!

Nepotism is a tangential point, and yes I agree that it's a bad thing. Ilya did not get this deal through nepotism, he got it through his past accomplishments, much like how a general gets promoted after many years of exemplary work.

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