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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

#691

Post by Yizahi »

brigadier132 wrote: post #663
Yizahi wrote: post #640

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any intelligence on the level of average human and for sure on the level above it will be able to learn. And learning means it will acquire new motivations, among other things. Fixed motivation thing is simply a program, not AI. A very advanced program maybe, but ultimately just a scaled up version of the stuff we already have. AI will be different, if we will create it.

> And learning means it will acquire new motivations This conclusion doesn't logically follow. > Fixed motivation thing is simply a program, not AI I don't agree with this definition. AI used to be just "could it solve the turing test". Anyway, something with non-fixed motivations is simply just not that useful for humans so why would we even create it? This is the problem with talking about AI, a lot of people have…

Disclaimer - I don't consider current LLMs as (I)ntelligent in the AI, so when I wrote AI in the comment above it was equivalent to the AGI/ASI as currently advertised by LLM corpos.

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

#692

Post by trashtester »

leesec wrote: post #229

Again I read the comments and can't think of any place less optimistic or understanding of technology than Hackernews. Lot's of armchair critics thinking they know better than the guy who help built AlexNet. I should be surprised but I'm not anymore, just disapointed. One of the smartest computer science researchers is taking a stab at the most important problem of our lifetimes, we should be cheering him on.

The same thing happened to Slashdot around 2010.

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

#693

Post by js8 »

gizajob wrote: post #613
openrisk wrote: post #611

Who would have thought that vectorized linear algebra will be at the center of so much financial speculation? There is a silver lining though. Even if it all goes to near-zero (most likely outcome for all VC investments anyway) the digital world will be one where fast matrix multiply is thoroughly commoditized. This is not a trivial feat. In a sense this will be the true end of the Wintel era. The old world of isolat…

“Who knows what the actual (financial) winners of this brave new era will be” Nvidia

Computronium is the new gold.

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

#694

Post by lmm »

dartos wrote: post #109
sirspacey wrote: post #85

Lots of dismissive comments here. Ilya proved himself as a leader, scientist, and engineer over the past decade with OpenAI for creating break-through after break-through that no one else had. He’s raised enough to compete at the level of Grok, Claude, et al. He’s offering investors a pure play AGI investment, possibly one of the only organizations available to do so. Who else would you give $1B to pursue that? That’…

All I’m saying is you used the word “if” a lot there. AGI assumes exponential, preferably infinite and continuous improvement, something unseen before in business or nature. Neither siri nor Alexa were sold as AGI and neither alone come close to a $1B product. gpt and other LLMs has quickly become a commodity, with AI companies racing to the bottom for inference costs. I don’t really see the plan, product wise. Moreo…

> AI is obviously not going to improve exponentially forever (literally nothing in the observed universe does)

Sure, but it doesn't have to continue forever to be wildly profitable. If it can keep the exponential growth running for another couple of rounds, that's enough to make everyone involved rich. No-one knows quite where the limit is, so it can reasonably be worth a gamble.

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

#695

Post by trashtester »

robertlagrant wrote: post #683
trashtester wrote: post #664

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We have no evidence that superintelligence will be developed. Fundamentally, we have no evidence of anything that will happen in the future. All we do is to extrapolate from the past through the present, typically using some kind of theory of how the world operates. The belief that we will eventually (whether it's this year or in 1000+ years), really only hinges on the following 3 assumptions: 1) The human brain is…

> Assumption 3 is mostly techno-optimism, or an extrapolation of the trend that we are able to build ever more advanced devices. This is your weak link. I don't see why progress will be a straight line and not a sloping-off curve. You shouldn't see the progress we've made in vehicle speed and assume we can hit the speed of light.

> This is your weak link.

I don't think so at all. I'm personally convinced that humanity EVENTUALLY will build something more "intelligent" than human brains.

> I don't see

I see

> You shouldn't see the progress we've made in vehicle speed and assume we can hit the speed of light

There are laws of Physics that prevent us from moving faster than the speed of light. There IS a corresponding limit for computation [1], but it's about as far from the human brain's ability as the speed of light is from human running speed.

I'm sure some people who saw the first cars thought they could never possibly become faster than a horse.

Making ASI has no more reason to be impossible than to build something faster than the fastest animal, or (by stretching it), something faster than the speed of sound (which was supposed to be impossible).

There is simply no reason to think that the human brain is at a global maximum when it comes to intelligence.

Evolutionary history points towards brain size being limited by a combination of what is safe for the female hip width and also what amount of energy cost can be justified by increasing the size of the brain.

Those who really think that humans have reached the peak, like David Deutsch, tend to think that the brain operates as a Turing Machine. And while a human brain CAN act like a very underpowered Turing Machine if given huge/infinite amounts of paper and time, that's not how most of our actual thought process function in reality.

Since our ACTUAL thinking generally does NOT use Turing Complete computational facilities but rather relies on most information being stored in the actual neural net, the size of that net is a limiting factor for what mental operations a human can perform.

I would claim that ONE way to create an object significantly more intelligent than current humans would be through genetic manipulation that would produce a "human" with a neocortex several times the size of what regular humans have.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_speed_limit

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

#696

Post by 11thEarlOfMar »

trashtester wrote: post #675
rpeden wrote: post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or possibly NT::.com I remember seeing interviews with Nortel's CEO where he bragged that most internet backbone traffic was handled by Nortel hardware. Things didn't quite work out how he thought they were going to work out. I think Nvidia is better positioned than Cisco or Nortel were during the dotcom crash, but does anyone actually think Nvidia's current performance is sustainable? It doesn't seem realistic to be…

People who fought in WW1, thought WW2 would be similar. Especially on the winning side. There is no specific reason to assume that AI will be similar to the dotcom boom/bust. AI may just as easily be like the introduction of the steam engine at the start of the industrial revolution, just sped up.

Indeed, but a lot of railroad startups went out of business because their capital investments far exceeded the revenue growth and they went bankrupt. I'd bet the same for AM radio companies in the 1920s. When new technologies create attractive business opportunities, there frequently is an initial overinvestment. The billions pouring into AI far exceeds what went into .COM, and much of it will return pennies. The investors who win are the ones who can pick the B&Os, RCAs and GOOGs out of the flock before everyone else.[0]

[0] "Planning and construction of railroads in the United States progressed rapidly and haphazardly, without direction or supervision from the states that granted charters to construct them. Before 1840 most surveys were made for short passenger lines which proved to be financially unprofitable. Because steam-powered railroads had stiff competition from canal companies, many partially completed lines were abandoned."

-- https://www.loc.gov/collections/railroad-maps-1828-to-1900/a...

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

#697

Post by trashtester »

11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #696
trashtester wrote: post #675

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who fought in WW1, thought WW2 would be similar. Especially on the winning side. There is no specific reason to assume that AI will be similar to the dotcom boom/bust. AI may just as easily be like the introduction of the steam engine at the start of the industrial revolution, just sped up.

Indeed, but a lot of railroad startups went out of business because their capital investments far exceeded the revenue growth and they went bankrupt. I'd bet the same for AM radio companies in the 1920s. When new technologies create attractive business opportunities, there frequently is an initial overinvestment. The billions pouring into AI far exceeds what went into .COM, and much of it will return pennies. The inv…

> Indeed, but a lot of railroad startups went out of business because their capital investments far exceeded the revenue growth and they went bankrupt

That was similar to what happened during the dotcom bubble.

The difference this time, is that most of the funding comes from companies with huge profit margins. As long as the leadership in Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft and Amazon (not to mention Elon) believes that AI is coming soon, there will be funding.

Obviously, most startups will fail. But even if 19 fail and 1 succeed, if you invest in all, you're likely to make money.

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

#698

Post by trashtester »

hartator wrote: post #422
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…

I think the wishful end goal is AGI. Picture something 1,000 smarter than a human. The potential value is waaaay bigger than any present company or even government. Probably won’t happen. But, that’s the reasoning.

Even if you can produce an IQ=250 AI, which is barely ASI, the value is close to infinite if you're the only one controlling it and you can have as many instances running as you want.

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

#699

Post by jhylau »

hello0904 wrote: post #567
jhylau wrote: post #559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VCs at the big/mega funds make most of their money from fees, they don't actually care as much about the potential portfolio investment exits 10-15 years from now. What they care MOST about is the ability to raise another fund in 2-3 years, so they can milk more fees from LPs. i.e. 2% fee PER YEAR on a 5bn fund is a lot of guaranteed risk-free money. To be able to achieve that is entirely dependent on two things: 1)…

So the question I have is, who are these LP's and why are they demanding funds go into "sexy" ideas? I mean it probably depends on the LP and what is their vision. Not all apples are red, come in many varieties and some for cider others for pies. Am I wrong?

These LPs at mega funds are typically partners/associates at pension funds or endowments that can write the 8-9figure checks. They are not super sophisticated and they typically do not stay at their jobs long enough to see the cash on cash returns 15 years later. Nor are they incentivized to care either. These guys are salaried employees with MBAs and get annual bonuses based on IRR (paper gains). Hence the priority is generating IRR , which in this case is very likely as Ilya will raise a few more rounds. Of course, Lps are getting smarter and are increasingly making more demands. But there is just so much capital to allocate for these mega funds, inevitable that some ideas are half baked.

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

#700

Post by jhylau »

rawrawrawrr wrote: post #566
jhylau wrote: post #559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VCs at the big/mega funds make most of their money from fees, they don't actually care as much about the potential portfolio investment exits 10-15 years from now. What they care MOST about is the ability to raise another fund in 2-3 years, so they can milk more fees from LPs. i.e. 2% fee PER YEAR on a 5bn fund is a lot of guaranteed risk-free money. To be able to achieve that is entirely dependent on two things: 1)…

Are you a VC? If they really didn't care about their investment exits, that would be crazy.

It’s not that they don’t care, of course they want to find winners. It’s just that A) there is so much capital to allocate that they have to allocate to marginal ideas B) their priorities are to raise their next fund which means focusing on vanity metrics like IRR and paper markups C) The incentive structure in VC pushes them to invested based on motivated reasoning. Remember VC returns are cyclical, and many vintages underperform the public markets and particularly large funds do worse simply because they have too much capital to allocate and too few great ideas.
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