Live data from Hacker News

Ilya Sutskever's SSI Inc raises $1B

reuters.com

701–710 of 803 posts

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

#701
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)…

> 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. You will struggle to raise funds if the companies you bet on perform poorly; the worse your track record the less chances of raising money and earn income from it.

Track record is based on IRR mostly. See my other comment on the Lps below regarding the incentive structure and what they care about. This particular bet is almost a guaranteed markup, as Ilya will surely/likely raise another round. It’s also not a terrible bet to invest in a proven expert/founder. By the time these companies exit (if they ever) 15 years from now, the mega fund VC partner will probably be retired from all the cumulative fees and just playing golf and taking occasional board meetings. Cash on cash returns are very different to playing the IRR game. Of course they want to find real winners as well, but reality is there aren’t that many and they have so much money to allocate they will have to bet on marginal things that can at least show some paper gains.

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

#704
post #691

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Consciousness, intelligence, and all these other properties can be and are mutually exclusive. What will be most useful for humans is a general intelligence that has no motivation for survival and no emotions and only cares about the goals of the human that is in control of it. I have not seen a convincing argument that a useful general intelligence must have goals that evolve beyond what the human gives it and must be conscious. What I have seen are assertions without evidence, "AI must be this way" but I'm not convinced.

I can conceive of an LLM enhanced using other ML techniques that is capable of logical and spatial reasoning that is not conscious and I don't see why this would be impossible.

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

#705
post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would still need an objective to guide the evolution that was originally given by humans. Humans have the drive for survival and reproduction... what about AGI? How do we go from a really good algorithm to an independently motivated, autonomous super intelligence with free reign in the physical world? Perhaps we should worry once we have robot heads of state and robot CEOs. Something tells me the current, human he…

Someone will surely set its objective for survival and evolution.

That would be dumb and unethical but yes someone will do it and there will be many more AIs with access to greater computational power that will be set to protect against that kind of thing.

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

#706

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That type of reasoning really reminds of the Internet bubble.

Well the internet is worth trillions now.

The Internet is worth trillions to no one in particular.

Just as clean water is worth trillions to no one in particular. Or the air we breathe.

You can take an abstract, general category and use it to infer that some specific business will benefit greatly, but in practice, the greater the opportunity the less likely it is it will be monopolized, and the more likely it is it will be commoditized.

But, my comment was a reference to the magic thinking that goes into making predictions.

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

#707
post #265
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If public ownership means we give one guy a button to end the world, I'm not sure how's that's a meaningful difference.

No one single person can cause a nuclear detonation alone.

The President of the United States has sole nuclear launch authority. To stop him would either take the cabinet and VP invoking the 25th amendment and removing him from office, or a military officer to disobey direct orders.

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

#708

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you assuming this hypothetical intelligence will have any motivations beyond the ones we give it? Human's have complex motivations due to evolution, AI motivations are comparatively simple since they are artificially created.

A true super intelligence would need the ability to evolve, and would probably evolve its own wants and needs.

> A true super intelligence would need the ability to evolve, and would probably evolve its own wants and needs.

Why? This seems like your personal definition of what a super intelligence is. Why would we even want a super intelligence that can evolve on its own?

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

#709
post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once could be a fluke, twice sends an entirely different message.

Even once is a -fluke- war crime.

Oppsie daisy.

Still, you’d have to be quite an idiot to wait for the third time to listen eh?

Besides, the winners get to decide what’s a war crime or not.

And when the US started mass firebombing civilian Tokyo, it’s not like they were going to be able to just ‘meh, we’re good’ on that front. Compared to that hell, being nuked was humane.

And I don’t say that lightly.

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

#710
post #622

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree and also disagree. > 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 You are forgetting Japan in WWII and given casualty numbers from island hopping it was going to be a absolutely huge casualty count with US troops, probably something on the order of Englands losses during WW1. Which for them sent them on a…

I'll try to argue his point. The idea that Japan would have resisted to the last man and that a massive amphibious invasion would have been required is kind of a myth. The US pacific submarine fleet had sunk the majority of the Japanese merchant marine to the point that Japan was critically low on war materiel and food. The Japanese navy had lost all of its capital ships and there was a critical shortage of personnel…

I am looking at the numbers from operation downfall that Truman and senior members of the administration looked at which had between 500,000 to 1,000,000 lives lost on the US side for a Japan invasion/defeat. 406k US soldiers lost their lives in WW2 so that would have more than tripled the deaths from its current numbers. And as for WWI and British casualties which I mentioned earlier, the British lost around 885k troops during WWI so US would have exceeded that number even on the low end of casualties.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall#:~:text=Tru....

Post reply on HN