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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

#791

Post by czl »

trashtester wrote: post #780
czl wrote: post #777

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> biology will create constraints. If you're male, you may be able to bench 200kg, but probably not 500kg unless your biology allows it. On evolutionary timeframes what biology allows can evolve and the hard limits are due to chemistry and physics. > there are costs to developing large brains. The benefits would not justify the costs, over evolutionary history. > Large brains come with a significant metabolic cost. T…

> Google "evolutionary spandrels" and you will learn there can be body features (large brains of whales) that are simply a byproduct of other evolutionary pressures rather than direct adaptation. If you're a 10-150 ton whale, a 2-10 kg brain isn't a significant cost. But if you're a 50kg primate, a brain of more than 1kg IS. For humanoids over the past 10 million years, there are very active evolutionary pressures to…

> Also, lighter bodies (relative to size) make us (in our natural form) extremaly capable long distance runners.

Humans' ability to run long distances effectively is due to a combination of factors, with the ability to sweat being one of the most crucial. Here are the key adaptations that make humans good endurance runners: a) Efficient sweating: Humans have a high density of sweat glands, allowing for effective thermoregulation during prolonged exercise. b) Bipedalism: Our two-legged gait is energy-efficient for long-distance movement. c) Lack of fur: This helps with heat dissipation. d) Breathing independence from gait: Unlike quadrupeds, our breathing isn't tied to our running stride, allowing for better oxygen intake.

Lighter bodies (relative to size) plays a role but there plenty of creatures that have light bodies relative to size that are not great at long distance running.

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

#792

Post by czl »

trashtester wrote: post #780
czl wrote: post #777

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> biology will create constraints. If you're male, you may be able to bench 200kg, but probably not 500kg unless your biology allows it. On evolutionary timeframes what biology allows can evolve and the hard limits are due to chemistry and physics. > there are costs to developing large brains. The benefits would not justify the costs, over evolutionary history. > Large brains come with a significant metabolic cost. T…

> Google "evolutionary spandrels" and you will learn there can be body features (large brains of whales) that are simply a byproduct of other evolutionary pressures rather than direct adaptation. If you're a 10-150 ton whale, a 2-10 kg brain isn't a significant cost. But if you're a 50kg primate, a brain of more than 1kg IS. For humanoids over the past 10 million years, there are very active evolutionary pressures to…

> Still, the brain grew to maybe 2-4 times the size over this period.

I read somewhere that the human brain makes up only about 2% of body weight but uses 20% of the body’s energy. While brain size has increased over time, brain size does not determine intelligence. The brain’s high energy use, constant activity, and complex processes are more important. Its metabolic activity, continuous glucose and oxygen consumption, neurotransmitter dynamics, and synaptic plasticity all play major roles in cognitive function. Intelligence is shaped by the brain’s efficiency, how well it forms and adjusts neural connections, and the energy it invests in processing information. Intelligence depends far more on how the brain works than on its size.

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

#794

Post by sensanaty »

ip26 wrote: post #574
steveBK123 wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

The voice assistants are too basic. As folks have said before, nobody trusts Alexa to place orders. But if Alexa was as competent as an intelligent & capable human secretary, you would never interact with Amazon.com again.

Would you not, though? Don't the large majority of people, and dare I say probably literally everyone who buys something off Amazon first check the actual listing before buying anything?

I wouldn't trust any kind of AI bot regardless of intelligence or usefulness to buy toilet paper blindly, yet alone something like a hard drive or whatever.

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

#795

Post by sensanaty »

denizener wrote: post #746
rl3 wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In addition, it's also a big assumption that money will continue to matter or hold its value in such a world.

It is also entirely possible that if we get to AGI, it just stops interacting with us completely. It is why I find the AI doomer stuff so ridiculous. I am surrounded by less intelligent lifeforms. I am not interested in some kind of genocide against the common ant or fly. I have no interest in interacting with them at all. It is boring.

I mean, I'm definitely interested in genociding mosquitos and flies, personally.

Of course the extremely unfortunate thing is they actually have a use in nature (flies are massive pollinators, mosquitos... get eaten by more useful things, I guess), so wouldn't actually do it, but it's nice to dream of a world without mozzies and flies

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

#796

Post by sensanaty »

apwell23 wrote: post #760
crappybird wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can dilute the term to whatever they want. I think when the pressure to release becomes too high, they can just stick a patch of "Superintelligence™" on their latest LLM and release it.

what do you make of ppl commenting here saying 'well they won't release till superintelligence' . Are these ppl merely gullible or coconspirators in the scam ?

There's billions (with a B), probably closing in on Trillions, riding on the AI hypewave. This forum is full of VCs and VC-adjacent people who have vested interests in AI companies blowing up and being successful, regardless of if it's actually useful.

If you check the 2024 YC batch, you'll notice pretty much every single one of them mentions AI in some form or another. I guarantee you the large majority of them are just looking to be bought out by some megacorp, because it's free money right now.

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

#797

Post by neom »

galahad_ wrote: post #790
neom wrote: post #569

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The person you're responding to has a very sharp view of the profession. imo it's more nuanced, but not very complicated. In Capitalism, capital flows, that's how it works, capital should be deployed. Larges pools of capital are typically put to work (this in itself is nuanced). The "put to work" is various types of deployment of the capital. The simplest way to look at this is risk. Lets take pension funds because w…

I can't understand one thing: why are pension funds so fond of risky capital investments? What's the problem with allocating that money into shares of a bunch of old, stable companies and getting a small but steady income? I can understand if a few people with lots of disposable money are looking for some suspense and thrills, using venture capital like others use a casino. But what's the point for pension funds, whi…

A better way to look at it is: if pension funds are not fond of risky investments, then what am I seeing?

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

#798

Post by satvikpendem »

Obscurity4340 wrote: post #662
robertlagrant wrote: post #642

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nvidia making massive profits is a sign of huge market inefficiency and potential opportunities for competition. Yep, but just as the first reading glasses were only available to the wealthy, and now anyone can have them, the inefficiency takes time to work out. It'll take a long time, especially given how vertically integrated Nvidia are.

How could people who actually like NEEDED glasses be productive or get around without them prior to glasses being developed and commodified?

Bad eyesight, especially myopia, was much rarer than today, with the leading hypothesis being that not enough sunlight exposure over one's growing years leads to it.

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

#799

Post by chakintosh »

lazide wrote: post #709
chakintosh wrote: post #703

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

By that point, Japan was already on its way out and resorted to flying manned bombs and airplanes into american warships. Nuking Japan wasn't for Japan, it was a show of force for the soviets who were developing their own nukes.

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

#800

Post by jordanb »

__loam wrote: post #622
subsubzero wrote: post #307

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…

Nimitz wanted to embargo Japan and starve them out.

The big problem that McArthur and others pointed out is that all the Japanese forces on the Asian mainland and left behind in the Island Hopping campaign through the Pacific were unlikely to surrender unless Japan itself was definitively defeated with the central government capitulating and aiding in the demobilization.

From their perspective the options were to either invade Japan and force a capitulation, or go back and keep fighting it out with every island citadel and throughout China, Indochina, Formosa, Korea, and Manchuria.

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