These numbers are absurd
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Meta invests $14.3B in Scale AI to kick-start superintelligence lab
131–140 of 507 posts
Re: Meta invests $14.3B in Scale AI to kick-start superintelligence lab
#132These numbers are absurd
Yeah, half of my AI skepticism isn't that the tools don't work. It's that I'm having a tough time figuring out how these things are ever going to produce ROI. Like, at some point the end product needs to be a literal genie's lamp or fountain of youth.
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Re: Meta invests $14.3B in Scale AI to kick-start superintelligence lab
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
Off base when considering the likes of Palantir and many others. Not a fan of the person or many of Meta's business practices. But Meta has given a lot back with Llama and PyTorch, among many other open source contributions. Which others in the space are not doing.
React made quite a mess of the web just so we couldn't browse with JavaScript disabled, thereby allowing Facebook to track us through those like buttons that popped up everywhere. Are there hidden barbs in llama and pytorch too? I'm not close enough to them to know.
It was probably inevitable even without React. Easier to serve the same JSON to my web application and iPhone/android apps, Teams bot, etc.
Re: Meta invests $14.3B in Scale AI to kick-start superintelligence lab
#134Anyone know what scale does these days beyond labeling tools that would make them this interesting to Meta? Data labeling tools seem more of a traditional software application and not much to do with AI models themselves that would be somewhat easily replicated, but guessing my impression is out of date. Also now apparently their CEO is leaving [1], so the idea that they were super impressed with him doesn't seem to…
Scale has also built massive amounts of proprietary datasets that they license to the big players in training. Meta, Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, etc. all use Scale data in training. So, the play I’m guessing is to shut that tap off for everyone else now, and double down on using Scale to generate more proprietary datasets.
Isn’t this monopolistic?
Re: Meta invests $14.3B in Scale AI to kick-start superintelligence lab
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
2 different topics, who you are (as a person, or company or other group of people) isn't some scale where you add + and - and judge final number. Bad/evil deeds define us 1000x more than positive ones and thats our lasting legacy and how we are/will be judged.
I agree with all of that. The point was to counter the statement that Meta is the most ruthless and shameless of all companies. The most ruthless and shameless company would not give back a lot of useful free open source software for hobbyists and companies to use.
Yes they would? Mega corps can afford to commoditize various layers which prevents competition from accessing any profit. Meanwhile Meta et al can capture that profit in their own layers instead.
Re: Meta invests $14.3B in Scale AI to kick-start superintelligence lab
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
Off base when considering the likes of Palantir and many others. Not a fan of the person or many of Meta's business practices. But Meta has given a lot back with Llama and PyTorch, among many other open source contributions. Which others in the space are not doing.
React made quite a mess of the web just so we couldn't browse with JavaScript disabled, thereby allowing Facebook to track us through those like buttons that popped up everywhere. Are there hidden barbs in llama and pytorch too? I'm not close enough to them to know.
Not a fan of Facebook or React (though React Native is IMHO the one eyed among the blind for cross platform mobile development), but I think that's a bit far fetched. I do think Facebook has (or had?) genuinely an engineering culture that wants to give something back.
Re: Meta invests $14.3B in Scale AI to kick-start superintelligence lab
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
What is the big risk here? He has the cash to burn and he has full control of his position. Nothing will happen to him if he wastes a few Billions. He is not some poor single mom who has to decide between fixing her car and paying for kid’s Christmas presents
The risk here is that you've now put a person with no track record of success outside of being good at sales in charge of your AI efforts. You're betting that he's going to be the one to attract talent. The right leadership might be able to get talent to work for a discount. The wrong one would lead to talent not coming at all.
If Meta is known for anything besides user privacy violations it's for taking risks that often pay off. They were laughed at for overpaying for Instagram and Whatsapp, yet both were instrumental to their current success. Their continued bet on VR is still highly criticized, yet they were the first Big Tech company in the space, they're the current market leaders, and I'm sure it will have huge ROI in the near future. So is this bet on Wang, as ludicrous as it may seem now.
Re: Meta invests $14.3B in Scale AI to kick-start superintelligence lab
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
If Scale never creates value, he will lose billions of his own money due to his indirect holding in Meta.
I don't think people understand that once you're a billionaire with full ownership of your business and no risk of being ousted, making or losing billions is irrelevant.
Billionaires don't stop caring about looking like dumbasses just because they're extremely wealthy.
Re: Meta invests $14.3B in Scale AI to kick-start superintelligence lab
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
The risk here is that you've now put a person with no track record of success outside of being good at sales in charge of your AI efforts. You're betting that he's going to be the one to attract talent. The right leadership might be able to get talent to work for a discount. The wrong one would lead to talent not coming at all.
If Meta is known for anything besides user privacy violations it's for taking risks that often pay off. They were laughed at for overpaying for Instagram and Whatsapp, yet both were instrumental to their current success. Their continued bet on VR is still highly criticized, yet they were the first Big Tech company in the space, they're the current market leaders, and I'm sure it will have huge ROI in the near future.…
I've been all for it, look at my comment elsewhere in this thread. For me this is a huge mistake of a transaction that's neither accretive financially nor talent-wise.
This isn't the Instagram or Whatsapp transaction. Scale's been exclusively in the data labeling space.
Let's put this into perspective. OpenAI bought Jony Ive for about $5bln. Meta spent 3x that on Wang.
Re: Meta invests $14.3B in Scale AI to kick-start superintelligence lab
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
Scale has also built massive amounts of proprietary datasets that they license to the big players in training. Meta, Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, etc. all use Scale data in training. So, the play I’m guessing is to shut that tap off for everyone else now, and double down on using Scale to generate more proprietary datasets.
Isn’t this monopolistic?
Which is a primary reason Meta took a 49% stake in Scale vs buying them outright.