Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Meta invests $14.3B in Scale AI to kick-start superintelligence lab

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 507 posts

Re: Meta invests $14.3B in Scale AI to kick-start superintelligence lab

#161

Post by shermantanktop »

RankingMember wrote: post #138
mlinhares wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Maybe, but it doesn’t seem to stop them from actually looking like dumbasses. But that wealth attracts fans who constantly proclaim that their latest idea is brilliant.

Maybe we should pity the poor billionaires, hopped up on T or ketamine and trapped in an echo chamber…but I’ll think they’ll be ok.

Re: Meta invests $14.3B in Scale AI to kick-start superintelligence lab

#162

Post by johnecheck »

stingraycharles wrote: post #150
KaoruAoiShiho wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They already have a chatgpt competitor, you can talk to llama in all the facebook apps, they're just clearly inferior.

Where can I talk to llama in their apps? Serious question.

I use Messenger but not Facebook. There's a big "Ask Meta AI or Search" bar at the top of the app's main page.

Re: Meta invests $14.3B in Scale AI to kick-start superintelligence lab

#163

Post by porridgeraisin »

stingraycharles wrote: post #150
KaoruAoiShiho wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They already have a chatgpt competitor, you can talk to llama in all the facebook apps, they're just clearly inferior.

Where can I talk to llama in their apps? Serious question.

Whatsapp you can tag @meta ai in any chat, have a separate chat with meta ai, forward messages to the meta ai chat for fact checks, etc.

Re: Meta invests $14.3B in Scale AI to kick-start superintelligence lab

#164

Post by [deleted] »

akudha wrote: post #84
paxys wrote: post #79

Spending $15B to hire a 28 year old to build you some AI is certainly a move. You can call Zuck many things, but "afraid to take risks" isn't one of them.

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

[deleted]

Re: Meta invests $14.3B in Scale AI to kick-start superintelligence lab

#165

Post by bko »

akudha wrote: post #84
paxys wrote: post #79

Spending $15B to hire a 28 year old to build you some AI is certainly a move. You can call Zuck many things, but "afraid to take risks" isn't one of them.

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

Cash is the least concern. I listened to a podcast about the history of Microsoft and there were times where Gates said "at least it was only money" or something to that effect.

Microsoft floundered an entire decade on mobile and Windows Vista when they were going to lose out on Google that was literally paying OEMs to use their software and Apple, who had a vertical stack and made money off hardware. Huge setback in terms of focus that took them a long time to recover from.

The main constraint is focus of talent to work on one thing. This is a huge move in terms of coordinated effort into this space that may or may not pay off.

Re: Meta invests $14.3B in Scale AI to kick-start superintelligence lab

#166

Post by hoofhearted »

paxys wrote: post #94
hoofhearted wrote: post #88

This is a very interesting buy because Scale AI has been spamming anyone and everyone on freelancer platforms; and they don’t have a very good reputation online so far from people they have contracted with. Just go look at what people say about them on Reddit. It’s rare to find anything positive, or even a single brand champion that had some sort of great experience with them.

Just like Uber, Doordash & co don't have a good reputation among their contract workers. The entire business model is based on exploitation of labor. That doesn't mean it isn't valuable (in a capitalist sense).

No, those were entirely different user experiences when the services you mentioned were gaining traction and finding product market fit.

UberCab and Palo Alto Delivery were both services that had great success at user experiences for everyone involved including drivers, riders, small businesses, people ordering food. These experiences created brand champions who went out and raved about these technological innovations nonstop.

I don’t see any mentions of any positive experiences with Scale Ai here on HN or Reddit.. maybe that’s the reason behind the acquisition?

Re: Meta invests $14.3B in Scale AI to kick-start superintelligence lab

#167

Post by vonneumannstan »

7moritz7 wrote: post #143
vonneumannstan wrote: post #105

I'm really not sure why they are acquihiring a digital sweatshop owner. It's not obvious that Wang has any special insight or expertise related to building a Superintelligence other than Data Annotation...

He knows what data cohere, openai and anthropic commission which is a major advantage and I doubt they'll continue relying on scale ai

I assume you could individually poach entire teams away from all 3 companies for much less than $100M so this is still a strange move.

Re: Meta invests $14.3B in Scale AI to kick-start superintelligence lab

#168

Post by bathtub365 »

imiric wrote: post #137
laborcontract wrote: post #104

Earlier 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.…

What is convincing you that VR will have huge ROI in the near future? We are over 10 years in to the modern VR era and despite even Meta’s strong device sales it’s still very niche. Apple is trying their hardest and even they had to correct their sales expectations.

Re: Meta invests $14.3B in Scale AI to kick-start superintelligence lab

#169

Post by abletonlive »

WXLCKNO wrote: post #130
paxys wrote: post #79

Spending $15B to hire a 28 year old to build you some AI is certainly a move. You can call Zuck many things, but "afraid to take risks" isn't one of them.

Mentioning his age to diminish his value and accomplishments is certainly a move. How old are you and what have you achieved more than Alexandr Wang?

Just downvote them and move on. HN gets more like reddit everyday and you can tell it's the reddit sentiment in this thread that's taken over

Re: Meta invests $14.3B in Scale AI to kick-start superintelligence lab

#170

Post by coliveira »

laborcontract wrote: post #104
akudha wrote: post #84

Earlier 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.

What the commenter is saying is that this is no risk at all because $14B is negligible money for Meta at a year-long scale. It can always be written off as an investment that didn't work. In a company with $1.73T market cap, this is sometimes the loss you get in a single day of trading.
Post reply on HN