Did they just buy a "head of AI" for 14b?
And didn't they already have a "head of AI" who had actual bona fides? (LeCun)
Meta invests $14.3B in Scale AI to kick-start superintelligence lab
211–220 of 507 posts
Re: Meta invests $14.3B in Scale AI to kick-start superintelligence lab
#212Spending $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
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Re: Meta invests $14.3B in Scale AI to kick-start superintelligence lab
#213Is this the same company that has their recruiters (or whatever the hell they're called) spamming me incessantly via all my emails, even the throwaway ones I've used literally one single time that they presumably got via some unscrupulous means, about "annotating" data for training AI? And their rate is something laughable like 20 euros an hour?
We truly live in a clown world when a casual $14B is being chucked at garbage like this, I hope those Iranian nukes turn out to be real this time and I get to be the first in line to be cleansed via nuclear fire, 'cause I'm tired boss.
Re: Meta invests $14.3B in Scale AI to kick-start superintelligence lab
#214Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a pretty common saying in the tech industry - "if you can solve a problem by throwing money at it then it isn't really a problem".
I've been in the tech industry a quarter century, I've never heard this "pretty common saying" before, and most importantly I don't think it makes any sense. If anything, tech excels at disruption, where smaller competitors and new ideas are able to solve problems where "just throwing money at it" has failed.
I challenge you to name a tech unicorn who's biggest advantage wasn't the ability to hemorrhage money over a period of time that would've killed any normal business stone dead.
Re: Meta invests $14.3B in Scale AI to kick-start superintelligence lab
#215OpenAI uses scale via eg data made by humans through outlier. Part of this move could probably be seen as starving competition from data as much as buying talent at scale.
Every frontier lab has moved (or is moving) away from scale to other vendors/platforms/bespoke solutions.
Doesn't scale contract out/aggregate many smaller companies, and that's where the bespoke solutions are?
Re: Meta invests $14.3B in Scale AI to kick-start superintelligence lab
#216Anyone 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.
It's a smart purchase, it's just that I don't see how these datasets factor into super-intelligence. I don't think you can create a super-intelligent AI with more human data, even if it's high-quality data from paid human contributors.
Unless we watered-down the definition of super-intelligent AI. To me, super-intelligence means an AI that has an intelligence that dwarfs anything theoretically possible from a human mind. Borderline God-like. I've noticed that some people have referred to super-intelligent AI as simply AI that's about as intelligent as Albert Einstein in effectively all domains. In the latter case, maybe you could get there with a lot of very, very good data, but it's also still a leap of imagination for me.
Re: Meta invests $14.3B in Scale AI to kick-start superintelligence lab
#217Earlier 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.
I wondered that. But then huge revenue streams for Scale basically disappear immediately. Is it worth Meta spending all that money just to stop competitors using Scale? There are competitors who I am sure would be very eager to get the money from Google, OpenAI, Anthropic etc that was previously going to Scale. So Meta spends all that money for basically nothing because the competitors will just fill the gap if Scale…
Yeah, also the industry could come up with their own Scale if they were forced to.
But probs. it just makes sense on paper, Scale's revenue will pay this for itself and what they could do is to give/keep the best training sets for Meta, for "free" now.
Zuck's not an idiot. The Instagram and WhatsApp acquisitions were phenomenal in hindsight.
Re: Meta invests $14.3B in Scale AI to kick-start superintelligence lab
#218Spending $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.
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Re: Meta invests $14.3B in Scale AI to kick-start superintelligence lab
#219Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Dropped out of MIT after freshman year and starts Scale to do data labeling I was in their YC batch, so two notes: 1. He didn't start it himself 2. They weren't doing data labeling when they entered YC. They pivoted to this.
I didn't mean to imply he started it alone. Though his co-founder Lucy Guo is almost as bizarre of a story as Wang himself. I'm curious, what were they doing before data labeling?
With all the respect that is due, Lucy didn't do cr*p and also left quite early.
Scale is 99% Alex's credit.
Re: Meta invests $14.3B in Scale AI to kick-start superintelligence lab
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
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