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Emad Mostaque resigned as CEO of Stability AI

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Re: Emad Mostaque resigned as CEO of Stability AI

#261

Post by baobabKoodaa »

_xivi wrote: post #136
ec109685 wrote: post #20

Previous controversy involving the CEO (2023): https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrickcai/2023/06/04/stable-di... “ In reality, Mostaque has a bachelor’s degree, not a master’s degree from Oxford. The hedge fund’s banner year was followed by one so poor that it shut down months later. The U.N. hasn’t worked with him for years. And while Stable Diffusion was the main reason for his own startup Stability AI’s ascent to pr…

> What he is good at is taking other people’s work and putting his name on it, or doing stuff that you can’t check if it’s true. I have to say, this is a quite common ignorant statement that's said about almost every CEO. I'm not sure if there's more to it in this particular case, but no, CEOs aren't stealing your work. Similarly, marketers aren't parasites. Designers aren't there to waste your time. Many engineers s…

Emad jumped on the train after the major inventions were invented and PoCs were made. He could not have contributed to them unless he had a time machine. (Yes he contributed to the training costs of SD1.4 but the time point when he made the decision was not early research.)

Re: Emad Mostaque resigned as CEO of Stability AI

#262

Post by nabakin »

mejutoco wrote: post #226
mirekrusin wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SETI made sense because there is a lot of data where you download chunk and do expensive computation and return thin result. Model training is unlike that. It's large state that is constantly updated and updates require full, up to date state. This means you cannot distribute it efficiently over slow network with many smaller workers. That's why NVIDIA is providing scalable clusters with specialized connectivity so t…

That is the challenging part indeed. But if we think of mixture of experts models outperforming "monolithic" models, why not? Maybe instead of 8 you can do 1000 and that is easy to paralellize. It sounds worth exploring to me.

I don't think MoE allows for that either. You'd have to come up with a whole new architecture that allows parts to be trained independently and still somehow be merged together in the end.

Re: Emad Mostaque resigned as CEO of Stability AI

#263

Post by toenail »

LunaSea wrote: post #253
throw23324 wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's true. Latin America already knows it, USA and Europe are yet to catch up. Most of crypto is bullshit, but at the very least Bitcoin is a massive, massive use case.

What can I currently buy with Bitcoin?

Peace of mind

Re: Emad Mostaque resigned as CEO of Stability AI

#264

Post by l33tman »

Eisenstein wrote: post #204
throwaway11460 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps the hundreds of millions in VC investment and company value?

I'm not sure I understand. Are you saying that if a company gets a valuation because of an investment, that creates value?

How would you otherwise define value, except the value that someone is willing to assign to a share of a company or goods when purchasing?

Value can go up and down though..

Re: Emad Mostaque resigned as CEO of Stability AI

#266

Post by achow »

jacky2wong wrote: post #256

I think Stability is in an interesting situation. A few suggestions on its direction and current state: 1. Stability AI's loss of talent at the foundational research layer is worrying. They've lost an incredibly expensive moat and there's enough unsolved problems in the foundation layer (faster models, more energy efficient models, etc.) to ensure Stability provides differentiated offerings. Step 1 should be rectifyi…

> Deep UX wrappers for image editing and video editing while owning the end to end stack for image generation or video generation would be a great focal point for Stability that separates itself from the competition. People don't pay for images, they pay for images that solves their problems.

Recently, during an interview [1], when questioned about OpenAI's Sora, Shantanu Narayen (Adobe CEO) gave an interesting perspective on where value is created. His view (paraphrased generously)..

GenAI entails 3 'layers': Data, Foundational Models and the Interface Layer.

Why Sora may not be a big threat is because Adobe operates not only at first two layers (Data and Foundational model) but also at the interface layer. Not only Adobe perhaps knows better than anyone else what is need and workflow of a moviemaker, but I guess most importantly they already have moviemakers as their customers.

So product companies like Adobe (& Microsoft, Google etc.) are in better position to monetize GenAI. Pure-play AI companies like OpenAI are perhaps in B2B business. Actually, they maybe really in api business, they would have great data, would be building great foundational models and giving results of those as APIs; which other companies who are closer to their unique set of customers with their unique needs would be able to monetize and some part of those $$ flows back to pure-play AI companies

[1] At 5 mins mark.. https://www.cnbc.com/video/2024/02/20/adobe-ceo-shantanu-nar...

Re: Emad Mostaque resigned as CEO of Stability AI

#267

Post by DrSiemer »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #202
Satam wrote: post #18

The underlying reason is that current AI businesses and models are failing to capture any significant economic value. We're going to get there, but it will take some more work. It won't be decades, but a few more years would be helpful

>It won't be decades, but a few more years would be helpful I see it this way to be honest: - companies will aggresively try to use AI in the next 2-3 years, downsizing themselves in the meantime - the 3-5 year launch mark will show that downsizing was an awful idea and took too many hits to really be worth it. I don't know if those hits will be in profits (depends on the company) but it will clearly hit that uncanny…

Companies are aware of the current AI generation being a tool and not a full replacement (or they will be after the first experiments they perform).

They will not downsize, they will train their workforce or hire replacements that are willing to pick up these more powerful and efficient tools. In the hands of a skilled professional there will be no uncanny valley.

This will result in surplus funds, that can be invested in more talent, which in turn will keep feeding AI development. The only way is up.

Not allowing copyright on AI generated work is a ridiculous and untenable decision that will be overturned eventually.

Re: Emad Mostaque resigned as CEO of Stability AI

#268

Post by _xivi »

baobabKoodaa wrote: post #261
_xivi wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What he is good at is taking other people’s work and putting his name on it, or doing stuff that you can’t check if it’s true. I have to say, this is a quite common ignorant statement that's said about almost every CEO. I'm not sure if there's more to it in this particular case, but no, CEOs aren't stealing your work. Similarly, marketers aren't parasites. Designers aren't there to waste your time. Many engineers s…

Emad jumped on the train after the major inventions were invented and PoCs were made. He could not have contributed to them unless he had a time machine. (Yes he contributed to the training costs of SD1.4 but the time point when he made the decision was not early research.)

Sorry I'm not well versed in the story and it's still not clear to me what he did wrong.

Where is the controversy here? Is the CEO expected to contribute to research? there seems to be some context I'm missing

Re: Emad Mostaque resigned as CEO of Stability AI

#269

Post by nojvek »

janalsncm wrote: post #213
stale2002 wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if it becomes a hyper libertarian hellscape. Releasing cool open source AI tech doesn't turn the world into a libertarian hellscape. You are taking the memes way too seriously. Mostly people just joke around on twitter while are also building tech startups. e/acc isn't overthrowing the government.

You may want to read Marc Andreessen’s manifesto. E/acc isn’t just about “releasing cool AI tech”. It means unrestricted technological progress. Unrestricted, including from annoying things like consumer protection, environmental concerns, or even national security. If e/acc was just about making cool open source stuff and posting memes on the Internet, you wouldn’t need a new term for it, that’s what people have bee…

If Marc writes something it doesn’t become the definition of e/acc. Marc is hyperbolic and he gets a lot of clicks and eyeballs. As a VC though, he does it for his interest.

E/acc has many interpretations. In the most basic sense it means “technology accelerates growth”. One should work on better technology and making it widely distributed. Instead of giving away money, one can have the biggest impact on humanity with e/acc.

we’ve been effectively accelerating for the past 200 years.

Nothing hyper libertarian there.

Re: Emad Mostaque resigned as CEO of Stability AI

#270

Post by livrem »

huytersd wrote: post #41
Satam wrote: post #18

The underlying reason is that current AI businesses and models are failing to capture any significant economic value. We're going to get there, but it will take some more work. It won't be decades, but a few more years would be helpful

OpenAI and midjourney have millions of paying customers.

Stability has dreamstudio.ai, but it never seemed like they were seriously investing in it to try to compete with Midjourney?
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