Good hire.
Meta invests $14.3B in Scale AI to kick-start superintelligence lab
321–330 of 507 posts
Re: Meta invests $14.3B in Scale AI to kick-start superintelligence lab
#322Earlier quoted context omitted.
Of all the tech companies, Meta is the most ruthless and shameless. You'd have to be a total fool to trust Zuck, especially Zuck who put billions into AR for not much return and now billions into AI to create lackluster lagging models.
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.
I don't think it's a big stretch to say that Meta has not only been more successful than Palantir at mass surveillance, but has also likely caused a greater magnitude of harm (a lot through negligence) when considering events like the genocide in Myanmar.
Re: Meta invests $14.3B in Scale AI to kick-start superintelligence lab
#323Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think this is kind of a philosphical distinction to a lot of people: the assumption is that a computer that can reason like a smart person but still runs at the speed of a computer would appear superintelligent to us. Speed is already the way we distinguish supercomputers from normal ones.
I'd say superintelligence is more about producing deeper insight, making more abstract links across domains, and advancing the frontiers of knowledge than about doing stuff faster. Thinking speed correlates with intelligence to some extent, but at the higher end the distinction between speed and quality becomes clear.
My POV, speed + good evaluation are all you need. Infinite monkeys and Shakespeare.
Re: Meta invests $14.3B in Scale AI to kick-start superintelligence lab
#324This appears to be a psuedo-acquisition, but with a strange format to appease regulators. Will this still be an exit event for employees or do they get screwed here?
Sounds like they're getting paid based on his note to employees: > "The proceeds from Meta's investment will be distributed to those of you who are shareholders and vested equity holders [...] The exceptional team here has been the key to our success, so I'm thrilled to be able to return the favor with this meaningful liquidity distribution." https://x.com/alexandr_wang/status/1933328165306577316
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Re: Meta invests $14.3B in Scale AI to kick-start superintelligence lab
#325Re: Meta invests $14.3B in Scale AI to kick-start superintelligence lab
#326Earlier 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.
Llama was kind of a forced hand though. Yknow, when the model was leaked?
Maybe for the original, now obsolete, version. But nobody forced them to release Llama 2, 3, and 4.
Re: Meta invests $14.3B in Scale AI to kick-start superintelligence lab
#327Earlier quoted context omitted.
If anything, "abstract links across domains" is the one area where even very low intelligence AI's will still have an edge, simply because any AI trained on general text has "learned" a whole lot of random knowledge about lots of different domains; more than any human could easily acquire. But again, this is true of AI's no matter how "smart" they are. Not related to any "super intelligence" specifically. Similarly,…
I don't think current models are capable of making abstract links across domains. They can latch onto superficial similarities, but I have yet to see an instance of a model making an unexpected and useful analogy. It's a high bar, but I think that's fair for declaring superintelligence. In general, I agree that these models are in some sense extremely knowledgeable, which suggests they are ripe for producing producti…
> It's a high bar, but I think that's fair for declaring superintelligence.
I have to disagree because the distinction between "superficial similarities" and genuinely "useful" analogies is pretty clearly one of degree. Spend enough time and effort asking even a low-intelligence AI about "dumb" similarities, and it'll eventually hit a new and perhaps "useful" analogy simply as a matter of luck. This becomes even easier if you can provide the AI with a lot of "context" input, which is something that models have been improving at. But either way it's not superintelligent or superhuman, just part of the general 'wild' weirdness of AI's as a whole.
Re: Meta invests $14.3B in Scale AI to kick-start superintelligence lab
#328Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fair enough. If you aren't willing to give your friend $14 billion to join your company so you can hang out more, then are you two really friends?
I could see a friend giving me 4% of his net worth on those terms, esp. if i might return a few percent, in the fullness of time.
It also seems like a sort of different situation with Zuck because, I’m pretty sure, he’ll still be able to get by with only 96% of his net worth.
Re: Meta invests $14.3B in Scale AI to kick-start superintelligence lab
#329Earlier quoted context omitted.
Meta “will have a 49% stake in the artificial intelligence startup, but will not have any voting power” Wouldn’t Scale’s board/execs still have a fiduciary duty to existing shareholders, not just Meta?
Yes, but Meta would be able to kick the board and find another one more willing to accept their proposal as the best for shareholders.
Power struggles like this are weird to me. Is kicking the board likely to succeed at 49%? If so it feels like the control percentage isn't the primary factor in actual control.
Re: Meta invests $14.3B in Scale AI to kick-start superintelligence lab
#330Earlier 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.
Meta “will have a 49% stake in the artificial intelligence startup, but will not have any voting power” Wouldn’t Scale’s board/execs still have a fiduciary duty to existing shareholders, not just Meta?
The prevailing theory is that Meta did a 49% deal so it didn't set off anti-trust alarm bells. In other words, the 49% doesn't give them ultimate power, but you can best believe when Meta tells them to jump, the board and the execs are going to ask "how high?".