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

nytimes.com

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

#351

Post by koakuma-chan »

moralestapia wrote: post #217
mattlondon wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Yeah, also the industry could come up with their own Scale if they were forced to

I worked at Outlier and it was such a garbage treatment

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

#352

Post by koakuma-chan »

andytratt wrote: post #191
tyre wrote: post #157

Earlier 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.

nor did he finish it himself. the Scale team has always been extremely talent-dense. but execution is everything, and Alex has certainly been the dictator executing without peer or co-leads for over half a decade now. "API for human labor" a la MTurk was the original idea, was it not? pretty close to the data labeling thesis.

> "API for human labor" a la MTurk was the original idea, was it not?

That's how spammers bypassed captcha for decades

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

#354

Post by whiplash451 »

imiric wrote: post #338
const_cast wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think everyone is greatly overestimating VR. The thing is, I can imagine some futuristic version of AI that transforms humanity. But with VR, even in my wildest dreams with all the problems solved, it’s still just second best to smartphones and computers. Imagine the perfect headset. Tiny, battery lasts forever, photo-realistic. I would still rather browse the Internet on my phone. I’d rather do my work on my lapto…

> What is the VR adding? Nothing but extra hoops to just through to get things done. It gives you maximum immersion into a digital world. Rather than view it through a rectangular 2D window, it can encompass 360 degrees of your vision in full 3D. If you don't see how this would be appealing for consuming content, work, entertainment, etc., then I can't convince you otherwise. VR adoption has always been held back by…

Didn’t people say the same thing about 3D TV?

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

#355

Post by Henchman21 »

It doesn’t seem at all wise to give the least ethical among us access to a super intelligence. Not trying to single out Zuck specifically, though his challenges with ethics do seem well documented.

Rather, I’m speaking about the entire industry. Humanity isn’t demanding this, only those at the top seem to want it, and they seem to want it so they can keep more share of the pie for themselves, and decrease the size of everyone else’s share.

It feels like we’re at a very ugly crossroads.

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

#356

Post by logicchains »

rybosome wrote: post #124
krosaen wrote: post #92

Anyone 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 seems very short-sighted given how far Meta's latest model release was behind Qwen and DeepSeek, both of which relied heavily on automatically generated reasoning/math/coding data to achieve impressive results, not human annotated data. I.e. Scale's data is not going to help Meta build a decent reasoning model.

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

#357

Post by bamboozled »

Henchman21 wrote: post #355

It doesn’t seem at all wise to give the least ethical among us access to a super intelligence. Not trying to single out Zuck specifically, though his challenges with ethics do seem well documented. Rather, I’m speaking about the entire industry. Humanity isn’t demanding this, only those at the top seem to want it, and they seem to want it so they can keep more share of the pie for themselves, and decrease the size of…

Sorry, can you tell me what’s new ?

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

#358

Post by psb217 »

zozbot234 wrote: post #327
psb217 wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 easi…

I think you misunderstood what I meant about setting a high bar. First, passing the bar is a necessary but not sufficient condition for superintelligence. Secondly, by "fair for" I meant it's fair to set a high bar, not that this particular bar is the one fair bar for measuring intelligence. It's obvious that usefulness of an analogy generator is a matter of degree. Eg, a uniform random string generator is guaranteed to produce all possible insightful analogies, but would not be considered useful or intelligent.

I think you're basically agreeing with me. Ie, current models are not superintelligent. Even though they can "think" super fast, they don't pass a minimum bar of producing novel and useful connections between domains without significant human intervention. And, our evaluation of their abilities is clouded by the way in which their intelligence differs from our own.

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

#360

Post by strict9 »

fhd2 wrote: post #136
__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is true. I've been to several conferences where FB sent engineers to talk about their open source projects or how they used a particular language or framework.

I remember the conflicted feeling of strongly disliking their products and leadership but liking their contributions. Same energy but more intense in both directions many years later.

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