I think this was super interesting, it sounds like he’s leaning more into “open” than openai is. “In disruptive tech, closed-source moats are fleeting. Even OpenAI’s closed-source model can’t prevent others from catching up. “Therefore, our real moat lies in our team’s growth—accumulating know-how, fostering an innovative culture. Open-sourcing and publishing papers don’t result in significant losses. For technologis…
Says someone who personally has 50-100 billion USD. And no, it's not net worth through corp shares. The guy is essentially his own LP.
They are nice words, ironically though their product is an exact clone of a US product (apart from the data stealing discussion). You could argue the cheaper aspect is innovating, but that's what China has been doing for many products.
To the best of my knowledge, there's nothing quite like R1-Zero released by OpenAI or others, they seem to really be pushing innovation. Relevant ARC-Prize post and discussion from yesterday: https://arcprize.org/blog/r1-zero-r1-results-analysis https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42868390
An iteration at best, some Chinese electric cars have a better battery then Tesla and are cheaper. Yet would hardly call them innovative as he claims the chinese should become. It's actually what the Chinese have been doing, copying and making it cheaper with slightly different features.
It’s a pretty common phrase for “what’s the ultimate goal?” I don’t think it’s meant to be taken as a chess metaphor.
While less figurative, I don't see how "what's the ultimate goal for large AI models" makes it less scary. Some of it might have to do with my having recently watched Dune Prophecy (set in the aftermath of the Butlerian Jihad) but this recent rapid progress in AI is putting me in somewhat of an apocalyptic mindset.
In a world where work doesn't exist, what happens to a society built on work ethic? What is an economy without labor?
You're describing a lot of tech companies like Google that had all these different orgs that were money sinks not related to a direct source of revenue and funded by dominance in search and high margins. And these programs didn't necessarily yield great creative products. Quite the opposite. Whereas if you have some objective measure that's driving your decisions, like revenue or customer engagement (proxy for useful…
Having the right culture is easier said than done. The enshittification of nearly everything can largely be attributed to the difficulty of maintaining that culture of open-ended creation without direct accountability to revenue.
have to disagree there - the enshittification of nearly everything is 100% attributable to the seductive nature of rent seeking (more specifically, trying to gouge ever more in recurring revenue from people who you try to ensure have no other options). even companies who have innovative products and positive revenue streams have gone down that road.
It's a great interview throughout, but I was thrown off by this strange question (which I found to be much more interesting than the answer): > An Yong: What do you envision as the endgame for large AI models? I don't know if it has a different meaning/connotation in Chinese, but reading this metaphor with a Chess connotation scared me. If there is a game, who are the players? what is the victory condition? will ther…
Isn't "endgame" a common expression to mean "the end", "the place where there's no progress anymore" etc ?
I think it means more "the place where there's no existential risk any more"
Having the right culture is easier said than done. The enshittification of nearly everything can largely be attributed to the difficulty of maintaining that culture of open-ended creation without direct accountability to revenue.
have to disagree there - the enshittification of nearly everything is 100% attributable to the seductive nature of rent seeking (more specifically, trying to gouge ever more in recurring revenue from people who you try to ensure have no other options). even companies who have innovative products and positive revenue streams have gone down that road.
I mean, why do you think they are rent seeking in the first place?
(Hint: to make a profit and deliver profits to shareholders and investors)