Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ilya Sutskever's SSI Inc raises $1B

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

411–420 of 803 posts

Re: Ilya Sutskever's SSI Inc raises $1B

#411

Post by gwern »

gigatexal wrote: post #338
pembrook wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I get the cynicism (and yes, there is certainly some dumb money involved), it’s important to remember that every tech company that’s delivered 1000X returns was also seen as ridiculously overhyped/overvalued in its early days. Every. Single. One. It’s the same story with Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook/Meta, Microsoft, etc. etc. That’s the point of venture capital; making extremely risky bets spread across a wi…

> While I get the cynicism (and yes, there is certainly some dumb money involved), it’s important to remember that every tech company that’s delivered 1000X returns was also seen as ridiculously overhyped/overvalued in its early days. Every. Single. One. It’s the same story with Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook/Meta, Microsoft, etc. etc. Really? Selling goods online (Amazon) is not AGI. It didn’t take a huge leap to t…

> Really? Selling goods online (Amazon) is not AGI. It didn’t take a huge leap to think that bookstores on the web could scale. Nobody knew if it would be Amazon to pull it off, sure, but I mean ostensibly why not? (Yes, yes hindsight being what it is…)

I don't think you remember the dot-com era. Loads of people thought Amazon and Pets.com were hilarious ideas. Cliff Stoll wrote a whole book on how the Internet was going to do nothing useful and we were all going to buy stuff (yes, the books too) at bricks-and-mortar, which was rapturously received and got him into _Newsweek_ (back when everyone read that).

"We’re promised instant catalog shopping — just point and click for great deals. We’ll order airline tickets over the network, make restaurant reservations and negotiate sales contracts. Stores will become obsolete. So how come my local mall does more business in an afternoon than the entire Internet handles in a month?"

Re: Ilya Sutskever's SSI Inc raises $1B

#412

Post by kimbler »

gigatexal wrote: post #306

This being ycombinator and as such ostensibly has one or two (if not more) VCs as readers/commentators … can someone please tell me how these companies that are being invested in in the AI space are going to make returns on the money invested? What’s the business plan? (I’m not rich enough to be in these meetings) I just don’t see how the returns will happen. Open source LLMs exist and will get better. Is it just tha…

These VC’s are already lining up the exit as they are investing. They all sit on the boards of major corps and grease the acquisitions all the way through. The hit rate of the top funds is all about connections and enablement.

Re: Ilya Sutskever's SSI Inc raises $1B

#413

Post by krick »

This isn't very interesting itself, IMO, but it implies that they have something to sell investors. I wonder what it is. I kinda do understand that some bullshit elevator-pitch about how "we are the best" or even a name (Musk) is unfortunately sometimes enough in VC to invest vast amounts of money, but I don't know if it really happens often, and I hope there's more than that. So if there is more than that, I wonder what it is. What does Sutskever&Co have now that OpenAI doesn't, for example?

Re: Ilya Sutskever's SSI Inc raises $1B

#414

Post by BobbyJo »

dcchambers wrote: post #336
gigatexal wrote: post #306

This being ycombinator and as such ostensibly has one or two (if not more) VCs as readers/commentators … can someone please tell me how these companies that are being invested in in the AI space are going to make returns on the money invested? What’s the business plan? (I’m not rich enough to be in these meetings) I just don’t see how the returns will happen. Open source LLMs exist and will get better. Is it just tha…

I also don't understand it. If AGI is actually reached, capital as we know it basically becomes worthless. The entire structure of the modern economy and the society surrounding it collapses overnight. I also don't think there's any way the governments of the world let real AGI stay in the hands of private industry. If it happens, governments around the world will go to war to gain control of it. SSI would be nationa…

> If AGI is actually reached, capital as we know it basically becomes worthless

I see it as capital becoming infinitely more valuable and labor becoming worthless, since capital can be transmuted directly into labor at that point.

Re: Ilya Sutskever's SSI Inc raises $1B

#415

Post by blitzar »

gigatexal wrote: post #306

This being ycombinator and as such ostensibly has one or two (if not more) VCs as readers/commentators … can someone please tell me how these companies that are being invested in in the AI space are going to make returns on the money invested? What’s the business plan? (I’m not rich enough to be in these meetings) I just don’t see how the returns will happen. Open source LLMs exist and will get better. Is it just tha…

> companies that are being invested in in the AI space are going to make returns on the money invested

By selling to the "dumb(er) money" - if a Softbank / Time / Yahoo appears they can have it, if not you can always find willing buyers in an IPO.

Re: Ilya Sutskever's SSI Inc raises $1B

#416

Post by andyjohnson0 »

lawrenceyan wrote: post #394
dcchambers wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also don't understand it. If AGI is actually reached, capital as we know it basically becomes worthless. The entire structure of the modern economy and the society surrounding it collapses overnight. I also don't think there's any way the governments of the world let real AGI stay in the hands of private industry. If it happens, governments around the world will go to war to gain control of it. SSI would be nationa…

What you're talking about is something in the vein of exponential super intelligence. Realistically what actually ends up happening imo, we get human level AGI and hit a ceiling there. Agents replace large portions of the current service economy greatly increasing automation / efficiency for companies. People continue to live their lives, as the idea of having a human level AGI personal assistant becomes normalized a…

> Agents replace large portions of the current service economy greatly increasing automation / efficiency for companies.

> People continue to live their lives

Presumably large numbers of those people no longer have jobs, and therefore no income.

> we get human level AGI and hit a ceiling there

Recently I've been wondering if our best chance for a brake on runaway non-hard-takeoff superintelligence would be that the economy would be trashed.

Re: Ilya Sutskever's SSI Inc raises $1B

#417

Post by null0pointer »

koolala wrote: post #162

Doesn't this corrupt SafeAI's safe vision just like $1,000,000,000 corrupted OpenAI's open vision? How can investment like this not transform a company's mission into eventually paying back Billions and making Billions of dollars?

Yep, investment is an inevitably corrupting force for a company's mission. AI stuff is in a bit of a catch-22 though since doing anything AI related is so expensive you need to raise funds somehow.

Re: Ilya Sutskever's SSI Inc raises $1B

#418

Post by vkou »

brigadier132 wrote: post #404
lawrenceyan wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're talking about is something in the vein of exponential super intelligence. Realistically what actually ends up happening imo, we get human level AGI and hit a ceiling there. Agents replace large portions of the current service economy greatly increasing automation / efficiency for companies. People continue to live their lives, as the idea of having a human level AGI personal assistant becomes normalized a…

I think you underestimate what can be accomplished with human level agi. Human level agi could mean 1 million Von Neumann level intelligences cranking 24/7 on humanity's problems.

The biggest problem that humanity has from the perspective of the people with the capital necessary to deploy this is 'How to consolidate more wealth and power into their hands.'

One million Von Neumanns working on that 'problem' is not something I'm looking forward to.

Re: Ilya Sutskever's SSI Inc raises $1B

#419

Post by unyttigfjelltol »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #409
brigadier132 wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you underestimate what can be accomplished with human level agi. Human level agi could mean 1 million Von Neumann level intelligences cranking 24/7 on humanity's problems.

Only if there are no hardware limits, which seems highly unlikely.

Right, the comments are assuming an entrepreneur could conjure an army of brains out of nothing. In reality, the question is whether those brains are so much cheaper they open avenues currently unavailable. Would it be cheaper to hire an AGI or a human intern?
Post reply on HN