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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

#451

Post by egillie »

laborcontract wrote: post #98
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and not much to do with AI models themselves that would be somewhat easily replicated, but guessing my impression is out of date.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…

This is by all indications the world's most expensive acquihire of a single person. Reporting has been that Zuckerberg has seen Wang as a confidant of sorts, and has proposed a vision of AI that's said to be non consensus.

Where did you find the reporting about the non consensus ai view? That’s the most interesting take I’ve heard on this

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

#452

Post by twelve40 »

paxys wrote: post #89
akudha wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the big risk here? He has the cash to burn and he has full control of his position. Nothing will happen to him if he wastes a few Billions. He is not some poor single mom who has to decide between fixing her car and paying for kid’s Christmas presents

Spending $15B is a risk. Yes they have the money, but we're talking a quarter of Meta's annual income. That's not nothing. And money concerns aside, Meta needs to be a major player in AI. If they have made the wrong bet with Scale AI & Wang then the company will suffer in the long term.

> Meta needs to be a major player in AI

Honest question, why do they so existentially need to be a major player in AI? It's a social network that connects people, serves UGC and some spam/ads, and sells advertisement. Same but with photos for IG, same but with messages for Whatsap. Which part of this will die without AI? If they are obsessed with chatting with an AI bot on Whatsapp, just plug in grok or openai like Telegram, is that the killer feature worth bazillions of dollars?

(everything else seems like a failed experiment, VR, Libra, Facebook phone, whatever, nobody even remembers half these things)

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

#453

Post by gsf_emergency_2 »

paxys wrote: post #146
ml-anon wrote: post #85

The only way to understand this is by knowing: Meta already has two (!!) AI labs who are already at existential odds with one-another and both are in the process of failing spectacularly. One (FAIR) is lead by Rob Fergus (who? exactly!) because the previous lead quit. Relatively little gossip on that one other than top AI labs have their pick of outgoing talent. The other (GenAI) is lead by Ahmad Al-Dahle (who? exact…

This is exactly why Zuck feels he needs a Sam Altman type in charge. They have the labs, the researchers, the GPUs, and unlimited cash to burn. Yet it takes more than all that to drive outcomes. Llama 4 is fine but still a distant 6th or 7th in the AI race. Everyone is too busy playing corporate politics. They need an outsider to come shake things up.

It's not that he needs a Sam Altman, but that he cannot be Sam Altman (for path-dependent reasons related to his standing in international politics),

not any advantage in virtue (or vices, for that matter)

In national politics, Sam is toe to toe with Elon,which is to say, not great, not terrible

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

#454

Post by anonym00se1 »

dongobread wrote: post #391
paxys wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly why Zuck feels he needs a Sam Altman type in charge. They have the labs, the researchers, the GPUs, and unlimited cash to burn. Yet it takes more than all that to drive outcomes. Llama 4 is fine but still a distant 6th or 7th in the AI race. Everyone is too busy playing corporate politics. They need an outsider to come shake things up.

The corporate politics at Meta is the result of Zuck's own decisions. Even in big tech, Meta is (along with Amazon) rather famous for its highly political and backstabby culture. This is because these two companies have extremely performance-review oriented cultures where results need to be proven every quarter or you're grounds for laying off. Labs known for being innovative all share the same trait of allowing rese…

I may or may not have worked there for 4 years and may or may not be able to confirm that Meta is one of the most poorly run companies I've ever seen.

They are, at best, 25-33% efficient at taking talent+money and turning it into something. Their PSC process creates the wrong incentives, they either ignore or punish the type of behavior you actually want, and talented people either leave (especially after their cliff) or are turned into mediocre performers by Meta's awful culture.

Or so I've heard.

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

#455

Post by twelve40 »

wan23 wrote: post #184
stingraycharles wrote: post #30

From my perspective, Meta is doing pretty reasonable with their AI compared to eg Apple. What is their end goal with AI? I understand Google, Anthropic and OpenAI try to cater to a certain audience with their AI products. I understand the way Apple wants (but is failing) to integrate AI into their products. What’s Meta’s strategy here? What’s their vision?

Meta monetizes content. AI makes it easier and cheaper to create content. If everyone has access to high quality AI, high quality content may be more plentiful and that content can be posted on Meta's platforms, which would make it more money.

Still confused, i show up to "consume content" from people i follow, not from Meta. Sure, occasional trash and spam and ads, and "recommended", and "promoted", but mostly things that people post. If content creators still come to post on say Instagram, which provides distribution and monetization, how does it matter which tools they used? Should Meta then try to acquire say Adobe Photoshop too, to produce better IG content?

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

#456

Post by mcmcmc »

gsf_emergency_2 wrote: post #453
paxys wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly why Zuck feels he needs a Sam Altman type in charge. They have the labs, the researchers, the GPUs, and unlimited cash to burn. Yet it takes more than all that to drive outcomes. Llama 4 is fine but still a distant 6th or 7th in the AI race. Everyone is too busy playing corporate politics. They need an outsider to come shake things up.

It's not that he needs a Sam Altman, but that he cannot be Sam Altman (for path-dependent reasons related to his standing in international politics ), not any advantage in virtue (or vices, for that matter) In national politics, Sam is toe to toe with Elon,which is to say, not great, not terrible

> In national politics, Sam is toe to toe with Elon,which is to say, not great, not terrible

That’s quite the stretch, Elon is now PNG with the MAGA crowd and was already reviled by the left

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

#457

Post by unconstrastive »

ml-anon wrote: post #85

The only way to understand this is by knowing: Meta already has two (!!) AI labs who are already at existential odds with one-another and both are in the process of failing spectacularly. One (FAIR) is lead by Rob Fergus (who? exactly!) because the previous lead quit. Relatively little gossip on that one other than top AI labs have their pick of outgoing talent. The other (GenAI) is lead by Ahmad Al-Dahle (who? exact…

I wouldn't categorize FAIR as failing. Their job is indeed fundamental research and are still a leading research lab, especially in perception and vision. See SAM2, DINOv2, V-JEPA-2, etc. The "fair" (hah) comparisons of FAIR are not to DeepMind/OAI/Anthropic, but to other publishing research labs like Google Research, NVIDIA Research, and they are doing great by that metric. It does seem that for whatever reason that FAIR resisted productization, unlike DeepMind, which is not necessarily a bad thing if you care about open research culture (see [1]). GenAI was supposed to be the "product lab" but failed for many reasons, including the ones you mentioned. Anyways, Meta does have a reputation problem that they are struggling to solve with $$ alone, but its somewhat of a category error to deem it FAIR's fault when FAIR is not a product LLM lab. Also Rob Fergus is a legit researcher; he published regularly with people like Ilya and Pushmeet (VP of Deepmind Research), just didn't get famous :P.

not affiliated with meta or fair.

[1] https://docs.google.com/document/d/1aEdTE-B6CSPPeUWYD-IgNVQV...

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

#458

Post by pyb »

dongobread wrote: post #391
paxys wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly why Zuck feels he needs a Sam Altman type in charge. They have the labs, the researchers, the GPUs, and unlimited cash to burn. Yet it takes more than all that to drive outcomes. Llama 4 is fine but still a distant 6th or 7th in the AI race. Everyone is too busy playing corporate politics. They need an outsider to come shake things up.

The corporate politics at Meta is the result of Zuck's own decisions. Even in big tech, Meta is (along with Amazon) rather famous for its highly political and backstabby culture. This is because these two companies have extremely performance-review oriented cultures where results need to be proven every quarter or you're grounds for laying off. Labs known for being innovative all share the same trait of allowing rese…

Interesting that "high-impact" on the one hand, and innovative/successful in the marketplace on the other, should be at odds at Meta. Makes one wonder how they measure impact.

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

#460

Post by dchftcs »

epsilonthree wrote: post #224

I work at Meta. Scale has given us atrocious data so many times, and gotten caught sending us ChatGPT generated data multiple times. Even the WSJ knew: https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/alexandr-wang-scale-ai-d7c6efd7 https://archive.is/5mbdH We intentionally didn’t use them at all for Llama 2 and mostly avoided using them for Llama 3, but execs kept pushing Scale on us. Total mystery why until now, guess this explains it.

I guess Mark Zuckerberg likes Alexandr Wang a lot. They have a lot in common. They both value intensity and are willing to engage in morally dubious tactics. The culture of Scale sounded quite a bit like Meta these days (and not Meta in mid 2010s) and may indeed be what Zuckerberg envisioned Meta's culture should be. So even if Scale's product isn't the best, it probably seemed like delegating to a copy of Zuckerberg himself, so it just "felt right".

However, a top research lab needs to be competitive yet still have an environment that fosters intellectual honesty. Meta Gen AI did not seem like that, and I don't think Scale's culture is like that either.

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