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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

#461

Post by twelve40 »

paxys wrote: post #193
rokhayakebe wrote: post #109

My mother is 73. She uses Meta AI a lot. Her friends do too. Maybe Zuck knows what he is doing.

Because he put a big "AI" button on every single one of Meta's apps and surfaces. I'd bet that most of the usage is accidental. Great way to show inflated user counts in your earnings reports and get some directors promoted, sure, but not a long term strategy.

True, that AI button is shoved pretty violently in unexpected places, and surprises me in an unpleasant way, since I've never considered Meta itself as a place to search for information, let alone something trustworthy.

But this is actually interesting. Asking for medical information in the past was the realm of Google Search, now a combo of Google/Gemini/Chatgpt/whatever. Could it be they are going to try to bite off a chunk of that market? kind of like how they chose not to compete with Google search in 2010's. But now are taking another pass at it?

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

#462

Post by tyre »

flyinglizard wrote: post #393
unshavedyak wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

At 49% I'm certain they would become the largest shareholder, by far. Then allying with another smaller shareholder to get majority - especially as you are Meta and can repay in various ways - is trivial. This is control, in all forms but name.

another shareholder, one of the largest, is the now-former-CEO who now works at Meta. They have full control.

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

#463

Post by rlt »

ml-anon wrote: post #417
bhl wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a 2 year cliff: it's 6 months before vesting, then 2 years before you can sell.

Effective cliff. What use is vested “equity” (ppus aren’t even equity) that you cannot sell?

Massive difference. You can vest and move on, even if you don’t have liquidity, which most private companies don’t for employees anyway.

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

#464

Post by rlt »

pixl97 wrote: post #342
unshavedyak wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You only need to convince 2% of the other stakeholders to get your way.

They don’t have voting power.

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

#465

Post by gsf_emergency_2 »

mcmcmc wrote: post #456
gsf_emergency_2 wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

PNG may not be a stretch, but so isn't the purported health of Sam's local ambitions? :)

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

#466

Post by rlt »

eaglelamp wrote: post #307
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…

It looks like security/surveillance play more than anything. Scale has strong relationships with the US MIC, the current administration (predating Zuck's rebranding), and gulf states. Their Wikipedia history section lists accomplishments that align closely with DoD's vision for GenAI. The current admin, and the western political elite generally, are anxious about GenAI developments and social unrest, the pairing of M…

Andrew Bosworth (CTO of Meta) being commissioned as a Lieutenant Colonel in a new unit of the US Army Reserve is even more interesting in this light.

https://x.com/boztank/status/1933512877140316628?s=46

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

#467

Post by rlt »

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #86
strict9 wrote: post #56

Earlier 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.

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.

React was released in like 2013. We were well on our way to the web being unusable with JavaScript disabled by then.

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

#468

Post by bombolo »

andytratt wrote: post #177
DebtDeflation wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a wild story for sure. Dropped out of MIT after freshman year and starts Scale to do data labeling. Three years later Scale has a $1B valuation and two years after that Wang is the world's youngest billionaire. Nine years after Scale's founding they're still doing less than $1B in annual revenue. Yet Meta is doing a $14B acquihire. There's definitely more than meets the eye. I suspect it involves multiple world…

i don't know Alex directly that well but i believe his "freshman year" skipped all GIRs and was spent polishing off the most advanced graduate courses in CS theory (18.404), machine learning (6.867), algorithms (6.854), etc. so basically he did MIT at the PhD level in 1 year. As a classmate myself who did it in 3, at a high level too (and I think Varun - of Windsurf - completed his undergrad in 3 years also)... Wang'…

[dead]

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

#469

Post by delusional »

unshavedyak wrote: post #329
delusional wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There's a lot of things shareholders can do to screw over other shareholders. Smaller shareholders are at least somewhat likely to follow along with the largest shareholder, just to avoid becoming their enemies and getting squeezed out.

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

#470

Post by ml-anon »

rlt wrote: post #463
ml-anon wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Effective cliff. What use is vested “equity” (ppus aren’t even equity) that you cannot sell?

Massive difference. You can vest and move on, even if you don’t have liquidity, which most private companies don’t for employees anyway.

Except you can only sell a prescribed amount at an undetermined time. By the earliest possible sell date you have already made 8 figures liquid at Meta.
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