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Emad Mostaque resigned as CEO of Stability AI

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Re: Emad Mostaque resigned as CEO of Stability AI

#81
post #46

I love their product, but I was suspect of Emad ever since he said “There will be no programmers in five years.”[0] That just sounds so simplistic that I don't believe he believes it himself. [0] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/stability-ai-ceo-no-human-193...

Well it's been almost a year since he said that. You would think we'd have lost the first chunk of programmers to AI by now.

We have, there are a bunch of bottom of the barrel executives that have done hiring freezes and layoffs under the assumption that AI would replace everything. It will go the exact same way as the outsourcing craze that swept the industry in the mid aughts. The executives that initiate the savings will be praised and rewarded lavishly, and then when everything blows up and falls apart those responsible for the short sighted and ineffective cuts will be long gone.

Re: Emad Mostaque resigned as CEO of Stability AI

#82
post #37
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the current limitations of AI in mind, it often looks like a solution looking for a problem. It's too unreliable, slow, dumb, and too expensive for a lot of the tasks companies would like to use it for. And that becomes part of the problem because it's hard to sell unreliable technology unless you design the product in a way that plays well with the current shortcomings. We will get there, but it's still a few i…

I don't think it's that SD and LLMs are solutions looking for problems, it's that there are very clear problems to which they provide 90% of a solution and make it impossible to clear the last 10%. They're the new WYSIWYG/low-code. Everyone that doesn't fully understand the problem space thinks they're some ultimate solution that is going to revolutionise everything. People that do are responding with a resounding 'm…

Human work is much more deterministic than AI as it encompasses a lot more constraints than what the task specified. If you take concept art creations, while the brief may be a few sentences, the artist knows to respect anatomy and perspective rules, as well as some common definitions (when the brief says ship, you know that it’s the ship concept approved last week). As an artist, I’ve used reference pictures, dolls, 3d renders and one of the most aspect these tools had was consistency. I don’t see Large Models be consistent without another models applying constraint to what they’re capable of producing, like rules defining correct anatomy and extracting data that defines a character. The fact is we do have tools like MakeHuman [0], Marvelous Designer [1], and others that let you generate ideas that are consistent in their flexibility.

I look at Copilot and it’s been the same for me. I’m either working on a huge codebase and most of the time, it means tweaking and refactoring, which is not something I trust a LLM with. Or it’s a greenfield project and I usually write only the necessary code for a task and boilerplate generation is not a thing for me. Coding for me is like sculpting and LLM-based solutions feel like trying to do with bricks attached to my feet. You can get something working if you’re patient enough, but it’s make more sense and it’s more enjoyable to just use your fingers.

[0]: http://www.makehumancommunity.org/

[1]: https://marvelousdesigner.com/

Re: Emad Mostaque resigned as CEO of Stability AI

#86
post #46

I love their product, but I was suspect of Emad ever since he said “There will be no programmers in five years.”[0] That just sounds so simplistic that I don't believe he believes it himself. [0] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/stability-ai-ceo-no-human-193...

The CEO of nvidia said basically the same thing so I don't know if that's the best metric.

You mean the CEO of the company that just rode the AI hype wave to become one of the top 3 most valuable companies in the world? It's his fiduciary duty to say things like that, whether or not he believes them, the same as every other CEO in the AI space.

Re: Emad Mostaque resigned as CEO of Stability AI

#87
post #46

I love their product, but I was suspect of Emad ever since he said “There will be no programmers in five years.”[0] That just sounds so simplistic that I don't believe he believes it himself. [0] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/stability-ai-ceo-no-human-193...

The CEO of nvidia said basically the same thing so I don't know if that's the best metric.

Unfortunately when Stability shuts down Wall Street might get spooked that the bubble is popping and downvote NVDA

Re: Emad Mostaque resigned as CEO of Stability AI

#88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Midjourney is the most popular discord channel by far with 19.5M+ members, $200M in revenue in 2023 with 0 external investments and only 40 employees. The problem has nothing to do with commercializing image gen AI and all to do with Emad/Stability having seemingly 0 sensible business plans. Seriously this seemed to be the plan: Step 1: Release SD for free Step 2: ??? Step 3: Profit The vast majority of users couldn'…

> $200M in revenue in 2023 with 0 external investments and only 40 employees. The dream

For a founder maybe , definitely not for employees .

AI startups need not an insignificant amount of startup capital , you cannot just spend weekends to build like you would a saas app . Model training is expensive so only wealthy individuals can even consider this route

Companies like that have no oversight or control mechanisms when management inevitably goes down crazy paths, also without external valuations option vesting structures are hard to ascertain value.

Re: Emad Mostaque resigned as CEO of Stability AI

#89
post #43
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's that SD and LLMs are solutions looking for problems, it's that there are very clear problems to which they provide 90% of a solution and make it impossible to clear the last 10%. They're the new WYSIWYG/low-code. Everyone that doesn't fully understand the problem space thinks they're some ultimate solution that is going to revolutionise everything. People that do are responding with a resounding 'm…

A game with no consistency in the art is probably enabled. We've crossed the threshold where something like Magic the Gathering could be recreated by a tiny team and a low budget. I don't think the limiting factor here is the software; it looks like we got AI-generated art pretty much as soon as consumer graphics cards could handle it (10 years ago it would have been quite hard). I'd be measuring progress in hardware…

Current AI is entirely incapable of generating the balanced and fun/engaging rule sets required for a MtG style game. Sure the art assets could be generated with skilled prompting and touchup but even that is nowhere close to the strong statement you made.

Re: Emad Mostaque resigned as CEO of Stability AI

#90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The CEO of nvidia said basically the same thing so I don't know if that's the best metric.

You mean the CEO of the company that just rode the AI hype wave to become one of the top 3 most valuable companies in the world? It's his fiduciary duty to say things like that, whether or not he believes them, the same as every other CEO in the AI space.

There is no fiduciary duty to lie, or make up stories you do not believe.

People really oversell fiduciary duty. Yet the whole point of top-level corporate roles is to steer a company predicated upon opinion, which means that you have great latitude to act without malfeasance.

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