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Ilya Sutskever's SSI Inc raises $1B

reuters.com

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

#81

Post by moralestapia »

lijok wrote: post #49
HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if "Super Intelligence" means anything .. just LLMs, or maybe they are pursuing new architectures and shooting for AGI ?

They're shooting straight for AGI

AGI would definitely be a major historical milestone for humanity ...

... however, I'm on the camp that believes it's not going to be hyper-profitable for only one (or a few) single commercial entities.

AGI will not be a product like the iPhone where one company can "own" it and milk it for as long as they want. AGI feels more like "the internet", which will definitely create massive wealth overall but somehow distributed among millions of actors.

We've seen it with LLMs, they've been revolutionary and yet, one year after a major release, free to use "commodity" LLMs are already in the market. The future will not be Skynet controlling everything, it will be uncountable temu-tier AIs embedded into everything around you. Even @sama stated recently they're working on "intelligence so cheap that measuring its use becomes irrelevant".

/opinion

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

#82

Post by infecto »

DalasNoin wrote: post #60
danielovichdk wrote: post #44

"It will focus on building a small highly trusted team of researchers and engineers split between Palo Alto, California and Tel Aviv, Israel." Why Tel Aviv in Israel ?

Ilya went to university in israel and all founders are jewish. Many labs have offices outside of the US, like london, due to crazy immigration law in the us.

Many companies have offices outside because of talent pools, costs, and other regional advantages. Though I am sure some of it is due to immigration law, I don't believe that is generally the main factor. Plus the same could be said for most other countries.

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

#83

Post by sidcool »

paxys wrote: post #13

$1B raise, $5B valuation. For a company that is a couple months old and doesn't have a product or even a single line of code in production. Wild.

It's the brand name effect. Ilya's name will get in much more dollars. Hopefully something profitable comes out at the other end.

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

#84

Post by Etheryte »

_ttg wrote: post #32

i get that they're probably busy making AGI but surely they can spare a few hours to make a proper website? or is this some 4d-chess countersignalling i'm too stupid to notice?

On the contrary, I think it's a great website. They made it clear from the get go that they're not selling any products any time soon, why would they need a flashy website? They're looking for scientists, techies and the like, and the website reflects their target audience.

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

#85

Post by sirspacey »

Lots of dismissive comments here.

Ilya proved himself as a leader, scientist, and engineer over the past decade with OpenAI for creating break-through after break-through that no one else had.

He’s raised enough to compete at the level of Grok, Claude, et al.

He’s offering investors a pure play AGI investment, possibly one of the only organizations available to do so.

Who else would you give $1B to pursue that?

That’s how investors think. There are macro trends, ambitious possibilities on the through line, and the rare people who might actually deliver.

A $5B valuation is standard dilation, no crazy ZIRP style round here.

If you haven’t seen investing at this scale in person it’s hard to appreciate that capital allocation just happens with a certain number of zeros behind it & some people specialize in making the 9 zero decisions.

Yes, it’s predicated on his company being worth more than $500B at some point 10 years down the line.

If they build AGI, that is a very cheap valuation.

Think how ubiquitous Siri, Alexa, chatGPT are and how terrible/not useful/wrong they’ve been.

There’s not a significant amount of demand or distribution risk here. Building the infrastructure to use smarter AI is the tech world’s obsession globally.

If AGI works, in any capacity or at any level, it will have a lot of big customers.

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

#86

Post by Yizahi »

davedx wrote: post #70
Yizahi wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is significant possibility that true AI (what Ilia calls superintelligence) is impossible to build using neural networks. So it is closer to some tokenbro project than to nuclear research. Or he will simply shift goalposts, and call some LLM superintelligent.

> There is significant possibility that true AI (what Ilia calls superintelligence) is impossible to build using neural networks What evidence can you provide to back up the statement of this "significant possibility"? Human brains use neural networks...

There are two possibilities.

1. Either you are correct and the neural networks humans have are exactly the same or very similar to the programs in the LLMs. Then it will be relatively easy to verify this - just scale one LLN to the human brain neuron count and supposedly it will acquire consciousness and start rapidly learning and creating on its own without prompts.

2. Or what we call neural networks in the computer programs is radically different and or insufficient to create AI.

I'm leaning to the second option, just from the very high level and rudimentary reading about current projects. Can be wrong of course. But I have yet to see any paper that refutes option 2, so it means that it is still possible.

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

#89

Post by Vecr »

stonethrowaway wrote: post #62

Safe superintelligence is a misnomer. If it’s intelligent, it knows what must be done. If it can’t, it’s not super or intelligent.

That's controversial to say the least. Especially if there's something like reinforcement learning involved.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existential_risk_from_artifici...

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

#90

Post by consp »

davedx wrote: post #70
Yizahi wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is significant possibility that true AI (what Ilia calls superintelligence) is impossible to build using neural networks. So it is closer to some tokenbro project than to nuclear research. Or he will simply shift goalposts, and call some LLM superintelligent.

> There is significant possibility that true AI (what Ilia calls superintelligence) is impossible to build using neural networks What evidence can you provide to back up the statement of this "significant possibility"? Human brains use neural networks...

I would replace "use" with "vaguely look like".
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