Ilya Sutskever's SSI Inc raises $1B • Hacker News Board

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

#801

Post by vasilipupkin » Tue, Sep 10, 2024, 1:16 PM UTC

mvkel wrote: post #765

vasilipupkin wrote: post #546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you are missing the point. SSI believes that it can build a super intelligence. Regardless of whether you personally buy into that or not, the expected value of such an investment is infinity effectively. 5 billion dollar valuation is a steal

OpenAI and Anthropic also believe that, too. The thing they have is products, customers, and traction. $5B pre-product, betting on the team is fine. $50B needs to be a lot more than that. Many examples of industries collapsing under the weight of belief. See: crypto.

again, this comment misses the point

OpenAI and Anthropic for sure have products and that's great. However, these products are pretty far from a super intelligence.

The bet SSI is making is that by not focusing on products and focusing directly on building a super intelligence, they can leapfrog all these other firms

Now, if you assign any reasonable non zero probability to them succeeding,the expected value of this investment is infinity. It's definitely a very risky investment, but risk and expected value are two different things.

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

#802

Post by lazzlazzlazz » Tue, Sep 10, 2024, 5:39 PM UTC

jhylau wrote: post #559

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…

VCs at the big/mega funds make most of their money from fees, they don't actually care as much about the potential portfolio investment exits 10-15 years from now. What they care MOST about is the ability to raise another fund in 2-3 years, so they can milk more fees from LPs. i.e. 2% fee PER YEAR on a 5bn fund is a lot of guaranteed risk-free money. To be able to achieve that is entirely dependent on two things: 1)…

This couldn't be less true, for what it's worth. VCs from the largest funds are in it ~entirely for the DPI (distributed to paid-in capital; investment returns). Not only is this far, far more profitable than management fees (which are mostly spent on operations) — DPI is the only way to guarantee you can raise the next fund.

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

#803

Post by lazide » Thu, Sep 12, 2024, 2:21 PM UTC

chakintosh wrote: post #799

lazide wrote: post #709

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oppsie daisy. Still, you’d have to be quite an idiot to wait for the third time to listen eh? Besides, the winners get to decide what’s a war crime or not. And when the US started mass firebombing civilian Tokyo, it’s not like they were going to be able to just ‘meh, we’re good’ on that front. Compared to that hell, being nuked was humane . And I don’t say that lightly.

By that point, Japan was already on its way out and resorted to flying manned bombs and airplanes into american warships. Nuking Japan wasn't for Japan, it was a show of force for the soviets who were developing their own nukes.

Neutralizing Japan the rest of the way would have cost millions of additional American lives, at a minimum. Japan was never going to surrender unless they saw the axe swinging for their neck, and knew they couldn’t dodge. They didn’t care about their own civilians.

As made quite apparent by, as you note, kamikaze tactics and more.

The Bomb was a cleaner, sharper, and faster Axe than invading the main island.

That it also sent a message to the rest of the world was a bonus. But do you think they would have not used it, if for example the USSR wasn’t waiting?

Of course not, they’d still have nuked the hell out of the Japanese.