this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2024
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TechTakes

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Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.

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Ilya Sutskever's new AI super-intelligence startup raises a billion dollars. Unclear what they actually do. (www.reuters.com)
submitted 2 months ago by sailor_sega_saturn@awful.systems to c/techtakes@awful.systems
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https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/openai-co-founder-sutskevers-new-safety-focused-ai-startup-ssi-raises-1-billion-2024-09-04/

http://web.archive.org/web/20240904174555/https://ssi.inc/

I have nothing witty or insightful to say, but figured this probably deserved a post. I flipped a coin between sneerclub and techtakes.

They aren't interested in anything besides "superintelligence" which strikes me as an optimistic business strategy. If you are "cracked" you can join them:

We are assembling a lean, cracked team of the world’s best engineers and researchers dedicated to focusing on SSI and nothing else.

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[–] self@awful.systems 27 points 2 months ago (1 children)

ah yeah, 10 employees and “worth” $5 billion, utterly normal bubble shit

Sutskever was an early advocate of scaling, a hypothesis that AI models would improve in performance given vast amounts of computing power. The idea and its execution kicked off a wave of AI investment in chips, data centers and energy, laying the groundwork for generative AI advances like ChatGPT.

but don’t sweat it, the $1 billion they raised is going straight to doing shit that doesn’t fucking work but does fuck up the environment, trying to squeeze more marginal performance gains out of systems that plateaued when they sucked up all the data on the internet (and throwing money at these things not working isn’t even surprising, given a tiny amount of CS knowledge)

[–] imadabouzu@awful.systems 14 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I don't get it. If scaling is all you need, what does a "cracked team" of 5 mean in the end? Nothing?

What's, the different between super intelligence being scaling, and super intelligence, being whatever happens? Can someone explain to me the difference between what is and what SUPER is? When someone gives me the definition of super intelligence as "the power to make anything happen," I always beg, again, "and how is that different precisely from not, that?"

The whole project is tautological.

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 6 points 2 months ago

I'm just amused that their scaling program doesn't scale properly. Due to the hungry hungry AI needing more and more data.

[–] sailor_sega_saturn@awful.systems 15 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Eliezer is skeptical, can find flaw in any alignment strategy in 2 minutes: https://x.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1803676608320192617

If you have an alignment plan I can't shoot down in 120 seconds, let's hear it. So far you have not said anything different from the previous packs of disaster monkeys who all said exactly this almost verbatim, but I'm open to hearing better.

[–] self@awful.systems 18 points 2 months ago (2 children)

is… is yud one of the disaster monkeys? or are we supposed to forget he spent a bunch of years running and renaming an institute that tried and failed to do this exact same alignment grift?

[–] self@awful.systems 12 points 2 months ago

also, xcancel

[–] sc_griffith@awful.systems 5 points 2 months ago

yud is the uniquely capable person in this area. anyone who even sets foot in it should make groveling to him a high priority. these people are disaster monkeys because they aren't doing that

[–] sc_griffith@awful.systems 11 points 2 months ago (2 children)

you know a company is very serious when it uses game balance terminology to describe its HR practices. "I'm sorry, we're going to have to nerf your salary"

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 11 points 2 months ago (2 children)

“Your wages feel overtuned.”

“We’re thinking of reworking your position.”

“This company is in beta. Your position is not fixed and might not be in the final product.”

Tangent: As a first time participant in an early access game, I came across the term “overtuned” which made me irrationally angry. My understanding is that it is supposed to mean “you buffed this because of feedback but maybe a little too much” but I have rarely seen it used to mean other than “this needs a nerf, and I won’t justify my position, but I want to sound like I’m reasonable”

[–] self@awful.systems 13 points 2 months ago

“you buffed this because of feedback but maybe a little too much” but I have rarely seen it used to mean other than “this needs a nerf, and I won’t justify my position, but I want to sound like I’m reasonable”

please never let me make the mistake of becoming a game developer; I absolutely would be the guy who closes this ticket with “fuck off gamer” and gets us review bombed by the worst parts of our playerbase

[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 8 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Tangent: As a first time participant in an early access game, I came across the term “overtuned” which made me irrationally angry. My understanding is that it is supposed to mean “you buffed this because of feedback but maybe a little too much” but I have rarely seen it used to mean other than “this needs a nerf, and I won’t justify my position, but I want to sound like I’m reasonable”

never, ever, ever play EVE. you might pop a vein in apoplexy

(CCP demonstrates some of the most stunning lack of systemic thinking and basic hypothesis testing on the very damn thing they control, and it frequently does my head in)

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 5 points 2 months ago

I think I’ve seen a bit of it and thought that it was a game that could kill me in that manner!!!

[–] dgerard@awful.systems 5 points 2 months ago

C-level team killer

[–] antifuchs@awful.systems 7 points 2 months ago

It’s called “safe superintelligence” because they want investors to sign SAFE agreements and feel very smart about it.

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I’m thinking this is a POSIWID kind of deal. The mission statement of this company should just be: “A. I. Money please!”

[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 5 points 2 months ago

or "AI! Money, please?", in the most extreme conductor voice possible

[–] cwood@awful.systems 3 points 2 months ago

Well look if you no longer had a Silicon Valley executive's salary you might have opinions about that situation too.

Weird sort of wartime to be investing new dollars into Israel though I thought?

Oh wait right. https://bdsmovement.net/news/israel%E2%80%99s-most-important-source-capital-california