[HN Gopher] Stability AI Head of Research Resigns from Startup
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       Stability AI Head of Research Resigns from Startup
        
       Author : swyx
       Score  : 53 points
       Date   : 2023-06-28 20:14 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.bloomberg.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.bloomberg.com)
        
       | gary_0 wrote:
       | https://archive.ph/iYBLS
        
       | ChrisArchitect wrote:
       | [dupe]
       | 
       | 4th time in days
       | 
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36487211
        
       | m_ke wrote:
       | Judging by their glassdoor reviews they're not going to make it:
       | https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Stability-AI-Reviews-E7022...
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | deltree7 wrote:
         | [dead]
        
       | zui wrote:
       | David Ha - Head of Research -@hardmaru
       | 
       | Ren Ito - COO
        
       | bhouston wrote:
       | Already covered yesterday:
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36490215
        
         | jeron wrote:
         | posted but not really covered
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | JimtheCoder wrote:
       | From the article...
       | 
       | "I have Asperger's and ADHD, and I have a very definitive view of
       | the future," he (Emad Mostaque, CEO) said on stage. "I think that
       | shocks people because they can't deal with the exponentials."
       | 
       | What does this even mean?
        
         | deltree7 wrote:
         | Non-Asperger people think linearly. They also need structure,
         | rules and 5-year plan for their career.
        
         | emadm wrote:
         | It means I have exceptionally high confidence that this will be
         | the biggest thing to hit the economy, society and markets in
         | the last hundred years for good and ill.
         | 
         | Against this there is minimal risk in obtaining large scale
         | supercompute which will be a scarce asset, funding will not
         | peak for a few years and there is no way to scale to meet
         | demand.
         | 
         | Almost nobody will also train their own models and open,
         | auditable, models will be legally required for every
         | government, regulated industries and more.
         | 
         | My role is to allocate the compute, build the partnerships &
         | gather people who believe that this technology should be
         | distributed globally which is why we have a very diverse team.
         | 
         | I am not very good with people though.
        
           | throw14082020 wrote:
           | > I am not very good with people though.
           | 
           | It's not about being good with people. Plenty of people are
           | introverts - that's fine. It's pretty important in society to
           | be honest and not-fraudulent, and you've lost a lot of trust.
           | It's not that you're not good with people, you're
           | manipulative and people are not good with you anymore.
           | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrickcai/2023/06/04/stable-
           | di...
        
           | JimtheCoder wrote:
           | Wow. He appears. Thanks for responding.
        
           | xiphias2 wrote:
           | I loved your last interview with Harry Stebbings:
           | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4RrdKdC4v4&t=1437s
           | 
           | I don't want to see interviews about you quitting and saving
           | the world, I wanted to see how you want to make money, and
           | finally this last was honest. I guess you had to be quiet
           | before, but I guess we had enough ,,altruisms'' and congress
           | hearings with a few Sams already.
           | 
           | (I also have Aspergers though, so not representing most
           | people)
        
           | teknopurge wrote:
           | >> Almost nobody will also train their own models ...
           | 
           | If the value is in better training data then everyone will
           | train their own models. We should have a goal where we have
           | domain-specific models that make us more efficient, but also
           | constantly train a context-aware model based on individuals.
           | Model composition is the future.
        
             | tomp wrote:
             | > everyone will _fine-tune_ their own models
        
               | teknopurge wrote:
               | individuals / companies that cannot afford their own
               | workflows will fine-tune models with heavy preexisting
               | biases. The upper-class of the market will train their
               | own models, producing advantaged outcomes. Data is the
               | moat.
        
           | xadhominemx wrote:
           | Why is supercompute going to be a scarce asset? NVDA is going
           | to sell 50 training-oriented supercomputers in the next 18
           | months.
        
         | ke88y wrote:
         | The scientific vision, leadership, and work was done by other
         | folks. Emad saw the opportunity but primarily contributed cash
         | and connections, which in the west means he gets to control
         | everything. As a result, he is currently setting a tragic
         | quantity of finite resources on fire (not the least of which is
         | time and human campital, and in a geopolitically important
         | field).
         | 
         | The western world desperately needs a way to do resource
         | allocation that is parallel to and augments financial markets.
         | History did not end, and the "joker with the most cash as
         | feudal lord of an IP village" has become perhaps the largest
         | existential threat to the western world.
        
           | wskinner wrote:
           | > The western world desperately needs a way to do resource
           | allocation that is parallel to and augments financial
           | markets.
           | 
           | Something like a government that taxes the people and spends
           | the tax revenue on stuff? In the USA, government spending
           | accounts for 37% of GDP [1].
           | 
           | The fact that some individuals can gain control over
           | quantities of capital which are large in absolute terms but
           | small in comparison to the total size of the economy is a
           | crucial feature of this system.
           | 
           | [1]: https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/government-
           | spendi...
        
             | ke88y wrote:
             | _> In the USA, government spending accounts for 37% of GDP_
             | 
             | First, and most importantly, this is a critique of all
             | societal institutions. I do not think that the correct
             | solution is necessarily taxation and redistribution. The
             | investors in Stability AI didn't _have_ to choose to
             | misspend their money on an organization structured as a
             | typical 20th century corporate dictatorship run by a big
             | personality; they could have set up a much more effective
             | structure. But they _chose_ that corporate structure and
             | leadership personality type /background because our society
             | is sick on a fundamental level.
             | 
             | I would like to think financial markets are capable of
             | breaking out of this insanity, but I'm extraordinarily
             | skeptical.
             | 
             | Second, almost none of that goes to R&D/innovation. The
             | vast bulk of that spending goes to entitlements and
             | defense. The part we do spend on science is barely enough
             | to support basic science and is still embarrassingly small
             | compared to other outlays. For example, we spend twice as
             | much on farm subsidies (not AG total, just subsidies) as we
             | do on the National Science Foundation.
             | 
             | Third, of the part that does go toward R&D/innovation,
             | almost none of it is spent on development and innovation.
             | Almost all of our federal spending buckets on R&D is heavy
             | on R, light on D, and "hackathon"/"pre-seed" levels of
             | interest in innovation. We do not spend enough on
             | R&D/innovation, and what we do spend is misallocated
             | (mostly towards the goal of generating IP for Springer)
             | because it is mostly allocated by folks at elite
             | universities who are all friends with one another.
             | 
             | The public sector in the west is just as broken, albiet the
             | pathology presents differently.
        
           | woooooo wrote:
           | I'm with you on everything here but its not like westerners
           | have a monopoly on cash/connections being paramount. It's
           | been true everywhere, all the time, even in communist
           | countries that are supposed to make it impossible.
        
             | ke88y wrote:
             | Agreed. I believe "competency" is orthogonal to "liberal
             | constitutional-republican and/or democratic values".
             | 
             | This is _exactly_ what I mean when I say that we are not at
             | The End Of History. Western values need not necessarily win
             | out. The belief in that inevitability is the source of the
             | west 's sclerotic apathy, and without correction will lead
             | no where good.
        
         | jeron wrote:
         | sounds like he's a micromanaging visionary with no feelings
        
           | emadm wrote:
           | Opposite actually.
        
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       (page generated 2023-06-28 23:01 UTC)