[HN Gopher] Sculptor: Catch and fix issues as you code
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Sculptor: Catch and fix issues as you code
Author : thejash
Score : 48 points
Date : 2025-04-08 16:26 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (imbue.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (imbue.com)
| bbor wrote:
| Product-wise this seems to fall into the "sounds great, if it a)
| works well and b) is cheap enough to use regularly" category, so
| instead I'll leave some more general musings on the company for
| my fellow nosy outsiders:
|
| After researching this company for a bit and reading stuff
| ranging from their basic-but-spot-on vision statement published
| today[1] and a careers page that reads like any ML researcher's
| dream[2] all the way to a (shockingly nuanced!) discussion of
| "red flags" on /r/MachineLearning[3], I think the only clear
| takeaway is that this is a fascinating+enigmatic entrant to the
| AI field.
|
| For example, California's Senator Wiener gave them credit in a
| Twitter post for "supporting" the writing of SB1047[4], the
| strongest AI safety bill in the US by a longshot (...that was
| sadly killed late last year by an alt-right podcaster). I know
| we're rightfully cynical on here about AI regulation pushed by
| for-profit firms, but helping write the bill that OpenAI
| criticized seems like a unique badge of honor! It does make me
| wonder why they're a purely for-profit firm if they're so
| interested in safety; both Anthropic and OpenAI2.0 are organized
| as Public Benefit Corporations, which IMO is at least a better-
| than-nothing pinky-promise. Redditors mentioned the founders are
| loosely associated with e/acc, so maybe they're just free market
| true believers?
|
| On the tech side: they've been around since 2021 as "Generally
| Intelligent" (yes, _that_ one...), but after a long post-GPT2
| period of focusing on foundational models & benchmarks, this is
| is their first consumer product announcment AFAICT. They describe
| the underlying tech as an "agent environment architecture," which
| seems to match my initial impression that they've pivoted
| somewhat towards symbolic architectonics?
|
| I happen to be way too confident that this is the only way
| forward for 99% of non-dominant players, so it gives me hope that
| a seemingly ethics-forward, research-focused company is well
| along their way here! When I asked the "does it work well"
| question at the top, I think it's telling that I wasn't
| questioning the underlying model's one-shot IQ, but rather the
| system's UX and internal deliberation architecture...
|
| Godspeed Josh n co. All that aside, excited to see Sculptor in
| action someday!
|
| _P.S._ If any insiders read this: is the name a reference to
| Minksy 's "Sculpting" paper[5]??? He's been losing the usage
| battle to "vibe coding" much to my dismay, so I'd be thrilled to
| have a new ally lol
|
| [1] https://imbue.com/company/vision/
|
| [2] https://imbue.com/careers/
|
| [3]
| https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/17hns0t/d_...
|
| [4]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safe_and_Secure_Innovation_for...
|
| [5] Starts on page 49 in this (19-page) PDF:
| https://courses.cs.umbc.edu/471/papers/minksy91.pdf
| kanjun wrote:
| Hi there! I'm Kanjun, Josh's cofounder -- thanks for this
| lovely take on Imbue :) I feel quite seen, and wanted to share
| some replies to your thoughts.
|
| On Sculptor: You've nailed it on the key things to get right.
| Today, I'd say the product is still very early, and it can
| indeed get expensive if you kick off tons and tons of agents.
| Today's research preview release (currently free for testers)
| aims to slowly grow our community of testers, so we can get the
| product to identify and fix issues well, and enable actual
| software engineering with AI agents. We'd genuinely love to
| work with you as we build this out if you're game to deal with
| early-stage bumps and crashes: DM me on X (I'm @kanjun) and
| we'll get you set up with Sculptor.
|
| On policy and mission: Thank you for the treatment on SB-1047.
| We care a lot about distributing power, and that showed us
| firsthand the complexities of regulating entrenched interests.
| We are not currently a PBC because the legal entity doesn't
| seem to greatly affect the behavior of companies that are PBCs.
| It seems like the bigger effect is how leadership thinks about
| ethics and decision-making, and so for now, we take our own
| ethical grounding and behaviors seriously rather than relying
| on the legal structure.
|
| We're neither e/acc nor EA -- I don't fully resonate with
| either's treatment of the dynamics created by increasing AI
| capabilities, and I'm generally wary of this kind of tribalism
| as it can hinder critical thinking. My current primary lens is
| that of power distribution -- we want to ensure that power is
| as much as possible in the hands of humans, and in particular,
| prosocial humans.
|
| On Minsky: Wow, I'd totally forgotten about his Sculpting
| paper! But upon rereading, we are referencing a similar feeling
| to how software engineering could feel in the future -- less
| need for intense precision, more like sculpting. Our view of
| how that gets implemented necessarily differs from Minsky's (he
| was ahead of his time).
|
| Indeed, we started our journey as Generally Intelligent (and
| posted jobs on HN all the time, heh), with the intent of
| figuring out how to address what we saw as core sociotechnical
| problems of AI. This product is, we believe, a step in that
| direction. In the next month or so, I will put out a more
| detailed treatment of the ideas around power, tailored for an
| audience keen on diving deeper.
|
| Thanks again for the encouragement!
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