5 ms·

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

by ke88y 3y ago

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 capital, 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 is dictator of the org" model has become perhaps the largest existential threat to the western world.

woooooo 3y ago
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 3y ago
  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.
wskinner 3y ago
> 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-spending-to-gdp https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/government-spendi...
- ke88y 3y ago
  > 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 our alternative to the financial status quo of corporate-big-personality-dictatorship (aka government spending since we have no other alternative) 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 as the private, albiet the pathology presents differently. I imagine there are alternatives beyond choosing between two horrendously broken systems.
AndrewKemendo 3y ago
Precicely this. Mutual cooperatives have all the pieces we need in my opinion for the core organization of human action. Unfortunately they are effectively impossible to start for anything with more than trivial startup costs, as capital is (somewhat understandably) allergic to promoting Democratic employee owned organizations.
- ke88y 3y ago
  I love the Seagull Articles of Incorporation! https://www.seegull.org/articles-of-inc.html https://www.seegull.org/articles-of-inc.html Definitely need more of this. It's strange that, in the west, we're deeply committed to these basic values in all institutions except those which have become the most powerful and important in folks' every days lives (employers and service/goods providers), where we are instead deeply allergic to notions of democracy, equality, and checks and balances.
  - AndrewKemendo 3y ago
    Thank you! It’s absurd right? Democracy is great —- as long as it’s not in the workplace! That would be madness! It’s a long hard road here FWIW so if you’ve got the stomach for it I suggest trying to build one.
emadm 3y ago
…but we release our stuff open source and are one of the largest supporters of open source AI out there from funding https://github.com/lucidrains https://github.com/lucidrains to compute grants for awesome stuff like OpenFlamingo 2 https://twitter.com/emostaque/status/1674157859284697089 https://twitter.com/emostaque/status/1674157859284697089 This is highly efficient allocation as the code and models can be used widely Nobody else is really doing this I do wonder at times if folk want us to stop
- Kerbonut 3y ago
  Never stop doing stuff.
- gettodachoppa 3y ago
  >Nobody else is really doing this I do wonder at times if folk want us to stop Please don't. You're doing humanity a service. AFAIK you're the only AI company who released something of this magnitude for free, without any restrictions. The people who want you to stop are: 1. Bitter artists who see their livelyhood endangered and lash out at the most prominent example. We can sympathize but this isn't your fault, this was going to happen anyway. At least you democratized it. 2. People upset in general that some tech companies will be getting rich off AI while the rest of us get poorer, lose jobs, etc. You get the brunt of the hate because your free tools are usable by the average person, and therefore more people are exposed to it. They don't realize that if SD never existed, the only thing that would change is that this technology would still exist, except we'd all be paying some OpenAI-like company a monthly fee to use it. 3. Big NGO. Their raison d'etre is fighting against something, no matter what, because this is how they get donations/attention, which pays for the salaries of the trust fund kids who work at those places. Apparently if someone generates an image of a naked kid using SD, I'm supposed to care as if it was actual child abuse material? Somehow we don't extend that logic to the manufacturers of pen and paper which allow that same person to draw or write their disgusting fantasies. 4. Clueless people who fall for the propaganda from the least ethical members of the previous groups. 5. SD fans upset that you bent to the pressure from NGOs and Twittards and kneecaped SD in your rush to remove copyrighted art from the training data. Newer versions are objectively inferior from an end-user's perspective and deep down you know it, because you see what enthusiasts are using on /r/stablediffusion. But I don't hold this against you, even if it's disappointing. We will always have SD 1.5, which remains the best way for normal people (ie not rich VC corps) to do text-to-image. If you do nothing else for the rest of your life, you will be celebrated for this. Stay up, playa'!

by ke88y 3y ago

woooooo 3y ago

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 3y ago
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.

wskinner 3y ago

> 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-spending-to-gdp https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/government-spendi...

ke88y 3y ago
> 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 our alternative to the financial status quo of corporate-big-personality-dictatorship (aka government spending since we have no other alternative) 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 as the private, albiet the pathology presents differently. I imagine there are alternatives beyond choosing between two horrendously broken systems.

AndrewKemendo 3y ago

Precicely this. Mutual cooperatives have all the pieces we need in my opinion for the core organization of human action. Unfortunately they are effectively impossible to start for anything with more than trivial startup costs, as capital is (somewhat understandably) allergic to promoting Democratic employee owned organizations.

ke88y 3y ago
I love the Seagull Articles of Incorporation! https://www.seegull.org/articles-of-inc.html https://www.seegull.org/articles-of-inc.html Definitely need more of this. It's strange that, in the west, we're deeply committed to these basic values in all institutions except those which have become the most powerful and important in folks' every days lives (employers and service/goods providers), where we are instead deeply allergic to notions of democracy, equality, and checks and balances.
- AndrewKemendo 3y ago
  Thank you! It’s absurd right? Democracy is great —- as long as it’s not in the workplace! That would be madness! It’s a long hard road here FWIW so if you’ve got the stomach for it I suggest trying to build one.

emadm 3y ago

…but we release our stuff open source and are one of the largest supporters of open source AI out there from funding https://github.com/lucidrains https://github.com/lucidrains to compute grants for awesome stuff like OpenFlamingo 2 https://twitter.com/emostaque/status/1674157859284697089 https://twitter.com/emostaque/status/1674157859284697089 This is highly efficient allocation as the code and models can be used widely Nobody else is really doing this I do wonder at times if folk want us to stop

Kerbonut 3y ago
Never stop doing stuff.
gettodachoppa 3y ago
>Nobody else is really doing this I do wonder at times if folk want us to stop Please don't. You're doing humanity a service. AFAIK you're the only AI company who released something of this magnitude for free, without any restrictions. The people who want you to stop are: 1. Bitter artists who see their livelyhood endangered and lash out at the most prominent example. We can sympathize but this isn't your fault, this was going to happen anyway. At least you democratized it. 2. People upset in general that some tech companies will be getting rich off AI while the rest of us get poorer, lose jobs, etc. You get the brunt of the hate because your free tools are usable by the average person, and therefore more people are exposed to it. They don't realize that if SD never existed, the only thing that would change is that this technology would still exist, except we'd all be paying some OpenAI-like company a monthly fee to use it. 3. Big NGO. Their raison d'etre is fighting against something, no matter what, because this is how they get donations/attention, which pays for the salaries of the trust fund kids who work at those places. Apparently if someone generates an image of a naked kid using SD, I'm supposed to care as if it was actual child abuse material? Somehow we don't extend that logic to the manufacturers of pen and paper which allow that same person to draw or write their disgusting fantasies. 4. Clueless people who fall for the propaganda from the least ethical members of the previous groups. 5. SD fans upset that you bent to the pressure from NGOs and Twittards and kneecaped SD in your rush to remove copyrighted art from the training data. Newer versions are objectively inferior from an end-user's perspective and deep down you know it, because you see what enthusiasts are using on /r/stablediffusion. But I don't hold this against you, even if it's disappointing. We will always have SD 1.5, which remains the best way for normal people (ie not rich VC corps) to do text-to-image. If you do nothing else for the rest of your life, you will be celebrated for this. Stay up, playa'!