6 ms·

What is this article really about? So many details missing about the $70k bill to assume is the wrongdoing of the CEO or company. The article smells like someo

What is this article really about? So many details missing about the $70k bill to assume is the wrongdoing of the CEO or company. The article smells like someone wants to build an argument against Stable Diffusion. I don't think that any of the arguments on the article hold to imply that Stable Diffusion (company) is crumbling. As an example, the "I sold 15% of the stake for $100" argument from the previous cofounder doesn't hold unless proven otherwise by a judge. The context always matter: is not the same selling 15% when there were no investors or IP, to selling it under coercion... but that a judge will be way better to assess than people external to the matter. I wonder what's the gain behind publishing this kind of "yellow" articles (and to whom)

dontknowmuch 3y ago
Looks like a hit piece planted to build momentum to oust the CEO.
formvoltron 3y ago
why would anyone bother to sell for $100? I mean just get a job as a UPS driver!
- NegativeK 3y ago
  I've got some incredibly worthless stuff that I'd take $100 for.
  - sokoloff 3y ago
    Is any of it a substantial stake in an operating generative-AI company? If so, I'll buy it for $100; I literally don't intend to do more diligence than that to find a likely overlay.
    - emadm 3y ago
      He wanted out completely and no association after first project failed https://twitter.com/emostaque/status/1680774535342358528?s=46 https://twitter.com/emostaque/status/1680774535342358528?s=4...
      - sokoloff 3y ago
        According to the account of someone who has a substantial vested interest in that being the case. (It might be the case, in which "they got what they asked for".) In a case where each side has a substantial vested interest in their story being accepted as true, it's wise to be skeptical of the claims on both sides and look for other, corroborating or contradicting evidence.
        emadm 3y ago
        It's pretty clear cut as his suit has three claims 1. Did not inform him of pivot and generative AI art (false, even generated AI art for him) 2. Did not inform him of fundraise/inflows (also false) 3. Either of the above are not legal under Delaware law (also false) We will find out in a few months I suppose.
- defen 3y ago
  It's possible that he perceived his ownership stake as having negative value - e.g. due to tax reasons or other regulatory overhead (needing to participate in board meetings or whatever), legal risk (they get sued for doing something desperate and dumb and he needs to participate in the lawsuit) etc. But you can't just dissolve your shares, you have to either shut the company down entirely or sell your stake to someone. If he thought the company was truly worthless / negative expected value then $100 is fair consideration. A famous example of this is Ronald Wayne selling his 10% stake in Apple for $800 because he was worried that Jobs would incur a bunch of risky debt that he'd be liable for.
  - chii 3y ago
    i would've imagined that a limited liability corporation means that the lowest value it can go is zero, not negative. A shareholder cannot and should not ever be responsible for the debts of the company imho. As for time costs, the shareholder could just not attend or do anything, if they perceive the work to be of worthless value, and thus, should therefore have zero as the floor, rather than negative!
- esperent 3y ago
  In case anyone is out of the loop here, UPS drivers have a strong union and negotiated a great rate of pay. The story being spun in the media is that us tech workers are angry about this for some reason. It's one of the most blatant attempts to pit workers against workers and undermine unions that I've ever seen.
mikhmha 3y ago
Really? I think the untrustworthiness of the CEO and their tendency to embellish facts around their background is a massive red flag. These have been reported on multiple times the past few months. Why lie about having a masters degree or working at a trading firm? And of course you may say that all CEOs are liars. And I would agree. But the smart CEO’s know not to lie about trivial things like education credentials. I don’t think this is a hit piece. I think the incompetency of the CEO is finally bubbling up to the surface and rotting the company from the inside. And now the original believers are starting to turn on their former saviour.
- cma 3y ago
  > Why lie about having a masters degree or working at a trading firm? Maybe not really having the degree but it mostly being satisfied is a positive with venture capitalist after the richest man in the world had problems with his physics degree.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - emadm 3y ago
    It was a weird allegation when I paid the postage and got the MA from Oxford a couple of weeks later https://twitter.com/emostaque/status/1682091613278072832?s=46 https://twitter.com/emostaque/status/1682091613278072832?s=4... Told them that and more https://emad.posthaven.com/on-setting-the-record-straight https://emad.posthaven.com/on-setting-the-record-straight On the cofounder share sale thing it was the Ron Wayne effect with massive sour grapes and him straight up lying https://twitter.com/emostaque/status/1680774535342358528?s=46 https://twitter.com/emostaque/status/1680774535342358528?s=4...
    - ilaksh 3y ago
      Can you detail the years of study after your completion of the BA that enabled you to be awarded the MA? Or is this a "free" MA indicating "seniority"? If it's the latter, then that's deliberately misleading to keep referencing it as if it were a normal MA. I do appreciate your efforts with the open source models though.
anonylizard 3y ago
There is 100% a hit piece effort against stability. It is extremely unusual, for multiple media outlets to repeatedly write an article against a small startup, that's completely unrelated to customer harm or say employee abuse. Wow, the founder fudged his VC presentations, wow, the masters degree wasn't legit, like WHO CARES? The only missing piece was the motivation, who exactly holds such a grudge against Emad really? Then the missing piece finally came to light: https://www.reuters.com/technology/stability-ai-is-sued-by-co-founder-who-says-he-was-duped-selling-stake-100-2023-07-13/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/stability-ai-is-sued-by-c... Basically, this "Cyrus Hodes" guy, thought stability was worthless before StableDiffusion, sold out his stake for $100. That is a fair assessment, because Stability before SD was completely aimless and going nowhere, and definitely not worth anything. However, Emad spotted an incredible bet, and obtained the naming rights to a latent diffusion model for cheap. And the titanic success of SD instantly propelled Stability to a serious player on the AI world. Hence the 100 mil raise afterwards. Needless to say, this Cyrus guy is extremely mad. If you check his credentials, he's not a technical guy, but actually extremely political, full of adviser roles to OECD or governmental organizations. Therefore its unsurprising that he: 1. Is able to organize the multi-month media effort in secret, to give journalists the angle to write against Stability. 2. Is ultra bitter about being kicked out of stability (But I doubt he would have been a good leader anyways at Stability, since AI transitioned from being a hype-based industry to a real product driven one after SD.) In any case, Stability has had some hiccups, but they appear to be recovering very well in the recent months. They've had 3 separate product launches. 1. SDXL, the first successor to SD that finally has community acceptance (So the actual useful fine-tunes and ecosystems can grow around it) 2. Stablebeluga, a fast-follower high quality fine-tune for Llama2 with decent acceptance 3. Stablecode, a open source coding-specific LLM It shows their R&D team is once again working, and gaining the confidence of the community again, after the two disasters that was SD2.0 and stableLM
- ShamelessC 3y ago
  > Needless to say, this Cyrus guy is extremely mad. If you check his credentials, he's not a technical guy, but actually extremely political, full of adviser roles to OECD or governmental organizations. Therefore its unsurprising that he: > 1. Is able to organize the multi-month media effort in secret, to give journalists the angle to write against Stability. This is cryptocurrency levels of conspiracy theory. Do you have any evidence? Or do you have an existing track record to back up these claims at least?
nonbirithm 3y ago
I don't know if this is 100% a hit piece if so many people really did resign citing emad as the main problem. If he is a compulsive liar or as incompetent as his co-workers claim then it's a red flag to me. I remember the one time talked about how he could scrape data behind paywalls and about deliberately bypassing anti-scraping techniques on Twitter. I don't think it was a very good PR move. In the back of my mind I always had this thought that Stability could be some kind of AI accelerationist fund - hype up a shining future, raise enough capital to clear the bar for model training, release their model unencumbered and gather a fervent following of gracious users, and... not have a fully realized plan for what comes after. But I have a feeling that even if they go under people will still be talking about Stability and their influence on generative art for a long while, at least until another freely available model can oust Stable Diffusion.
- emadm 3y ago
  That was just the hate mob attacking I noted that the most interesting data is behind firewalls as in private data as our entire model is open models to private data => not using that data to train our models You can also license that data smartly, with royalty schemes and more, three no reason to get past paywalls etc nor do we do so (others do of course) We are the only AI company to even offer opt outs, first models soon on that
tmaly 3y ago
I personally think the Stable Diffusion product being somewhat open in that I can download it and run it on my home desktop is pretty amazing. That along is encouraging some much interesting innovation in this new type of art. People are creating all sorts of cool LoRas.

dontknowmuch 3y ago

Looks like a hit piece planted to build momentum to oust the CEO.

formvoltron 3y ago

why would anyone bother to sell for $100? I mean just get a job as a UPS driver!

NegativeK 3y ago
I've got some incredibly worthless stuff that I'd take $100 for.
- sokoloff 3y ago
  Is any of it a substantial stake in an operating generative-AI company? If so, I'll buy it for $100; I literally don't intend to do more diligence than that to find a likely overlay.
  - emadm 3y ago
    He wanted out completely and no association after first project failed https://twitter.com/emostaque/status/1680774535342358528?s=46 https://twitter.com/emostaque/status/1680774535342358528?s=4...
    - sokoloff 3y ago
      According to the account of someone who has a substantial vested interest in that being the case. (It might be the case, in which "they got what they asked for".) In a case where each side has a substantial vested interest in their story being accepted as true, it's wise to be skeptical of the claims on both sides and look for other, corroborating or contradicting evidence.
      - emadm 3y ago
        It's pretty clear cut as his suit has three claims 1. Did not inform him of pivot and generative AI art (false, even generated AI art for him) 2. Did not inform him of fundraise/inflows (also false) 3. Either of the above are not legal under Delaware law (also false) We will find out in a few months I suppose.
defen 3y ago
It's possible that he perceived his ownership stake as having negative value - e.g. due to tax reasons or other regulatory overhead (needing to participate in board meetings or whatever), legal risk (they get sued for doing something desperate and dumb and he needs to participate in the lawsuit) etc. But you can't just dissolve your shares, you have to either shut the company down entirely or sell your stake to someone. If he thought the company was truly worthless / negative expected value then $100 is fair consideration. A famous example of this is Ronald Wayne selling his 10% stake in Apple for $800 because he was worried that Jobs would incur a bunch of risky debt that he'd be liable for.
- chii 3y ago
  i would've imagined that a limited liability corporation means that the lowest value it can go is zero, not negative. A shareholder cannot and should not ever be responsible for the debts of the company imho. As for time costs, the shareholder could just not attend or do anything, if they perceive the work to be of worthless value, and thus, should therefore have zero as the floor, rather than negative!
esperent 3y ago
In case anyone is out of the loop here, UPS drivers have a strong union and negotiated a great rate of pay. The story being spun in the media is that us tech workers are angry about this for some reason. It's one of the most blatant attempts to pit workers against workers and undermine unions that I've ever seen.

mikhmha 3y ago

Really? I think the untrustworthiness of the CEO and their tendency to embellish facts around their background is a massive red flag. These have been reported on multiple times the past few months. Why lie about having a masters degree or working at a trading firm? And of course you may say that all CEOs are liars. And I would agree. But the smart CEO’s know not to lie about trivial things like education credentials. I don’t think this is a hit piece. I think the incompetency of the CEO is finally bubbling up to the surface and rotting the company from the inside. And now the original believers are starting to turn on their former saviour.

cma 3y ago
> Why lie about having a masters degree or working at a trading firm? Maybe not really having the degree but it mostly being satisfied is a positive with venture capitalist after the richest man in the world had problems with his physics degree.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- emadm 3y ago
  It was a weird allegation when I paid the postage and got the MA from Oxford a couple of weeks later https://twitter.com/emostaque/status/1682091613278072832?s=46 https://twitter.com/emostaque/status/1682091613278072832?s=4... Told them that and more https://emad.posthaven.com/on-setting-the-record-straight https://emad.posthaven.com/on-setting-the-record-straight On the cofounder share sale thing it was the Ron Wayne effect with massive sour grapes and him straight up lying https://twitter.com/emostaque/status/1680774535342358528?s=46 https://twitter.com/emostaque/status/1680774535342358528?s=4...
  - ilaksh 3y ago
    Can you detail the years of study after your completion of the BA that enabled you to be awarded the MA? Or is this a "free" MA indicating "seniority"? If it's the latter, then that's deliberately misleading to keep referencing it as if it were a normal MA. I do appreciate your efforts with the open source models though.

anonylizard 3y ago

There is 100% a hit piece effort against stability. It is extremely unusual, for multiple media outlets to repeatedly write an article against a small startup, that's completely unrelated to customer harm or say employee abuse. Wow, the founder fudged his VC presentations, wow, the masters degree wasn't legit, like WHO CARES? The only missing piece was the motivation, who exactly holds such a grudge against Emad really? Then the missing piece finally came to light: https://www.reuters.com/technology/stability-ai-is-sued-by-co-founder-who-says-he-was-duped-selling-stake-100-2023-07-13/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/stability-ai-is-sued-by-c... Basically, this "Cyrus Hodes" guy, thought stability was worthless before StableDiffusion, sold out his stake for $100. That is a fair assessment, because Stability before SD was completely aimless and going nowhere, and definitely not worth anything. However, Emad spotted an incredible bet, and obtained the naming rights to a latent diffusion model for cheap. And the titanic success of SD instantly propelled Stability to a serious player on the AI world. Hence the 100 mil raise afterwards. Needless to say, this Cyrus guy is extremely mad. If you check his credentials, he's not a technical guy, but actually extremely political, full of adviser roles to OECD or governmental organizations. Therefore its unsurprising that he: 1. Is able to organize the multi-month media effort in secret, to give journalists the angle to write against Stability. 2. Is ultra bitter about being kicked out of stability (But I doubt he would have been a good leader anyways at Stability, since AI transitioned from being a hype-based industry to a real product driven one after SD.) In any case, Stability has had some hiccups, but they appear to be recovering very well in the recent months. They've had 3 separate product launches. 1. SDXL, the first successor to SD that finally has community acceptance (So the actual useful fine-tunes and ecosystems can grow around it) 2. Stablebeluga, a fast-follower high quality fine-tune for Llama2 with decent acceptance 3. Stablecode, a open source coding-specific LLM It shows their R&D team is once again working, and gaining the confidence of the community again, after the two disasters that was SD2.0 and stableLM

ShamelessC 3y ago
> Needless to say, this Cyrus guy is extremely mad. If you check his credentials, he's not a technical guy, but actually extremely political, full of adviser roles to OECD or governmental organizations. Therefore its unsurprising that he: > 1. Is able to organize the multi-month media effort in secret, to give journalists the angle to write against Stability. This is cryptocurrency levels of conspiracy theory. Do you have any evidence? Or do you have an existing track record to back up these claims at least?

nonbirithm 3y ago

I don't know if this is 100% a hit piece if so many people really did resign citing emad as the main problem. If he is a compulsive liar or as incompetent as his co-workers claim then it's a red flag to me. I remember the one time talked about how he could scrape data behind paywalls and about deliberately bypassing anti-scraping techniques on Twitter. I don't think it was a very good PR move. In the back of my mind I always had this thought that Stability could be some kind of AI accelerationist fund - hype up a shining future, raise enough capital to clear the bar for model training, release their model unencumbered and gather a fervent following of gracious users, and... not have a fully realized plan for what comes after. But I have a feeling that even if they go under people will still be talking about Stability and their influence on generative art for a long while, at least until another freely available model can oust Stable Diffusion.

emadm 3y ago
That was just the hate mob attacking I noted that the most interesting data is behind firewalls as in private data as our entire model is open models to private data => not using that data to train our models You can also license that data smartly, with royalty schemes and more, three no reason to get past paywalls etc nor do we do so (others do of course) We are the only AI company to even offer opt outs, first models soon on that

tmaly 3y ago

I personally think the Stable Diffusion product being somewhat open in that I can download it and run it on my home desktop is pretty amazing. That along is encouraging some much interesting innovation in this new type of art. People are creating all sorts of cool LoRas.