4 ms·

They just want the best, and they’re afraid of having second rates, B-players, etc., causing a bozo explosion. That seems like all the motivation that’s needed.

They just want the best, and they’re afraid of having second rates, B-players, etc., causing a bozo explosion. That seems like all the motivation that’s needed. Why why would they need fears about a quasi-facebook chatbot?

lores 1y ago
Just like in football, buying all the best players pretty much guarantees failure as egos and personal styles clash and take precedence over team achievement. The only reasons one would do that are fear, vanity, and stupidity, and those have to be more important than getting value for the extraordinary amounts of money invested.
- HarHarVeryFunny 1y ago
  Yeah, pretty much agree. The only case where this may have made sense - but more for an individual rather than a team - is Google's aqui-rehire of Noam Shazeer for $1B. He was the original creator of the transformer architecture, had made a number of architectural improvements while at Character.ai, and thus had a track record of being able to wring performance out of it, which at Google-scale may be worth that kind of money.
  - dekhn 1y ago
    Noam was already one of Google's top AI researchers and a personal friend of Jeff Dean (head of Google AI, at least in title). He worked on some of the early (~2002) search systems at Google and patented some of their most powerful technoloigies at the time- which were critical in making Google Search a product that was popular, and highly profitable.
- MichaelZuo 1y ago
  First rate A-players are beyond petty ego clashes, practically by definition… otherwise they wouldn’t be considered so highly (and thus fall into the bozo category).
  - saagarjha 1y ago
    If you're the only one considering them, sure.
HarHarVeryFunny 1y ago
Coming from Meta, I have to wonder if the reason for this isn't more down to Zuck's ego and history. He seems to have somewhat lost interest in FaceBook, and was previously all-in on the Metaverse as the next big thing, which has failed to take off as a concept, and now wants to go all-in on "super-intelligence" (seems to lack ambition - why not "super-duper extra special intelligence"?) with his new vision being smart glasses as the universal AI interface. He can't seem to get past the notion that people want to wear tech on their head and live in augmented reality. Anyhow, with the Metaverse as a flop, and apparently having self-assessed Meta's current LLM efforts as unsatisfactory, it seems Zuck may want to rescue his reputation by throwing money at it to try to make his next big gamble a winner. It seems a bit irrational given that other companies, and countries, have built SOTA LLMs without needing to throw NBA/NFL/rockstar money around.
- turnsout 1y ago
  This rings true. Zuck wants to go down in the history books like Jobs—as a visionary who introduced technology that changed the world. He's not there yet, and he knows it. Jobs gave us GUIs and smartphones. Facebook is not even in the same universe, and Instagram is just something he bought. He went all in on the metaverse, but the technology still needs at least 10-15 years to fully bake. In the meantime, there's AGI/super-intelligence. He needs to beat Sam Altman. The sad thing is, even if he does beat Sam to AGI, Sam will still probably get the credit as the visionary.
  - aleph_minus_one 1y ago
    > Jobs gave us GUIs and smartphones. Steve Jobs neither gave/invented GUIs nor smartphones. :-D
    - turnsout 1y ago
      He didn’t have to be the first to be the one most associated with popularizing the technology.
      - 1y ago

lores 1y ago

Just like in football, buying all the best players pretty much guarantees failure as egos and personal styles clash and take precedence over team achievement. The only reasons one would do that are fear, vanity, and stupidity, and those have to be more important than getting value for the extraordinary amounts of money invested.

HarHarVeryFunny 1y ago
Yeah, pretty much agree. The only case where this may have made sense - but more for an individual rather than a team - is Google's aqui-rehire of Noam Shazeer for $1B. He was the original creator of the transformer architecture, had made a number of architectural improvements while at Character.ai, and thus had a track record of being able to wring performance out of it, which at Google-scale may be worth that kind of money.
- dekhn 1y ago
  Noam was already one of Google's top AI researchers and a personal friend of Jeff Dean (head of Google AI, at least in title). He worked on some of the early (~2002) search systems at Google and patented some of their most powerful technoloigies at the time- which were critical in making Google Search a product that was popular, and highly profitable.
MichaelZuo 1y ago
First rate A-players are beyond petty ego clashes, practically by definition… otherwise they wouldn’t be considered so highly (and thus fall into the bozo category).
- saagarjha 1y ago
  If you're the only one considering them, sure.

HarHarVeryFunny 1y ago

Coming from Meta, I have to wonder if the reason for this isn't more down to Zuck's ego and history. He seems to have somewhat lost interest in FaceBook, and was previously all-in on the Metaverse as the next big thing, which has failed to take off as a concept, and now wants to go all-in on "super-intelligence" (seems to lack ambition - why not "super-duper extra special intelligence"?) with his new vision being smart glasses as the universal AI interface. He can't seem to get past the notion that people want to wear tech on their head and live in augmented reality. Anyhow, with the Metaverse as a flop, and apparently having self-assessed Meta's current LLM efforts as unsatisfactory, it seems Zuck may want to rescue his reputation by throwing money at it to try to make his next big gamble a winner. It seems a bit irrational given that other companies, and countries, have built SOTA LLMs without needing to throw NBA/NFL/rockstar money around.

turnsout 1y ago
This rings true. Zuck wants to go down in the history books like Jobs—as a visionary who introduced technology that changed the world. He's not there yet, and he knows it. Jobs gave us GUIs and smartphones. Facebook is not even in the same universe, and Instagram is just something he bought. He went all in on the metaverse, but the technology still needs at least 10-15 years to fully bake. In the meantime, there's AGI/super-intelligence. He needs to beat Sam Altman. The sad thing is, even if he does beat Sam to AGI, Sam will still probably get the credit as the visionary.
- aleph_minus_one 1y ago
  > Jobs gave us GUIs and smartphones. Steve Jobs neither gave/invented GUIs nor smartphones. :-D
  - turnsout 1y ago
    He didn’t have to be the first to be the one most associated with popularizing the technology.
    - 1y ago