4 ms·

I don’t know anything about him, but if he is running a department at Meta, he as at the very least a political genius and a teenage data labeller

tomrod 11mo ago
It's a simple heuristic that will save a lot of time: something that seems too good to be true usually is.
lijok 11mo ago
[flagged]
- antonvs 11mo ago
  > They hired a teenager to run one of their departments Except they didn’t. The person in question was 28 when they hired him. He was a teenager when he cofounded the company that was acquired for thirty billion dollars. But the taste of those really sour grapes must be hard to deal with.
  - KaiserPro 11mo ago
    [flagged]
    - antonvs 11mo ago
      > Comic hyperbole darling. Even if you say so yourself. > I know that's hard to understand, especially when you're one of the start up elect, who still believes. There's a lot of projection going on in that sentence.
      - KaiserPro 11mo ago
        [flagged]
    - tomhow 11mo ago
      > Comic hyperbole darling. I know that's hard to understand, especially when you're one of the start up elect, who still believes. Please omit patronizing swipes like this from comments on HN. You have no idea what the parent commenter "believes", but we know very well that sneering like this only makes HN worse. Please take a moment to remind yourself of the guidelines and make an effort to observe them in future. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - NewsaHackO 11mo ago
    I could not imagine being as salty as the original poster seems to be about Alex Wang. To hold that amount of hate for a superior that is more successful than you can’t be good for the soul
    - lijok 11mo ago
      You’re taking this a tad too seriously
    - BobbyJo 11mo ago
      a superior is kind of a loaded way to say "executive" or "company's leadership".
  - tomhow 11mo ago
    > But the taste of those really sour grapes must be hard to deal with Please don't sneer at fellow community members on HN, and don't reply to a bad comment with a worse one; it just makes HN seem like a more mean and miserable place. The comment would have been fine without that last sentence.
    - antonvs 11mo ago
      Content is more important to me than tone. Much of this subthread is nothing more than gossip about someone people are apparently jealous of. Talk about a "mean and miserable place." Techbros upset that they didn't cash out as big.
antonvs 11mo ago
Presumably this is all referring to Alexander Wang, who's 28 now. The data-labeling company he co-founded, Scale AI, was acquired by Meta at a valuation of nearly $30 billion. But I suppose the criticism is that he doesn't have deep AI model research credentials. Which raises the age-old question of how much technical expertise is really needed in executive management.
- NewsaHackO 11mo ago
  Hopefully he isn’t referring to Alex Wang, as it would invalidate anything else he said in his comment
- KaiserPro 11mo ago
  > how much technical expertise is really needed in executive management. For running an AI lab? a lot. Put it this way, part of the reason that Meta has squandered its lead is because it decided to fill it's genAI dept (pre wang) with non-ML people. Now thats fine, if they had decent product design and clear road map as to the products they want to release. but no, they are just learning ML as they go, coming up with bullshit ideas as they go and seeing what sticks. But, where it gets worse, is they take the FAIR team and pass them around like a soiled blanket: "You're a team that is pushing the boundaries in research, but also you need stop doing that and work on this chatbot that pretends to be a black gay single mother" All the while you have a sister department, RL-L run by Abrash, who lets you actually do real research. Which means most of FAIR have fucked off to somewhere less stressful, and more concentrated on actually doing research, rather than posting about how you're doing research. Wangs misteps are numerous, the biggest one is re-platforming the training system. Thats a two year project right there, for no gain. It also force forks you from the rest of the ML teams. Given how long it took to move to MAST from fblearner, its going be a long slog. And thats before you tackle increasing GPU efficiency.
  - lp251 11mo ago
    why did they move to fblearner what is the new training platform I must know
tim333 11mo ago
I was just watching the Y Combinator interview with Alexandr Wang who I guess may be being referred to https://youtu.be/5noIKN8t69U https://youtu.be/5noIKN8t69U The teenage data labeler thing was a bit of an exaggeration. He did found scale.ai at nineteen which does data labeling amongst other things.
- ulfw 11mo ago
  What other things?
  - objektif 11mo ago
    Semantic tagging.
    - ulfw 11mo ago
      So... Tagging and labeling ok.
  - tim333 11mo ago
    They do testing like 'humanities last exam' and they build custom LLMs for some of the largest companies, the defense dept and other US govt stuff - bit here https://youtu.be/5noIKN8t69U?t=2037 https://youtu.be/5noIKN8t69U?t=2037
- rhines 11mo ago
  I watched this interview when I first heard about Alexandr Wang. I'd seen he was the youngest self made billionaire, which is a pretty impressive credential to have under your belt, and I wanted to see if I could get a read on what sets him apart. Unfortunately he doesn't reveal any particular intelligence, insight, or drive in the interview, nor does he in other videos I found. Possibly he hides it, or possibly his genius is beyond me. Or possibly he had good timing on starting a data labelling company and then leveraged his connections in SV (including being roommates with Sam Altman) to massively inflate Scale AI's valuation and snag a Meta acquisition.
  - deleted 11mo ago

tomrod 11mo ago

It's a simple heuristic that will save a lot of time: something that seems too good to be true usually is.

lijok 11mo ago

[flagged]

antonvs 11mo ago
> They hired a teenager to run one of their departments Except they didn’t. The person in question was 28 when they hired him. He was a teenager when he cofounded the company that was acquired for thirty billion dollars. But the taste of those really sour grapes must be hard to deal with.
- KaiserPro 11mo ago
  [flagged]
  - antonvs 11mo ago
    > Comic hyperbole darling. Even if you say so yourself. > I know that's hard to understand, especially when you're one of the start up elect, who still believes. There's a lot of projection going on in that sentence.
    - KaiserPro 11mo ago
      [flagged]
  - tomhow 11mo ago
    > Comic hyperbole darling. I know that's hard to understand, especially when you're one of the start up elect, who still believes. Please omit patronizing swipes like this from comments on HN. You have no idea what the parent commenter "believes", but we know very well that sneering like this only makes HN worse. Please take a moment to remind yourself of the guidelines and make an effort to observe them in future. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- NewsaHackO 11mo ago
  I could not imagine being as salty as the original poster seems to be about Alex Wang. To hold that amount of hate for a superior that is more successful than you can’t be good for the soul
  - lijok 11mo ago
    You’re taking this a tad too seriously
  - BobbyJo 11mo ago
    a superior is kind of a loaded way to say "executive" or "company's leadership".
- tomhow 11mo ago
  > But the taste of those really sour grapes must be hard to deal with Please don't sneer at fellow community members on HN, and don't reply to a bad comment with a worse one; it just makes HN seem like a more mean and miserable place. The comment would have been fine without that last sentence.
  - antonvs 11mo ago
    Content is more important to me than tone. Much of this subthread is nothing more than gossip about someone people are apparently jealous of. Talk about a "mean and miserable place." Techbros upset that they didn't cash out as big.

antonvs 11mo ago

Presumably this is all referring to Alexander Wang, who's 28 now. The data-labeling company he co-founded, Scale AI, was acquired by Meta at a valuation of nearly $30 billion. But I suppose the criticism is that he doesn't have deep AI model research credentials. Which raises the age-old question of how much technical expertise is really needed in executive management.

NewsaHackO 11mo ago
Hopefully he isn’t referring to Alex Wang, as it would invalidate anything else he said in his comment
KaiserPro 11mo ago
> how much technical expertise is really needed in executive management. For running an AI lab? a lot. Put it this way, part of the reason that Meta has squandered its lead is because it decided to fill it's genAI dept (pre wang) with non-ML people. Now thats fine, if they had decent product design and clear road map as to the products they want to release. but no, they are just learning ML as they go, coming up with bullshit ideas as they go and seeing what sticks. But, where it gets worse, is they take the FAIR team and pass them around like a soiled blanket: "You're a team that is pushing the boundaries in research, but also you need stop doing that and work on this chatbot that pretends to be a black gay single mother" All the while you have a sister department, RL-L run by Abrash, who lets you actually do real research. Which means most of FAIR have fucked off to somewhere less stressful, and more concentrated on actually doing research, rather than posting about how you're doing research. Wangs misteps are numerous, the biggest one is re-platforming the training system. Thats a two year project right there, for no gain. It also force forks you from the rest of the ML teams. Given how long it took to move to MAST from fblearner, its going be a long slog. And thats before you tackle increasing GPU efficiency.
- lp251 11mo ago
  why did they move to fblearner what is the new training platform I must know

tim333 11mo ago

I was just watching the Y Combinator interview with Alexandr Wang who I guess may be being referred to https://youtu.be/5noIKN8t69U https://youtu.be/5noIKN8t69U The teenage data labeler thing was a bit of an exaggeration. He did found scale.ai at nineteen which does data labeling amongst other things.

ulfw 11mo ago
What other things?
- objektif 11mo ago
  Semantic tagging.
  - ulfw 11mo ago
    So... Tagging and labeling ok.
- tim333 11mo ago
  They do testing like 'humanities last exam' and they build custom LLMs for some of the largest companies, the defense dept and other US govt stuff - bit here https://youtu.be/5noIKN8t69U?t=2037 https://youtu.be/5noIKN8t69U?t=2037
rhines 11mo ago
I watched this interview when I first heard about Alexandr Wang. I'd seen he was the youngest self made billionaire, which is a pretty impressive credential to have under your belt, and I wanted to see if I could get a read on what sets him apart. Unfortunately he doesn't reveal any particular intelligence, insight, or drive in the interview, nor does he in other videos I found. Possibly he hides it, or possibly his genius is beyond me. Or possibly he had good timing on starting a data labelling company and then leveraged his connections in SV (including being roommates with Sam Altman) to massively inflate Scale AI's valuation and snag a Meta acquisition.
- deleted 11mo ago