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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

by tim333 1y 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 1y ago
What other things?
- objektif 1y ago
  Semantic tagging.
  - ulfw 1y ago
    So... Tagging and labeling ok.
- tim333 1y 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 1y 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 1y ago
  [deleted]
- tim333 1y ago
  I got the impression he's intelligent and hard working but to a large extent got lucky. I mean his idea was to kind of do a better version of Mechanical Turk which is ok as an idea but not amazing or anything. But then all these LLM companies were getting billions thrown at them by investors thinking they'd be AGI soon but they didn't work well without lots of humans doing fine tuning and Wang's company provided an outlet to throw the money at to get humans to try to do that. I don't know how that will go at Meta. At the moment having lots of humans tweek LLMs still seems to be the main thing at the AI companies but that could change.
- id 1y ago
  Or maybe, just maybe, becoming a billionaire has way more to do with luck than anything else. I don't know about any billionaire in the history of billionaires who appears to have gotten there solely based on special abilities. Being born into the right circumstances is all it really takes.
  - tim333 1y ago
    Oprah Winfrey? Still some luck but she didn't start in great circustances.
  - never_giveup 1y ago
    Surely
  - jandrese 1y ago
    > Being born into the right circumstances is all it really takes. You do still need to do the work. People have squandered golden opportunities because they didn't put in the effort.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]

by tim333 1y ago

ulfw 1y ago

What other things?

objektif 1y ago
Semantic tagging.
- ulfw 1y ago
  So... Tagging and labeling ok.
tim333 1y 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 1y 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 1y ago
[deleted]
tim333 1y ago
I got the impression he's intelligent and hard working but to a large extent got lucky. I mean his idea was to kind of do a better version of Mechanical Turk which is ok as an idea but not amazing or anything. But then all these LLM companies were getting billions thrown at them by investors thinking they'd be AGI soon but they didn't work well without lots of humans doing fine tuning and Wang's company provided an outlet to throw the money at to get humans to try to do that. I don't know how that will go at Meta. At the moment having lots of humans tweek LLMs still seems to be the main thing at the AI companies but that could change.
id 1y ago
Or maybe, just maybe, becoming a billionaire has way more to do with luck than anything else. I don't know about any billionaire in the history of billionaires who appears to have gotten there solely based on special abilities. Being born into the right circumstances is all it really takes.
- tim333 1y ago
  Oprah Winfrey? Still some luck but she didn't start in great circustances.
- never_giveup 1y ago
  Surely
- jandrese 1y ago
  > Being born into the right circumstances is all it really takes. You do still need to do the work. People have squandered golden opportunities because they didn't put in the effort.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]