Machine Learning

I just listened to the ceo on the latent space podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/latent-space-the-ai-engineer-podcast-codegen-agents/id1674008350?i=1000631322801

She definitely seems like a Silicon Valley insider with the right credentials. But I also agree that the company sets off some red flags with no business strategy. Then again, openai didn’t have a busniess strategy at the beginning.

I bet you’d learn a lot by working there but not about shipping products. Just my barely informed take.

It's a real firm. They're associated with Ycombinator.

The direction of achieving robust reasoning in LLMs is both reasonable and likely to be achievable. It probably isn't super easy, but lots of people are thinking about ways of achieving it and it's an active area of research.

I'm not sure whether I'd invest in it, but it seems fine. It's a reasonable direction and I'm sure there's a way for people to be productive while working in that direction.

Seems risky but if you take enough cash as comp and don’t believe any paper comp valuations at face value I would see it as a reasonable gamble if you need a job

I interviewed there and got rejected on the final round in the spring. The people interviewing me seemed competent, and I liked their interview questions (I'm not exactly sure if I was rejected cause my answers were wrong, it didn't seem that way to me, but I did kinda feel like me and last interviewer didn't really click). Though after the fact I did do some research into the founders and yes was surprised by the fact that it's more like she's a silicon valley person more than AI person.

But Sam Altman is silicon valley person and he's running OpenAI just fine (in terms of raising the valuation of the company and increasing returns to investors -- which is the job of CEO). Although he had Ilya, I don't think there is anyone that impressive running Generally Intelligent's research.

I had an external recruiter reach out for one of their roles. To be honest, their interview process just seems too long, so I passed; one of the panels is a two day on-site. According to the recruiter, they’ve had not so great candidates being sent their way, so they’re a bit weary of that.

Not giving an opinion, just sharing info and my personal choice.

I think the things you've pointed out are not red flags. It's sort of the primary job of a startup founder to be a salesman first and foremost, and that's what these founders are doing. It's also not crazy to think that they could have raised $200 million+ around 2021; back when interest rates were low people were happy to throw money around with reckless abandon.

There are some red flags, though. I think the concerning thing, to me, is the founders' connections to cult-like movements. Consider:

• The founders lived together in one of those SF grouphouses, and they advertise this fact: https://archive.house/
• The CEO's website, especially, has a lot of grandiose and millenarian language, and she seems to have a greatly exaggerated sense of her expertise regarding topics that she has no training in (especially psychology).
• The founders first met at a meeting for the Center For Applied Rationality (described early on in this podcast), which is/was sort of a central hub organization for the lesswrong crowd, who are notable for their cult-like behavior.
• In that same podcast episode (around 17:45 minute mark) the founders seem to obliquely imply that their $200 million funding comes from fellow "like-minded" people in the lesswrong crowd.

So, basically, the downside here is that the founders - and indeed all of the staff, if they're hiring people like themselves - may have grandiose, millenarian ambitions that are not grounded in any kind of real science or practical business plan, and will never need such grounding because they have rich benefactors who think the same way.

This can be fine, depending on your goals. If the paychecks clear and you get to do things that you want to do, maybe there's no big downside. The biggest risk is the potential for the usual downsides that come with cult associations: incompetent management and dysfunctional social environments. No way to know if that's the case until you talk to them, though.

5 years with no product, no research, yet raised $200 million at a >$1 billion valuation is a major red flag. Going to become the next Theranos/Magic Leap.

Hi, I have some context re: the founder.

1. No formal ML background. But fwiw plenty of people have had no ML background and done good things in ML. Even if you just look at big contributors in OpenAI.
2. Their first few years was with Sourceress, which was both unrelated and not done with "huge funding". The hard pivot to Generally Intelligent was a few years later. And they only raised their big rounds recently.
3. I'm not sure but probably they kept the same corporation (and perhaps returned $ to some investors) as part of the pivot from Sourceress

(4-9, I don't know enough, and so can't answer well.). I think the founders are a little futurist, maybe optimistic and stretched by a lot of initiatives, but not scammers. I don't know the quality of the current company and what they can build.

It sucks to have information you can’t disclose lol

Someone who has IMO gold medals recently joined them over quant trading firms, sends a positive signal imo.