[ImprobableTruth]

Really sad to see. Emad pivoting to posting crypto nonsense on twitter made me think the writing is on the wall for Stability, but I still didn't expect it so soon. I expect they'll pivot to closed models and then fade away.

[zenlikethat]

Translation of “stepping down to focus on distributed AI”:

Getting fired and making moves to capitalize on the current crypto boom while it lasts

[n2d4]

Getting fired by whom? He is both the majority shareholder and controls the board

[rvz]

> Really sad to see. Emad pivoting to posting crypto nonsense on twitter made me think the writing is on the wall for Stability

Open-source AI is a race to zero that makes little money and Stability was facing lawsuits (especially with Getty) which are mounting into the millions and the company was already burning tens of millions.

Despite being the actual "Open AI", Stability cannot afford to sustain itself doing so.

[yreg]

Source on them burning tens of millions? What are they burning it on?

[skybrian]

I don’t know much about him. Was he into cryptocurrency before AI?

[dragonwriter]

> I expect they'll pivot to closed models and then fade away.

They already pivoted away from open-licensed models.

[ShamelessC]

> crypto nonsense on twitter

got any links?

[tymscar]

Not twitter but here he is talking about that:

https://youtu.be/BdZo4JUBSQk

[ShamelessC]

Wow much of what he’s saying in that video is a lie with regards to the history of latent diffusion, creating an open source GPT3, etc. Just taking credit for a bunch of work he didn’t have much to do with.

[spxneo]

You know it never ceases to amaze me how even the most respected fall prey to this money laundering scheme. If people even spent some time to read about Tether they would not touch this stuff. It's blood money.

[tasuki]

I've never owned any Tether, so don't know much about it. How is it blood money?

[stolsvik]

You should probably post some citations to that. Tether most probably have backing for every single dollar they have, and then plenty more. What about it is “blood money”?

[Tangokat]

With a bold claim like that citations would be in order.

[IshKebab]

I suspect a lot of them know it's a scam, they just want in on it and don't want to admit it.

[drsnow]

Exactly how is cryptocurrency merely a "money laundering scheme"?

[hruzgar]

Do you even know the tech behind crypto? Just because scammers and similar people use and promote it, doesn't make it a bad technology at all.

[shwaj]

Tether isn’t crypto though, in the sense of being decentralized, permissionless, etc

[benreesman]

I mean, is AI a less sketchy space in 2024 than crypto/blockchain in 2024? Two or three years ago sure, I guess, but today?

The drama around OpenAI is well documented, there are multiple lawsuits and an SEC investigation at least in embryo, Karpathy bounced and Ilya's harder to spot than Kate Middleton (edit: please see below edit in regards to this tasteless quip). NVIDIA is pushing the Dutch East India Company by some measures of profitability with AMD's full cooperation: George Hotz doesn't knuckle under to the man easily and he's thrown in the towel on ever getting usable drivers on "gaming"-class gear. At least now I guess the Su-Huang Thanksgiving dinners will be less awkward.

Of the now over a dozen FAANG/AI "boomerangs" I know, all of them predate COVID hiring or whatever and all get crammed down on RSU grants they accumulated over years: whether or not phone calls got made it's pretty clearly on everyone's agenda to wash all the ESOP out, neutron bomb the Peninsula, and then hire everyone back with at dramatically lower TC all while blowing EPS out quarter after quarter.

Meanwhile the FOMC is openly talking about looser labor markets via open market operations (that's direct government interference in free labor markets to suppress wages for the pro-capitalism folks, think a little about what capitalism is supposed to mean if you are ok with this), and this against the backdrop of an election between two men having trouble campaigning effectively because one is fighting off dozens of lawsuits including multiple felony charges and the other is flying back and forth between Kiev and Tel Aviv trying to manage two wars he can't seem to manage: IIRC Biden is in Ukraine right now trying to keep Zelenskyy from drone-bombing any more refineries of Urals crude because `CL` or whatever is up like 5% in the last three weeks which is really bad in an election year looking to get nothing but uglier: is anyone really arguing that some meme on /r/crypto is what's pushing e.g. BTC and not a pretty shaky-looking Fed?

Meanwhile over in crypto land, over the same period of time that AI and other marquee Valley tech has been turning into a scandal-plagued orgy of ugly headlines on a nearly daily basis, the regulators have actually been getting serious about sending bad actors to jail or leaning on them with the prospect (SBF, CZ), major ETFs and futures serviced by reputable exchanges (e.g. CME) have entered mainstream portfolios, and a new generation of exchanges (`dy/dx`, Vertex, Apex, Orderly) backed by conventional finance investments in robust bridge infrastructure (LayerZero) are now doing standard Island/ARCA-style efficient matching and then using the blockchain for what it's for: printing a consolidated, Reg NMS/NBBO/SIP-style consolidated tape.

As a freelancer I don't really have a dog in this fight, I judge projects by feasibility, compensation, and minimum ick factor. From the vantage point of my flow the AI projects are sketchier looking on average and below market bids on average contrasted to the blockchain projects, a stark reversal from even six months ago.

Edit: I just saw the news about Kate Middleton, I was unaware of this when I wrote the above which is in extremely poor taste in light of that news. My thoughts and prayers are with her and her family.

[ramraj07]

I and many many people around me use ChatGPT every single day in our lives. AI has a lot of hype but it’s backed by real crap that’s useful. Crypto on the other hand never really did anything practical except help people buy drugs and launder money. Or make people money in the name of investments.

[sevagh]

CL: Lee Chae-rin (Korean rapper), Craigslist, Chlorine

NMS: Neuroleptic malignant syndrome, No Man's Sky

NBBO: National Best Bid and Offer

SIP: Session Initiation Protocol, Systematic Investment Plan, Security Infrastructure Program