2024 is going to shift into a tough year for AI. Business minded folks are already starting to deeply question where the value is relative to the amount of money spent on training. Many/most of the GenAI companies have interesting ideas but no real business plan. Many of the larger AI companies look very shaky in terms of their governance and long term stability. Stability is showing itself to be very unstable, OpenAI has its mess that still seems not fully resolved, Inflection had a bunch of strange stuff go down earlier this week, and more to come.<p>I’m a huge fan of the tech, but as reality sets in things are gonna get quite rough and there will need to be a painful culling of the AI space before sustainable and long term value materializes.
I think Stability is in an interesting situation. A few suggestions on its direction and current state:
1. Stability AI's loss of talent at the foundational research layer is worrying. They've lost an incredibly expensive moat and there's enough unsolved problems in the foundation layer (faster models, more energy efficient models, etc.) to ensure Stability provides differentiated offerings. Step 1 should be rectifying the core issues of employment and refocusing this more into the AI lab space. I have no doubt this will require a re-steering of the ship and re-focusing of the "mission".
2. Stability AI's "mission" of building models for every modality everywhere has caused the company to lose focus. Resources are spread thin. With $100M in funding, there should be a pointed focus in certain areas - such as imaging or video. Midjourney has shown there is sufficient value capture already in just 1 modality. E.g. StableLM seems like early revenue rush and a bad bet with poor differentiation.
3. There is sufficient competition on the API layer. Stability's commitment to being open-source will continue to entice researchers and developers but there should be a re-focus on improvements in the applied layer. Deep UX wrappers for image editing and video editing while owning the end to end stack for image generation or video generation would be a great focal point for Stability that separates itself from the competition. People don't pay for images, they pay for images that solves their problems.
He's leaving to work on <i>decentralized</i> AI? That's exactly what Stability AI was doing before it became clear the economics no longer work out in practice, and starting a new company wouldn't change that. (Emad is an advisory board member to a decentralized GPU company, though: <a href="https://home.otoy.com/stabilityai/" rel="nofollow">https://home.otoy.com/stabilityai/</a> )<p>Obviously this is the polite way to send him off given the latest news about his leadership, but this rationale doesn't track.
The underlying reason is that current AI businesses and models are failing to capture any significant economic value. We're going to get there, but it will take some more work. It won't be decades, but a few more years would be helpful
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.
Well RIP Stability AI.<p>I love their models and I love how they have changed the entire open source AI ecosystem for the better, but the writing was always on the wall for them given how unprofitable they are.<p>I don't think much of the AI startup scene or socials groups like e/acc would have existed if it weren't for the tech that they just gave away for free.<p>Its interesting how Stability AI and their VC funding have done a much better job of acting effectively as a non-profit charity (because they don't have profits. lol) to speed up AI development and open source their results as compared to other companies that were supposed to have been doing that from the beginning.<p>They really were the true ActuallyOpenAI.<p>Related to this, if you are an aspiring person who wants to improve the world, tricking a bunch of VC investors to fund your tech and then giving away the results to everyone free of charge is the single best way to do it.
Looks like many AI startups are experiencing a bit of some turbulence and chaos in the recent months:<p>First the OpenAI rebellion in November, then the Inflection AI acqui-hire from Microsoft not willing to pay the over-valued $4B and deflected that to $600M instead (after making $0 revenue) and now a bit of in-stability at Stability AI with the CEO resigning after many employees leaving.<p>What does that say about the other AI companies out there who have raised tons of VC cash and aren't making any meaningful amount of revenue? I guess that is contributing to the collapse of this bubble with only a very few companies surviving.
Looks like he went to crypto<p><a href="https://x.com/sreeramkannan/status/1771340250801127664?s=46" rel="nofollow">https://x.com/sreeramkannan/status/1771340250801127664?s=46</a>
Recent genAI shakeups in the past week:<p>1. Inflection AI -- ceo out to MSFT<p>2. Stability AI -- ceo out to ____ (infinite sum games? with EigenLayer?)<p>What else? Is there a "GenAI is going great" website yet? (ala "web3 is going great": <a href="https://www.web3isgoinggreat.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.web3isgoinggreat.com/</a>)
Previous controversy involving the CEO (2023): <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrickcai/2023/06/04/stable-diffusion-emad-mostaque-stability-ai-exaggeration/" rel="nofollow">https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrickcai/2023/06/04/stable-di...</a><p>“ In reality, Mostaque has a bachelor’s degree, not a master’s degree from Oxford. The hedge fund’s banner year was followed by one so poor that it shut down months later. The U.N. hasn’t worked with him for years. And while Stable Diffusion was the main reason for his own startup Stability AI’s ascent to prominence, its source code was written by a different group of researchers. “Stability, as far as I know, did not even know about this thing when we created it,” Björn Ommer, the professor who led the research, told Forbes. “They jumped on this wagon only later on.” “<p>“ “What he is good at is taking other people’s work and putting his name on it, or doing stuff that you can’t check if it’s true.”
Emad is such an obvious grifter it’s honestly mad that he attracted so much VC money.<p>He couldn’t even get his own story straight regarding his education and qualifications which should be a pretty clear disqualifying red flag from the outset.<p>The Forbes article from last year was dismissed on here as a hit piece but the steady flow of talent out was the clear sign, capped by the original SD authors leaving last week (probably after some vesting event or external funding coming through).
> Earlier today, Emad Mostaque resigned from his role as CEO of Stability AI and from his position on the Board of Directors of the company to pursue decentralized AI.<p>Reading explanations of "decentralized AI" [0] sounds like a sales pitch for investors that missed out on the AI and crypto hype. Technically, it sounds like a distributed file storage which already exists.<p>[0] <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/digital-assets/2024/02/24/decentralized-ai-on-blockchain-rivals-openais-lead/" rel="nofollow">https://www.forbes.com/sites/digital-assets/2024/02/24/decen...</a>
I interviewed at Stability AI a while ago and that interview was a complete shit show. They quite literally spent 40 minutes talking about Emad and his "vision". I think we actually talked about what they wanted me to do there for like 15 minutes.<p>I was not feeling confident about them as a company that I wanted to work for before that interview, afterwards I knew that was a company I wouldn't work for.
6 months ago, I expressed my doubt about the viability of Stability business model on HN News. Mostaque answered the questions with a resounding yes and claimed the business of Stability.AI is better than ever.<p>Today he resigned.
Given all the talk here, it seems like the state of the business and the state of the stock market are grossly out of whack. Of course, that happens from time to time.
I can't find much information about Shan Shan Wong, the new co-CEO. Not even a photo of this person on the internet.<p>Anyone else have information about them?
lol Emad was always seemed like an obvious fraud to me. Not quite SBF level but same vibe. Whenever someone goes overboard on the nerd look it’s always a red flag.
He probably saw all the crypto AI grifters make hundreds of millions and wanted in on the action.<p>With his name attached, any crypto AI coin will launch straight to $500m mcap
I love their product, but I was suspect of Emad ever since he said “There will be no programmers in five years.”[0]<p>That just sounds so simplistic that I don't believe he believes it himself.<p>[0] <a href="https://finance.yahoo.com/news/stability-ai-ceo-no-human-193413248.html" rel="nofollow">https://finance.yahoo.com/news/stability-ai-ceo-no-human-193...</a>
Maybe related to last years controversy?<p>“Mostaque had embezzled funds from Stability AI to pay the rent for his family's lavish London apartment” and that Hodes learned that he “had a long history of cheating investors in prior ventures in which he was involved”
"AI"s are still pretty much vaporwares like 40 years ago. When people get tired of these toys, the bubble will simply burst, and nothing valuable left.