a16z Live

Why Human Data is Key to AI: Alexandr Wang from Scale AI

Episode Summary

Scale AI founder and CEO Alexandr Wang discusses the three pillars of AI—models, compute, and data—and how abundant data will power the evolution gen AI, with a16z Growth General Partner David George.

Episode Notes

In this conversation with a16z general partner David George, Scale AI founder and CEO Alexandr Wang discusses the three pillars of AI—models, compute, and data—and how creating abundant data is core to the evolution of gen AI. With Scale’s work across enterprise, automotive, and the public sector, Alex is also building the critical infrastructure that will allow any organization to use their proprietary data to build bespoke gen AI applications. In addition to talking about frontier data, Alex also shares his learnings from the growth of Scale, his approach to leadership, and what he thinks growth-stage founder/CEOs tend to get wrong about hiring.  

Read more, including a full transcript, here: https://a16z.com/frontier-data-foundries-alex-wang-scale-ai/

Timestamps: 

[00:00:58] How frontier data will change gen AI 

[00:08:47] Are big tech companies over-investing in AI? 

[00:14:39] Where the best AI businesses will thrive 

[00:17:05] How enterprise businesses are approaching AI adoption 

[00:19:50] What does the next phase of gen AI products look like? 

[00:23:23] Alex's approach to scaling Scale 

[00:25:36] The founder fallacy 

[00:30:12] MEI and how Alex views talent acquisition