Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang says he is waiting for Elon Musk's brain chips before having kids
Scale AI
founder
Alexandr Wang
has stated that he plans to delay having children until
brain-computer interfaces
like
Neuralink
become available. The 28-year-old tech founder and soon-to-be head of Meta's superintelligence initiatives, shared this perspective on a recent Shawn Ryan Show episode.
Tired of too many ads? go ad free now
His decision highlights his interest in integrating superintelligence into the next generation. Neuralink, a project led by
, is developing coin-sized microchips designed for brain implantation. These chips are intended to both record and stimulate brain activity. Currently in clinical trials, Neuralink has been implanted in three patients. One patient, Brad Smith, who has ALS, reported being able to edit a video using his Neuralink brain chip.
Why Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang is waiting for Neuralink brain chips to have kids
At one of the recent episodes of Shawn Ryan Show, Wang said:
'I want to wait to have kids until we figure out how Neuralink or other ways (brain computer interfaces) for brains to interlink with a computer until they start working. There are a few reasons for this. In first seven years of life, your brain is more neuroplastic than at any other point by an order of magnitude.
For example, if a newborn that has cataracts in their eyes, so they can't see through the cataracts and then they live the first seven years of their life with those cataracts.
Then when you have them removed they're like eight or nine.
Even with those removed, they're not going to learn how to see because it's so important in those first seven years of your development that you're able to see, that your brain can learn how to read the signals coming off of your eyes.
And if you don't have that until you're eight or nine, then you won't learn how to see, because it's so important that your
neuroplasticity
is so high in that early stage of life.
Tired of too many ads? go ad free now
I think, when we get Neuralink and these other technologies, kids who are born with them are going to learn how to use them in like crazy ways. It'll be like a part of their brain in a way that it'll never be true for an adult who gets a Neuralink or whatever hooked into their brain.'
You can watch the video
. (Cue: 1.00)
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Economic Times
18 minutes ago
- Economic Times
Stage set for micro-dramas; WhatsApp's monetisation bid
Investors are flocking to micro-drama startups as the next big thing in India's content and entertainment industry. This and more in today's ETtech Morning Dispatch. Also in the letter: ■ K'taka bike taxi ban ■ ID verification crackdown■ Meta's new India head India's big bet on micro drama: Startups, investors eye a new content race Investors are getting hooked on short, binge-worthy micro dramas as the next big wave in India's entertainment space. Unlike user-generated content on Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts, micro-dramas are professionally produced, with higher production quality and serialised storytelling designed for mobile-first audiences. Notable actors: Alongside startups such as Flick TV, Eloelo, Kuku FM, Chai Shots, and ReelSaga, larger digital platforms like Amazon, ShareChat, and Zee Entertainment Enterprises (ZEE) are also stepping into the micro-drama market to meet growing demand. Investor interest: Venture capital firms are actively backing local content platforms, hoping to replicate the playbook of their Chinese counterparts. Monetisation hurdles: The big challenge now is figuring out how to monetise the format. In a price-sensitive market like India, where the average revenue per user (ARPU) remains low, this is no small platforms are testing a pay-per-episode model with micropayments, while others plan to introduce monthly and quarterly subscription tiers. A few are also exploring hybrid strategies that combine subscriptions with ad-supported revenue. Zooming out: Micro-dramas have had a breakout moment in China over the past few years. Earlier this year, The Economist noted that the value of China's micro-drama market had jumped 10x between 2021 and 2023. noted that the value of China's micro-drama market had jumped 10x between 2021 and 2023. Its current estimated worth of $5.3 billion is projected to reach $14 billion by 2027. Cumulatively, Chinese micro-drama apps have garnered nearly 55 million downloads and $170 million in revenue overseas, according to iiMedia Research, as reported by The Economist . WhatsApp ads will not impact privacy: Will Cathcart WhatsApp's monetisation efforts will not contravene user privacy, Will Cathcart, head of WhatsApp at Meta, told us in an exclusive interview. Monetisation efforts by the platform have created value for both users and businesses, without compromising the app's core promise of privacy, security, and an ad-free chat experience, he said. Driving the news: On Monday, WhatsApp introduced ads in Status updates and launched subscriptions on Channels. The company clarified that these ads will not appear in private chats or calls. No risks to privacy: 'Nothing has changed about the privacy of people's messages, their calls, their statuses,' Cathcart emphasised, adding that these features remain end-to-end encrypted. But how? According to Cathcart, one of the key challenges is that encryption limits the amount of data available for ad targeting. This, he added, was a deliberate trade-off to preserve user privacy. However, the platform will do its 'best to make the ads relevant', he said. The ads in the Updates tab will reflect how users interact with the space, based on factors such as their country, city, language, and Channel activity, among other things, Cathcart said. Sponsor ETtech Top 5 & Morning Dispatch! Why it matters: ETtech Top 5 and Morning Dispatch are must-reads for India's tech and business leaders, including startup founders, investors, policy makers, industry insiders and employees. The opportunity: Reach a highly engaged audience of decision-makers. Boost your brand's visibility among the tech-savvy community. Custom sponsorship options to align with your brand's goals. What's next: Interested? Reach out to us at spotlightpartner@ to explore sponsorship opportunities. How the ban on Karnataka's bike taxis affects gig workers, commuters: ETtech explains On Monday morning, many Bengaluru commuters found themselves in a fix. With the Karnataka government's bike taxi ban taking effect, they were left scrambling for alternative transport. But beyond the inconvenience to riders, the move threatens the livelihoods of thousands of gig workers who relied on the service. What happened to the apps? Initially, Uber renamed its bike taxi option to 'moto courier' while Rapido called it 'bike parcel'. Ola, meanwhile, removed the feature entirely. As users speculated that the aggregators were trying to sidestep the regulations, both Uber and Rapido pulled the options from their apps altogether. Who's hit? Several commuters expressed frustration over the ban, especially those who depended on bike taxis for their speed and 50,000 and 60,000 gig workers are likely to be impacted across Karnataka, according to Shaik Salauddin, founder president of the Telangana Gig and Platform Workers Union. Companies continue to lobby: In separate statements, ride-hailing firms Rapido and Uber stated they are engaging with the state's transport department in search of a resolution. Both expressed hope that the discussions would lead to a positive outcome. Ola has not commented on the matter. Also Read: Karnataka's ban on bike taxis: A timeline ET Explainer: Behind crackdown on unauthorised use of government databases for user onboarding The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has directed several technology-led startups to cease their offline Aadhaar-based know-your-customer (KYC) services. According to two individuals familiar with the situation, these companies have been accessing Aadhar data through unauthorised channels. Scrambling to comply: As the government tightens scrutiny of data platforms, industry players are now pushing for clearly regulated avenues to carry out Aadhaar verification. What's on offer: With customer onboarding increasingly shifting online, financial services companies and consumer technology firms need to verify users efficiently. This has opened up space for ID verification startups, which help validate documents and cross-check them against official government databases. Also Read: ID please? MeitY verifies identity verification startups The need: Startups rely on these services mainly to prevent fraud in sectors such as digital lending, insurance, payments, and merchant onboarding. Verifying identities on the go makes it easier to onboard users and reduce risk. Problem? The government is now assessing whether these verification services are being offered through legitimate channels and legal means. Industry sources told us that while most large startups follow the rules, several smaller players have allegedly gained unauthorised access to some sensitive government databases. Also Read: NPCI curbs unauthorised use of UPI IDs by fintech companies Other Top Stories By Our Reporters Vidit Aatrey, CEO, Meesho Meesho secures NCLT approval for reverse flip to India: The Bengaluru bench of the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) has approved Meesho's proposal to demerge its Indian entities from its US-based parent, marking a significant milestone in the company's plan to relocate its domicile to India. Meta appoints Arun Srinivas as its India head: Meta Platforms has named Arun Srinivas as its new managing director and head for India, the company announced on Monday. ShareChat CBO Gaurav Jain steps down amid leadership shakeups: Jain, who heads ShareChat's monetisation efforts across functions, shared plans to leave amid a string of high-profile exits at the vernacular social media platform. Global Picks We Are Reading ■ AI alone cannot solve the productivity puzzle (FT) ■ OpenAI and Microsoft tensions are reaching a boiling point (WSJ) ■ Would you switch browsers for a chatbot? (The Verge) Updated On Jun 17, 2025, 07:35 AM IST
Mint
2 hours ago
- Mint
Scale AI's Wang Brings to Meta Knowledge of What Everyone Else is Doing
(Bloomberg) -- Scale AI co-founder Alexandr Wang is such an enthusiastic networker that his former roommate — OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman — once jokingly told him to tone it down a bit. Fortunately for Wang, he ignored the advice. Last week, the 28-year-old parlayed his ability to cultivate influential relationships into a $14.3 billion investment from Meta in Scale, and a new job for himself in Meta's 'superintelligence' group, reporting to CEO Mark Zuckerberg. His own cash and equity in the deal is worth more than $5 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. What Meta is buying: the one guy who knows what everyone else in the AI industry is doing. In recent months, Wang has become close with Zuckerberg and has spent time at the Meta CEO's houses in Tahoe and Palo Alto, California, discussing the future of AI, according to people familiar with the matter. Zuckerberg developed a strong admiration for him, the people said. Wang is also close with Altman, who before OpenAI used to run the elite startup accelerator Y Combinator. Scale went through YC in 2016, and the two men lived together for a period during the Covid-19 pandemic, according to other people who know the two men. At first glance, the Wang hiring looks a lot like the other expensive not-quite-acquisitions by Meta's big tech competitors. Microsoft, Amazon and Alphabet have also thrown gargantuan sums at AI researchers with advanced degrees and experience building cutting-edge models, sometimes by inking licensing deals with their companies. But Wang stands out because he's not an academic nor is he running a prominent AI model maker — he's just really good at knowing what's going on in the industry. His company, Scale, deals with the grunt work of human-powered data collection that's needed to build machine learning models, and most of the important companies have been his customers. With the Scale investment, Zuckerberg may gain leverage over some of his biggest AI rivals. Either those companies, including OpenAI and Google, continue to use Scale and help bolster a business Zuckerberg now owns 49% of, or they're forced to go find an alternative to Scale, which may slow their progress. (OpenAI intends to stick with Scale, while Google is reportedly planning to cut ties.) It's likely Wang also has valuable insights into Zuckerberg's competitors from his time partnering with them the last several network and reach extends beyond those firms, too. Since he co-founded Scale at 19, Wang has befriended other founders of billion-dollar startups such as Plaid, Figma and Brex. Wang has also curried favor with right-wing influencers and Republican lawmakers in Washington, in part by hammering concerns about China. In the process, Scale has racked up increasingly large government contracts. Going forward, those ties could also benefit Meta as it works to break into defense tech. Wang reaches out directly to keep up relationships with a dizzying number of people, in both junior and senior roles, and knows what they're working on and what they want to be doing, according to a close contact, who declined to be named speaking publicly about Wang. 'He knows everyone' in the AI world, that person said. Even Altman, an accomplished networker in his own right, teased Wang last year about his incessant need to be socializing. 'This is authoritative, truly no one flies in and out to more parties than you,' Altman tweeted at him. 'It looks like a full time job.' When Wang was born, in 1997, his Chinese immigrant parents named him Alexandr — missing the final e — because they wanted the numerologically lucky benefits of an eight-letter name, he once explained on a podcast. The number 8 is associated with wealth and prosperity in Chinese culture. Wang's parents were both physicists who worked at the Los Alamos National Lab in New Mexico; Wang inherited their braininess. He won math competitions in grade school, became a nationally ranked mathlete, and studied the violin. 'My sport was math,' he later recounted on a podcast. He finished high school early and enrolled at Massachusetts Institute of Technology but itched to start his own company. Even though his parents and two older brothers all have doctorates, he dropped out of college to move to San Francisco. 'I always wanted to be doing more, or wanted to be accomplishing more,' he said in a video for Forbes. He reassured his parents he was going to go back — 'a little white lie,' he said. In 2016, he teamed up with Lucy Guo, a Thiel Fellow, which means the billionaire Peter Thiel financially backed her choice to quit college because of her brilliance. The pair applied to YC with the idea for a doctor-booking app. During the 10-minute interview for YC, Wang came across as having a mix of potential and ego, YC partner Jessica Livingston recalled on the accelerator's podcast The Social Radars. 'May be arrogant or brilliant — I think the former,' she wrote in her notes at the time. 'But worth funding.' Other YC partners described the founder as 'high beta,' using an investing term to mean volatility. 'Describing a founder as 'high beta' means they're either going to flame out or take over the world,' YC founder Paul Graham posted about Wang. Within a few weeks of starting at YC, Wang and Guo realized the doctor-appointment idea was too steep a struggle and decided to pivot to a new idea. Wang had been inspired by recent advancements in machine learning; months earlier, the world's best human Go player had lost to a Go-playing AI. He and Guo decided to sell data-labeling services to other companies who needed to amass training data to feed into AI projects. Scale initially called itself an 'Uber for AI' because it offered contractors around the world the chance to make money by labeling data — for example, looking at imagery from self-driving cars and labeling obstacles, vehicles, signs and pedestrians. The startup quickly raised from top-tier investors. But two years after founding, the co-founders' relationship turned sour. After a dispute, Wang fired Guo and continued running the startup himself. As AI models continued to advance at a dramatic pace, Scale positioned itself as a key provider of the underlying data infrastructure. It was less flashy than building frontier models, but it was a lucrative business selling the work that still needed to be done by humans to the people building models that would replace them. Scale is not the only provider of data-labeling services, but Wang's star power, network and fundraising prowess helped make it the best known in the field. In the process, Wang and Scale also emerged as lightning rods for criticisms about the unseen workforce behind today's AI services. As Wang and Guo were on their way toward becoming billionaires, Scale worked with thousands of contractors in countries like Kenya and the Philippines who were paid relatively little to weed through reams of online data, with some saying they have suffered psychological trauma from the content they're asked to review. In a 2019 interview with Bloomberg, Wang said the company's contract workers earn 'good' pay — 'in the 60th to 70th percentile of wages in their geography.' Wang also pursued government contracts and impressed lawmakers with youth and confidence. In meetings in Washington, Wang came across as 'authoritative and direct' and made a concerted effort to meet with the Biden administration, said one former Biden staffer. Wang 'almost enjoyed' being underestimated because of his age, said a former Scale employee who accompanied him on trips to the capital. In 2020, the company landed a $90 million contract with the Defense Department; in 2022, that expanded to a deal to make its technology available to all federal agencies, under a $250 million purchase agreement. The outlet Semafor soon dubbed him 'Washington's AI Whisperer.' As Scale grew, so did Wang's wealth and profile. By 2022, at age 25, Forbes was calling him the youngest self-made billionaire. Scale threw posh private gatherings for the who's-who of AI, like a 2023 conference in the Utah mountains where, in between archery sessions and elevated dining, attendees discussed the threat of China's advancements in AI. Wang attended the Met Gala and frequently posted selfies hanging out with the Mad Men actress Kiernan Shipka. He spoke at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and was included on Time's 2024 list of the 100 most influential people. (Altman wrote the short blurb about Wang for the magazine's list, calling him a 'longtime friend.') Guo, Wang's ousted co-founder, is no longer involved in Scale, but her shares in the company also led Forbes to label her a self-made billionaire this year. She bought a luxury condo in Miami and threw a party with a rented lemur and snake, which provoked ire from her wealthy neighbors and prompted the New York Post to deem her 'Miami's No. 1 party girl.' In the past year, Wang has made overtures toward right-wing personalities and values. In June 2024, he announced that Scale's hiring policy would be based on 'MEI' — 'merit, excellence and intelligence,' a rebuttal to the diversity, equity and inclusion policies that were widely adopted by tech companies in the 2010s and have since been rejected and derided by many conservatives. In January, Wang attended Trump's inauguration and palled around with right-wing influencers such as the Paul brothers and the Nelk Boys. In one viral clip from the inauguration, comedian Theo Von falls backward and crashes into Logan Paul when his folding chair breaks; Wang and Altman are sitting a few feet away. After Wang met Von at the inauguration, Von had him as a guest on his popular podcast, one of several prominent shows that helped propel Trump to the White House. Wang, in a camo-print trucker hat with the word 'GODSPEED' embroidered across the front, explained to Von the basics of AI and pressed the point that the US risks losing its lead to China. 'Dude, you should be a superhero,' said Von, with awe in his voice. Wang replied, 'Math goes a long way,' to which Von added, 'Oh, hell yeah, dude — divide these nuts.' Wang has taken warnings about China's AI prowess to more serious forums, too. 'If we as Americans want to defend our way of life, our ideologies, and democracy broadly, it's important for us to stay ahead,' Wang told Bloomberg this winter at Davos. In January, Scale AI took out a full-page advertisement in the Washington Post stating: 'America must win the AI war.' That message has resonated in Washington as DeepSeek and other Chinese AI startups have released increasingly competitive AI models. Wang's recent moves echo those of Zuckerberg, who has also been cozying up to Trump. Meta rolled back its diversity efforts and weakened its hate-speech policies. They are starting to act alike in other ways; both Wang and Zuckerberg now sport curly mops of hair and favor streetwear fashion while appearing on right-leaning podcasts (Zuckerberg has been a guest with both Joe Rogan and Von). The two CEOs share the rare distinction of having both been, at one time or another, the world's youngest self-made billionaire. Now, one of them will be the other's boss. --With assistance from Jackie Davalos, Kurt Wagner, Riley Griffin, Rachel Metz and Shirin Ghaffary. More stories like this are available on
Time of India
7 hours ago
- Time of India
Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang says he is waiting for Elon Musk's brain chips before having kids
Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang has stated that he plans to delay having children until brain-computer interfaces like Neuralink become available. The 28-year-old tech founder and soon-to-be head of Meta's superintelligence initiatives, shared this perspective on a recent Shawn Ryan Show episode. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now His decision highlights his interest in integrating superintelligence into the next generation. Neuralink, a project led by , is developing coin-sized microchips designed for brain implantation. These chips are intended to both record and stimulate brain activity. Currently in clinical trials, Neuralink has been implanted in three patients. One patient, Brad Smith, who has ALS, reported being able to edit a video using his Neuralink brain chip. Why Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang is waiting for Neuralink brain chips to have kids At one of the recent episodes of Shawn Ryan Show, Wang said: 'I want to wait to have kids until we figure out how Neuralink or other ways (brain computer interfaces) for brains to interlink with a computer until they start working. There are a few reasons for this. In first seven years of life, your brain is more neuroplastic than at any other point by an order of magnitude. For example, if a newborn that has cataracts in their eyes, so they can't see through the cataracts and then they live the first seven years of their life with those cataracts. Then when you have them removed they're like eight or nine. Even with those removed, they're not going to learn how to see because it's so important in those first seven years of your development that you're able to see, that your brain can learn how to read the signals coming off of your eyes. And if you don't have that until you're eight or nine, then you won't learn how to see, because it's so important that your neuroplasticity is so high in that early stage of life. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now I think, when we get Neuralink and these other technologies, kids who are born with them are going to learn how to use them in like crazy ways. It'll be like a part of their brain in a way that it'll never be true for an adult who gets a Neuralink or whatever hooked into their brain.' You can watch the video . (Cue: 1.00)
