In the generative AI revolution, quality data is a valuable commodity. But not all data is created equally. Sarah Guo and Elad Gil sit down with SurgeAI founder and CEO Edwin Chen to discuss the meaning and importance of quality human data. Edwin talks about why he bootstrapped Surge instead of raising venture funds, the importance of scalable oversight in producing quality data, and the work Surge is doing to standardize human evals. Plus, we get Edwin’s take on what Meta’s investment into Scale AI means for Surge, as well as whether or not he thinks an underdog can catch up with OpenAI, Anthropic, and other dominant industry players.
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Chapters:
00:00 – Edwin Chen Introduction
00:41 – Overview of SurgeAI
02:28 – Why SurgeAI Bootstrapped Instead of Raising Funds
07:59 – Explaining SurgeAI’s Product
09:39 – Differentiating SurgeAI from Competitors
11:27 – Measuring the Quality of SurgeAI’s Output
12:25 – Role of Scalable Oversight at SurgeAI
14:02 – Challenges of Building Rich RL Environments
16:39 – Predicting Future Needs for Training AI Models
17:29 – Role of Humans in Data Generation
21:27 – Importance of Human Evaluation for Quality Data
22:51 – SurgeAI’s Work Toward Standardization of Human Evals
23:37 – What the Meta/ScaleAI Deal Means for SurgeAI
24:35 – Edwin’s Underdog Pick to Catch Up to Big AI Companies
24:50 – The Future Frontier Model Landscape
26:25 – Future Directions for SurgeAI
29:29 – What Does High Quality Data Mean?
32:26 – Conclusion
