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Alexandr Wang

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Alexandr Wang
BornJanuary 1997 (age 27)
Los Alamos, New Mexico, United States
EducationMassachusetts Institute of Technology (dropped out)
TitleFounder of Scale AI

Alexandr Wang (born January 19, 1997) is the founder and CEO of Scale AI, a data annotation platform that provides training data for machine learning models.[1][2] At age 24, he became the youngest self-made billionaire in the world.[3][4][5] According to Forbes, he is currently worth $2 billion, as of July 2024.[1]

Early life and education

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Wang was born in Los Alamos, New Mexico. He was the son of Chinese immigrants who worked as physicists at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, where nuclear weapons were first developed.[6] Wang was passionate about math and computer programming since childhood. He qualified for the Math Olympiad Program in 2013, the USA Physics Team in 2014, and was a USACO finalist in 2012 and 2013.[citation needed] During his teens, Wang worked for Quora as a software programmer.[7] He studied computer science and mathematics at MIT, but then dropped out to co-found Scale AI in 2016.[8]

Career

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In 2016 Wang founded Scale AI, which annotates the data used to train artificial intelligence software in computer vision and audio transcription. The company's board of directors includes Plaid co-founder William Hockey. In May 2021 Michael Kratsios, Chief Technology Officer of the United States under the Trump administration, joined as Scale AI's managing director and head of strategy. Former Amazon executive Jeff Wilke served as an advisor to Wang.[9] Scale AI's customers in the commercial sector include Etsy, General Motors, OpenAI, PayPal, Pinterest, Samsung, Toyota, and Uber.[10][11] In 2021 its valuation hit $7.3 billion, briefly giving Wang a $1 billion net worth as he owned 15% of the company.[2][12] Scale AI has received defense contracts from the United States Armed Forces[13][14] and been tapped by the Pentagon's Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office to test and evaluate the safety and reliability of large language models for military planning and decision-making.[15]

Scale AI operates a platform called Remotask, which hires some 240,000 data labelers in Africa and Southeast Asia at low rates, sometimes less than $1 an hour.[2] Annotation of training data is necessary for AI systems not to produce too many low-quality results.[5] In the Philippines, many of its hires are freelance contractors not covered under labor laws.[5] The pay for some annotation tasks dropped to less than one cent due to "vicious competition" after Remotask expanded to India as well as Venezuela.[5] Late payments are reportedly "commonplace", and some workers received only a few percent of their promised compensation.[5] In 2022, a University of Oxford study said Remotasks met the "minimum standards of fair work" in only two out of ten criteria. Scale AI has positioned Remotask as a separate brand and said it is committed to paying "a living wage." Remotask's terms and conditions says it can withhold payment or deactivate the accounts of freelancers whose work are deemed inaccurate.[5]

Awards and recognition

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In 2021, Wang was named to Forbes' 30 Under 30 list in the Enterprise Technology category.[16] He was also named to the Time 100 Next and Time100 AI list, which recognizes emerging leaders who are shaping the future of their fields.[4]

References

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  1. ^ a b "Alexandr Wang". Forbes. Retrieved 2024-01-17.
  2. ^ a b c East, Forbes Middle. "Here's How This Young Self-Made Billionaire Built A $7.3B AI Unicorn". Forbes ME. Retrieved 2024-01-14.
  3. ^ Sternlicht, Alexandra. "There's A New Youngest Self-Made Billionaire, And He Got Rich Working With The Government". Forbes. Retrieved 2024-01-14.
  4. ^ a b "TIME100 AI 2023: Alexandr Wang". Time. 2023-09-07. Retrieved 2024-01-14.
  5. ^ a b c d e f Tan, Rebecca (28 August 2023). "Behind the AI boom, an army of overseas workers in 'digital sweatshops'". The Washington Post. Retrieved 14 January 2024.
  6. ^ Cai, Kenrick. "How Alexandr Wang Turned An Army Of Clickworkers Into A $7.3 Billion AI Unicorn". Forbes. Retrieved 2024-01-14.
  7. ^ "The Next Elon Musk? This 26-Year-Old College Dropout Built A $7.3 Billion Tech Empire To Become The World's Youngest Self-Made Billionaire". Yahoo Finance. 28 July 2023.
  8. ^ Li, Steven. "How The 22-Year-Old Founder Of Scale AI Built A Billion-Dollar Business". Forbes. Retrieved 2024-01-14.
  9. ^ Soper, Taylor (April 13, 2021). "Tech Moves: Ex-Amazon leader Jeff Wilke joins Scale AI as advisor to CEO; Skilljar and Auth0 hire execs; T-Mobile board shuffle". GeekWire.
  10. ^ Scale AI's 22-Year Old CEO Wants to Improve the Safety of Self-Driving Cars, 2019-08-08, retrieved 2024-01-14
  11. ^ "Data-labeling company Scale AI is worth $7.3 billion after new funding round". Fortune. Retrieved 2024-01-14.
  12. ^ Loten, Angus (2021-07-12). "Scale AI's Rapid Growth Reflects Widening Demand for Smart Software". Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved 2024-01-14.
  13. ^ "Feature interview: Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang - First Move with Julia Chatterley - Podcast on CNN Audio". CNN. Retrieved 2024-01-14.
  14. ^ De Vynck, Gerrit (22 October 2023). "Some tech leaders fear AI. ScaleAI is selling it to the military". The Washington Post. Retrieved 15 March 2024.
  15. ^ Vincent, Brandi (20 February 2024). "Scale AI to set the Pentagon's path for testing and evaluating large language models". DefenseScoop.
  16. ^ Popkin, Helen A. S. "30 Under 30 In Enterprise Tech: Reinventing Business With Artificial Intelligence". Forbes. Retrieved 2024-01-14.
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