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Comment by jgilias

1 day ago

_why_ have people started to call companies “labs”?!

Because making new AI models is a research activity, so the group within Nvidia (or other companies) that does that activity is called a research lab, or just "lab" for short. I don't think anyone is saying that all of Nvidia is a lab (that's just shorthand I guess).

  • What amuses me is that “lab” is shorthand for “laboratory” and virtually no computer research happens inside a room people would typically call a lab.

    It’s a little like the trend of calling developers “engineers”. There’s no actual engineering in the traditional sense but I’m sure developers think it sounds cool to call themselves that.

    • If you can't tell the difference between computer science and software engineering, then at least one of those worlds contains none of your feet.

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Because they are mostly research departments (aka a lab) turned into a corp structure. It’s not a new phenomenon, just that until recently labs didn’t get $1T valuations so you see it more now

Because it sounds cool/sciency.

Just like everything AI is a "model". It's actually not, but it sounds cool/sciency.

  • Exactly. Adam Neumann figured this out with WeWork Labs.

    It sounds cool because people in our age are almost obsessed with scientistic performance.

    At least AI labs are actually doing experiments.