To their 27 years, Alexandr Wang You do not need to be a media celebrity to have more influence than many of the most popular magnates of Silicon Valley.
From the shadows, this mathematician prodigy born in Los Alamos, New Mexico – the same place where the atomic bomb was developed – commands one of the Key pieces In the gear of the artificial intelligence global. Your company, Scales toit does not design language models such as Chatgpt, but it does something more decisive: Process and label the data that these systems need to learn.
And in the universe of AI, Who controls the data, controls power.
Scale there is incandable to take huge information volumes – From images and texts to classified records – and convert them into datasets organized, ready to train machines with maximum precision.
That task, which may sound technical or even lower, is actually the founding stone of any functional AI model. Without properly structured data, algorithms do not work. Thus, Wang became the essential gear for technological giants who today lead the artificial intelligence career.
From the laboratory to Silicon Valley: a meteoric ascent
Born in one family of physicists who worked to Military laboratories Americans, Wang grew surrounded by equations, theories and state secrets.
At 17, he already participated in the United States Physics Olympics, and decided to skip the last two years of high school to start a Mathematics race at MIT. But his passage through the prestigious institute was brief: in 2016, With only 19 years, he left the studies to launch Scale AI.
The premise with which he founded the company was simple, but disruptive: Improve data labeling quality For automatic learning systems. Instead of obsessing speed, like many in the industry, Wang understood that the true differential was in better feed algorithms.
“The AI is not magical. It is as good as the data you give”, He explained in an interview with Forbes. And under that logic, his company quickly became an indispensable infrastructure for companies such as Openai, Meta, Google, NVIDIA And even the United States Department of Defense.
Since then, Scale AI collaborated in Intelligence, Surveillance and Electronic War Projects. Among the most relevant contracts are counted Combat simulations For the US army and programs of drone training For the Air Force.
In 2023, the company signed a 250 million dollar agreement with the Pentagon As part of the initiative Data-Centric AIwhose objective is clear: prevent China from leading the development of artificial intelligence. “We want to make sure that the United States does not lose this race,” Wang said during an audience in Congress.
However, not everything is impeccable. A few weeks ago, it was leaked that Scale AI had stored confidential data from Meta and XAI “Elon Musk’s company,” in Google Drive Public Documentsaccessible by anyone with a link.
Although the company reacted quickly, the episode lit alarms on the Fragility of a structure that concentrates critical information of half Silicon Valley.
In search of “superintelligence”
But far from weakening its position, the incident was followed by a high caliber strategic movement: Goal bought 49% of Scale AI by 14.3 billion dollars and placed Wang at the head of his New Superintelligence Division.
That unit will have the mission of creating general artificial intelligence models that compete with the most advanced developments in OpenAi or Anthropic. With this play, Wang stopped being the “refining” data to also become one of the Architects of the future of AI.
Despite its growing influence, Wang prefers to stay away from the spotlights. It does not have a public account in X (former Twitter), does not give TED talks or give promotional interviews.
Who worked with him describe him as a obsessive of detail. According to The Informationpersonally supervises the datasets more sensitive that leave your company and rejected several purchase offers to maintain total control of its creation.
His world vision also breaks with traditional molds. “I don’t want children until the brain-computer interface is ready”said in statements to Wired. “It makes no sense to bring life to a world that we have not yet built.” The phrase, disturbing and revealing, condenses its Obsession for human improvement Through technology.
In times where algorithms determine the value of a home, the diagnosis of a disease, the result of a judicial judgment or the strategy of a military operation, The data are much more than zeros and some: they are power. And Wang, without stridency or widths, is the one who transforms them into the raw material that moves the world.
With information from the avant -garde.