You don't have to tell them “labs” I’d love to know the etymological flow that led to the frontier AI companies being called “labs”. It’s a great twist, elevating their work while also projecting a kind of innocence. At one point, DeepMind, OpenAI, and Anthropic each really was a lab, but all three have plainly grown into normal companies —
“Lab” evokes Bell Labs, of course; it evokes deep science, Nobel Prize-level horsepower, a certain purity. I don’t deny that there are labs inside these companies … although I don’t believe any of them are operating with anywhere near the distance from practicality that Bell Labs maintained. And, either way, when you are hiring “Growth Account Executives”, you are a company.
Of course, for purposes of positioning and marketing, not to mention recruiting, companies are free to call themselves whatever they like. But there’s no reason for anyone else to collaborate with that project —
(Okay, I’ll acknowledge that the mysterious [SSI](https://ssi.inc/?utm_source=Robin_Sloan_sent_me) might indeed just be a lab!)
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