Basically Carmack is frustrated by: 1. Rate of progress on AR/VR at meta 2. People within Meta not "Giving a Dam!" / Poor decisions made within the org 3. Poor quality of the execution which I guess is related to #2 Relevant quote: "It pains me to hear people say that they don't even get their headset out to show off at the company because they know it's going to be a mess of charging and updating before they can mak…
This was my gripe about all console games. Real gamers that are daily users have their systems kept up to date, but I'm not one of those. I'm one of those that plays a few times a month, and only when I have nothing else to do. Because of the infrequent use of the console, I'm guaranteed to have to do an update on every use. The update alone cuts into the time allotted for gaming. So I play even less and less to the…
John Carmack Leaves Meta
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Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta
#312Earlier quoted context omitted.
Meta definitely isn't focused on fidelity and graphics. Their mobile VR push degraded VR graphics significantly.
Carmack was the one who was pushing for mobile.
Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta
#313”It has been a struggle for me. I have a voice at the highest levels here, so it feels like I should be able to move things, but I'm evidently not persuasive enough. A good fraction of the things I complain about eventually turn my way after a year or two passes and evidence piles up, but I have never been able to kill stupid things before they cause damage, or set a direction and have a team actually stick to it. I…
This is why there are so many leaks from Facebook. My sister is a reporter and she says that people leak when they feel they can't influence the decision of the org, that they are a Cassandra who is being ignored by the organization. That there is so much leaking from Facebook- much of it from seemingly senior and highly respected people- suggests major problems in the decision making process there.
Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta
#314He just founded a new company called Keen Technologies to work on AGI. Not surprising that he wants to focus on that now. He's been part-time at Meta for years. I'm interested to find out what kind of business model he's planning for an AGI company. Edit: he posted his leaving message publicly here: https://www.facebook.com/100006735798590/posts/pfbid0iPixEvP... Additional public comments on Twitter here: https://twi…
Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta
#315There is a pay wall, so I haven't read the article. I just want to put it out there: Did this seem predictable to anyone? I had the sense he was unsatisfied and Meta's public perception, particularly in Carmack's department, seemed to be plummeting. It seemed very likely that this would happen, but maybe I'm projecting too much. I imagined myself being deeply ungratified in his role.
This blogpost from 2014 has been an almost perfect predictor of the last few years of the Meta disaster. It misses some stuff, but it's not really wrong anywhere beyond some minor details. It calls out Carmack as being the canary that will ultimately predict Oculus/Meta's future. https://assayviaessay.blogspot.com/2014/03/virtual-spaces-re...
The idea was then that if he left quickly over ethical matters, it would be a sign of something was really wrong. But Carmack didn't leave quickly. It's been almost 9 years. And none of the reasons he cites have to do with openness, transparency, or abuse of user data.
Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta
#316Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is false. A shit ton of money can buy a ton of talent. Not Carmack level talent though, he made Doom and Quake so he's already a multi-millionaire. You need a metric ton of money to buy out Carmack, which is exactly what they did. The problem with Meta is the same as the problem in any mega corporation at that scale -- warped incentives. The incentive to spend all your time politicking your way up the massive co…
If the only solid reason for people to work for a company is money, that restricts the available talent pool to a specific subset of people. And those people are wanting to maximize their pay, not the quality of their work.
Nobody is able to hire very many people who want to optimize for the quality of their work. Few people put 110% effort into executing someone else’s vision for someone else’s profit.
Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta
#317Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta
#318”It has been a struggle for me. I have a voice at the highest levels here, so it feels like I should be able to move things, but I'm evidently not persuasive enough. A good fraction of the things I complain about eventually turn my way after a year or two passes and evidence piles up, but I have never been able to kill stupid things before they cause damage, or set a direction and have a team actually stick to it. I…
Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta
#319Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you solve a few more problems with chatgpt it's going to become useful enough that people are going to stop caring so much about the AGI label. It's going to quack like a duck enough to change a lot of industries.
> "If you solve a few more problems" The amount of work done by these 7 words is incredible. ChatGPT is far from changing a "lot" of industries. Still pathetic at programming (which isn't its purpose, but is AlphaCode's purpose; which also sucks), use of it for copy writing is nullified since it seems Google will crack down on AI generated copy writing. DALL-E is also a nice party trick but far from being particularl…
Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta
#320Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you solve a few more problems with chatgpt it's going to become useful enough that people are going to stop caring so much about the AGI label. It's going to quack like a duck enough to change a lot of industries.
> "If you solve a few more problems" The amount of work done by these 7 words is incredible. ChatGPT is far from changing a "lot" of industries. Still pathetic at programming (which isn't its purpose, but is AlphaCode's purpose; which also sucks), use of it for copy writing is nullified since it seems Google will crack down on AI generated copy writing. DALL-E is also a nice party trick but far from being particularl…