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Mark Zuckerberg freezes AI hiring amid bubble fears

telegraph.co.uk

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Re: Mark Zuckerberg freezes AI hiring amid bubble fears

#151

Post by smugma »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #130
arcticbull wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's really not. Facebook is an extremely well run organization. There's a lot to dislike about working there, and there's a lot to dislike about what they do, but you cannot deny they have been unbelievably successful at it. He really is good at his job, and part of that has been making bold bets and aggressively cutting unsuccessful bets.

Facebook can be well run without that being due to Zuck. There are literally books that make this argument from insider perspectives (which doesn't mean it's true, but it is possible, and does happen regularly). A basketball team can be great even if their coach sucks. You can't attribute everything to the person at the top.

That is true but in Meta’s case, it is tightly managed by him. I remember a decade ago a friend was a mid-level manager and would have exec reviews to Zuck, who could absorb information very quickly and redirect feedback to align with his product strategy.

He is a very hands CEO, not one who is relying on experts to run things for him.

In contrast, I’ve heard that Elon has a very good senior management team and they sort of know how to show him shiny things that he can say he’s very hands on about while they focus on what they need to do.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg freezes AI hiring amid bubble fears

#153

Post by krona »

TrackerFF wrote: post #53

I really do wonder if any of those rock star $100m++ hires managed to get a 9-figure sign-on bonus, or if the majority have year(s) long performance clauses. Imagine being paid generational wealth, and then the house of cards comes crashing down a couple of months later.

Taking rockstar players 'off the pitch' is the best way second-rate competitors can neutralize their opponents' advantage.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg freezes AI hiring amid bubble fears

#154

Post by andai »

stogot wrote: post #111
cma wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

5. Having a lot of very publicly extremely highly paid people will make people assume anyone working on AI there is highly paid, if not quite as extreme. What most people who make a lot of money spend it on is wealth signalling, and now they can get a form of that without the company having to pay them as much.

What good is a wealth signal without wealth? You’re promoting vacuous vanity

Higher status, access to higher quality mates, etc.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg freezes AI hiring amid bubble fears

#155

Post by ethbr1 »

code_for_monkey wrote: post #147

what happened to the metaverse??? I thought we finally had legs! Seriously why does anyone take this company seriously? Its gotta be the worst of the big tech, besides maybe anything Elon touches, and even then...

1. They've developed and open sourced incredibly useful and cool tech

2. They have some really smart people working there

3. They're well run from a business/financial perspective, especially considering their lack of a hardware platform

4. They've survived multiple paradigm shifts, and generally picked the right bets

Among other things.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg freezes AI hiring amid bubble fears

#156

Post by [deleted] »

lelanthran wrote: post #52
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1000 people can't get a woman to have a child faster than 1 person. So it depends on the type of problem you're trying to solve. If you're trying to build a bunch of Wendy's locations, it's clearly better to have more construction workers. It's less clear that if you're trying to build SGI that you're better off with 1000 people than 10. It might be! But it might not be, too. Who knows for certain til post-ex?

> 1000 people can't get a woman to have a child faster than 1 person. I always get slightly miffed about business comparisons to gestation: getting 9 women pregnant won't get you a child in 1 month. Sure, if you want one child. But that's not what business is often doing, now is it? The target is never "one child". The target is "10 children", or "100 children" or "1000 children". You are definitely going to overrun…

[deleted]

Re: Mark Zuckerberg freezes AI hiring amid bubble fears

#157

Post by phkahler »

lelanthran wrote: post #52
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1000 people can't get a woman to have a child faster than 1 person. So it depends on the type of problem you're trying to solve. If you're trying to build a bunch of Wendy's locations, it's clearly better to have more construction workers. It's less clear that if you're trying to build SGI that you're better off with 1000 people than 10. It might be! But it might not be, too. Who knows for certain til post-ex?

> 1000 people can't get a woman to have a child faster than 1 person. I always get slightly miffed about business comparisons to gestation: getting 9 women pregnant won't get you a child in 1 month. Sure, if you want one child. But that's not what business is often doing, now is it? The target is never "one child". The target is "10 children", or "100 children" or "1000 children". You are definitely going to overrun…

>> Sure, if you want one child. But that's not what business is often doing, now is it?

Your designing one thing. You're building one plant. Yes, you'll make and sell millions of widgets in the end but the system that produces them? Just one.

Engineering teams do become less efficient above some size.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg freezes AI hiring amid bubble fears

#158

Post by gdbsjjdn »

TrackerFF wrote: post #53

I really do wonder if any of those rock star $100m++ hires managed to get a 9-figure sign-on bonus, or if the majority have year(s) long performance clauses. Imagine being paid generational wealth, and then the house of cards comes crashing down a couple of months later.

I'm sure everyone is doing just fine financially, but I think it's common knowledge that these kind of comp packages are usually a mix of equity and cash earned out over multiple years with bonuses contingent on milestones, etc. The eye-popping top-line number is insane but it's also unlikely to be fully realized.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg freezes AI hiring amid bubble fears

#159

Post by Hammershaft »

SoftTalker wrote: post #41

Nothing would give me a nicer feeling of schadenfreude than to see Meta, Google, and these other frothing-at-the-mouth AI hucksters take a bath on their bets.

Can we try to not turn HN into this? I come to this forum to find domain experts with interesting commentary, instead of emotionally charged low effort food fights.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg freezes AI hiring amid bubble fears

#160

Post by ethbr1 »

lelanthran wrote: post #140
earthnail wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The analogy is a good analogy. It is used to demonstrate that a larger workforce doesn’t always automatically give you better results, and that there is a set of problems that are clear to identify a priori where that applies. For some problems, quality is more important than quantity, and you structure your org respectively. See sports teams, for example. In this case, you want one foundation model, not 100 or 1000.…

> In this case, you want one foundation model, not 100 or 1000. You can’t afford to build 1000. That’s the one baby the company wants. I am going to repeat the footnote in my comment: >> [1] It's even more facile in this context: you're looking to strike gold (AGI), so the analogy is trying to get one genius (160+ IQ) child. Good luck getting there by getting 1 woman pregnant at a time! IOW, if you're looking for spe…

You're ignoring that each foundation model requires sinking enormous and finite resources (compute, time, data) into training.

At some point, even companies like Meta need to make a limited number of bets, and in cases like that it's better to have smarter than more people.

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