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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

#701

Post by deepsun »

tracker1 wrote: post #601

I'm somewhere in the middle on this, with regards to the ROI... this isn't the kind of thing where you see immediate reflection on quarterly returns... it's the kind of thing where if you don't hedge some bets, you're likely to completely die out from a generational shift. Facebook's product is eyeballs... they're being usurped on all sides between TikTok, X and BlueSky in terms of daily/regular users... They're comp…

Deja vu, Zuck has already scaled down their AI research team a few years as I remember, because they didn't deliver any tangible results. Meta culture likes improving metrics like retention/engagement, and promotes managers if they show some improvement in their metrics. No one cares about long shots generally, and a research team is always the long shot.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg freezes AI hiring amid bubble fears

#702

Post by malfist »

throw310822 wrote: post #682
malfist wrote: post #607

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many years of not seeing returns this quarter does it take before its all hype?

"technology too expensive to be offered at a profit (yet)" != hype

Is it too expensive? Or not a valid solution to real problems?

Re: Mark Zuckerberg freezes AI hiring amid bubble fears

#703

Post by matthewdgreen »

tracker1 wrote: post #615
matthewdgreen wrote: post #560

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who was a customer of Netflix from the dialup to broadband world, I can tell you that this stuff happens much faster than you expect. With AI we're clearly in the "it really works, but there are kinks and scaling problems" of, say, streaming video in 2001 -- whereas I think you mean to indicate we're trying to do Netflix back in the 1980s where the tech for widespread broadband was just fundamentally not a…

Oh, like RealPlayer in the late 90's (buffering... buffering...)

RealPlayer in the late 90s turned into (working) Napster, Gnutella and then the iPod in 2001, Podcasts (without the name) immediately after, with the name in 2004, Pandora in 2005, Spotify in 2008. So a decade from crummy idea to the companies we’re familiar with today, but slowed down by tremendous need for new (distributed) broadband infrastructure and complicated by IP arrangements. I guess 10 years seems like a long time from the front end, but looking back it’s nothing. Don’t go buying yourself a Tower Records.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg freezes AI hiring amid bubble fears

#704

Post by giancarlostoro »

tracker1 wrote: post #601

I'm somewhere in the middle on this, with regards to the ROI... this isn't the kind of thing where you see immediate reflection on quarterly returns... it's the kind of thing where if you don't hedge some bets, you're likely to completely die out from a generational shift. Facebook's product is eyeballs... they're being usurped on all sides between TikTok, X and BlueSky in terms of daily/regular users... They're comp…

> they're being usurped on all sides

They did it to themselves. Facebook is not the same site I originally joined. People were allowed to people. Now I have to worry about the AI banning me.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg freezes AI hiring amid bubble fears

#705

Post by b112 »

rTX5CMRXIfFG wrote: post #696
rafaelmn wrote: post #679

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you used Siri recently ? It's actually amazing how it can be crap at tasks consistently considering underlying tech. 1 in 5 hallucinations would be a welcome improvement. Using ChatGPT voice mode and Siri makes Siri feel like a legacy product.

I don’t think that’s the point. Yes, Siri is crap, but Apple is already working on integrating LLMs at the OS level and those are shipping soon. It’s a quick fix to catch up in the AI game, but considering their track record, they’re likely to eventually retire third party partnerships and vertically integrate with their own models in the future. The incentive is there—doing so will only boost their stock price.

Wait, Apple is going to introduce an AI Clippy?!?!

Re: Mark Zuckerberg freezes AI hiring amid bubble fears

#706

Post by danpalmer »

Zuckerberg either doesn't have the resolve for changing the business, or just keeps picking the wrong directions (depending on your biases).

First Facebook tried to pivot into mobile, pushed really hard for a short time and then flopped. Then Facebook tried really hard to make the Metaverse a thing, and for a while, but eventually Meta stopped finding it interesting and significantly reduced investment. Then AI was the big thing and Meta put a huge amount of money into it, chasing after other companies, with an arguably novel approach compared to the rest of big tech... but now seems to be backing out or at least messaging less commitment. Oh and I think there was some crypto in there too at one point?

I'm not saying that they should have stuck with any of these. The business may not have worked in each case, and that's fine, but spending billions on each one seems like a bad idea. Zuckerberg is great at chasing the next big thing, but seemingly bad at landing the next big thing. He either needs to chase them more tentatively, investing far less, or he needs to stick with them long enough to work out all the issues and build the growth over the long term.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg freezes AI hiring amid bubble fears

#707

Post by w-ll »

qeternity wrote: post #672
Jagerbizzle wrote: post #646

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess there's no 'M' in "FAANG" but there's this: https://www.geekwire.com/2025/im-good-for-my-80-billion-what...

FAANG has been replaced by Mag7: Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Broadcom, Meta, Microsoft, and Nvidia.

Can we switch to BANAMMA, Ba-nam-ma

* Broadcom * Alphabet * Nvidia * Amazon * Meta * Microsoft * Apple

Re: Mark Zuckerberg freezes AI hiring amid bubble fears

#708

Post by miki123211 »

deegles wrote: post #523
miki123211 wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have an overwhelming feeling that what we're trying to do here is "Netflix over DialUp." We're clearly seeing what AI will eventually be able to do, just like many VOD, smartphone and grocery delivery companies of the 90s did with the internet. The groundwork has been laid, and it's not too hard to see the shape of things to come. This tech, however, is still far too immature for a lot of use cases. There's enough…

> We're clearly seeing what AI will eventually be able to do Are we though? Aside from a narrow set of tasks like translation, grammar, and tone-shifting, LLMs are a dead end. Code generation sucks. Agents suck. They still hallucinate. If you wouldn't trust its medical advice without review from an actual doctor, why would you trust its advice on anything else? Also, the companies trying to "fix" issues with LLMs wit…

> If you wouldn't trust its medical advice without review from an actual doctor, why would you trust its advice on anything else?

When an LLM gives you medical advice, it's right x% of the time. When a doctor gives you medical advice, it's right y% of the time. During the last few years, x has gone from 0 to wherever it is now, while y has mostly stayed constant. It is not unimaginable to me that x might (and notice I said might, not will) cross y at some point in the future.

The real problem with LLM advice is that it is harder to find a "scapegoat" (particularly for legal purposes) when something goes wrong.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg freezes AI hiring amid bubble fears

#709

Post by DanHulton »

danpalmer wrote: post #706

Zuckerberg either doesn't have the resolve for changing the business, or just keeps picking the wrong directions (depending on your biases). First Facebook tried to pivot into mobile, pushed really hard for a short time and then flopped. Then Facebook tried really hard to make the Metaverse a thing, and for a while, but eventually Meta stopped finding it interesting and significantly reduced investment. Then AI was t…

Don't forget gaming back in the day! Facebook games started taking off, then Facebook decided that the _only_ way you could get paid on the Facebook platform was with Facebook Credits, and to incentivize Facebook as the gaming platform of choice, Facebook would give out free Credits to players to spend on Facebook games. Of course, if your game was the one they chose to spend those Credits on, you wouldn't actually get paid, not with promotional credits, what, are you crazy?

No, I'm not still bitter from that era, why do you ask?

Re: Mark Zuckerberg freezes AI hiring amid bubble fears

#710

Post by IAmGraydon »

While I think LLMs are not the pathway to AGI, this bubble narrative appears to be a concerted propaganda campaign intended to get people to sell, and it all started with Altman, the guy who was responsible for always pumping up the bubble. I don't know who else is behind this, but the Telegraph appears to be a major outlet of these stories. Just today alone:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/08/20/ai-report-tr... https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/08/21/we-may-be-fa... https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/08/21/zuckerberg-f...

Other media outlets are also making a massive push of this narrative. If they get their way, they may actually cause a massive selloff, letting everyone who profited from the giant bubble they created buy everything up cheap.

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