Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fortunately there's probably a lot of opportunity for those 600 out there.
Yeah, it's a hot job market right now
For AI only.
Meta is axing 600 roles across its AI division
131–140 of 506 posts
Re: Meta is axing 600 roles across its AI division
#132This is in addition to another round of cuts from a couple months ago that didn't make the news. I heard from somebody who joined Meta in an AI-related division at a senior position a few months ago. Said within a couple of months of joining, almost his entire department was gutted -- VPs, directors, manager, engineers -- and he was one of the very few left.
Not sure of the exact numbers, given it was within a single department, the cuts were not big but definitely went swift and deep.
As an outside observer, Zuck has always been a sociopath, but he was also always very calculated. However over the past few months he seems to be getting much more erratic and, well... "Elon-y" with this GenAI thing. I wonder what he's seeing that is causing this behavior.
(Crossposted from dupe at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45669719)
Re: Meta is axing 600 roles across its AI division
#133Because the AI works so well, or because it doesn't? > ”By reducing the size of our team, fewer conversations will be required to make a decision, and each person will be more load-bearing and have more scope and impact,” Wang writes in a memo seen by Axios. That's kinda wild. I'm kinda shocked they put it in writing.
> By reducing the size of our team, fewer conversations will be required to make a decision
This was noted a long time ago by Brooks in the Mythical Man-Month. Every person added to a team increases the communication overhead (n(n − 1)/2). Teams should only be as big as they absolutely need to be. I've always been amazed that big tech gets anything done at all.
The other option would be to have certain people just do the work told to them, but that's hard in knowledge based jobs.
Re: Meta is axing 600 roles across its AI division
#134I think this is because older AI doesn't get done what LLM AI does. Older AI = normal trained models, neural networks (without transformers), support vector machines, etc. For that reason, they are letting them go. They don't see revenue coming from that. They don't see new product lines (like AI Generative image/video). AI may have this every 5 years. A break through moves the technology into an entirely new area. T…
I would expect nearly every active AI engineer who trained models in the pre-LLM era to be up to speed on the transformer-based papers and techniques. Most people don't study AI and then decide "I don't like learning" when the biggest AI breakthroughs and ridiculous pay packages all start happening.
Re: Meta is axing 600 roles across its AI division
#135I think this is because older AI doesn't get done what LLM AI does. Older AI = normal trained models, neural networks (without transformers), support vector machines, etc. For that reason, they are letting them go. They don't see revenue coming from that. They don't see new product lines (like AI Generative image/video). AI may have this every 5 years. A break through moves the technology into an entirely new area. T…
It's a good theory on first read, but likely not what's happening here.
Many here were in LLMs.
Re: Meta is axing 600 roles across its AI division
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
> adding erotica support to ChatGPT They really need that business model.
I mean, it's a path to "profitability", isn't it?
Hardly, they are burning money with TikSlop, they don't even know how to monetize it, just YOLO'd the product to keep investors interested.
Even the porn industry can't seem to monetize AI, so I doubt OpenAI who knows jack shit about this space will be able to.
Fact is generative AI is stupidly expensive to run, and I can't see mass adoption at subscription prices that actually allow them to break even.
I'm sure folks have seen the commentary on the cost of all this infrastructure. How can an LLM business model possibly pay for a nuclear power station, let alone the ongoing overheads of the rest of the infrastructure? The whole thing just seems like total fantasy.
I don't even think they believe they are going to reach AGI, and even if they did, and if companies did start hiring AI agents instead of humans, then what? If consumers are out of work, who the hell is going to keep the economy going?
I just don't understand how smart people think this is going to work out at all.
Re: Meta is axing 600 roles across its AI division
#137So Meta knows it can't win the AI race, but it's going to keep betting on the AGI race because YOLO/FOMO?
The only thing worse than a bubble? Two bubbles.
Re: Meta is axing 600 roles across its AI division
#138> while the company continues to hire workers for its newly formed superintelligence team, TBD Lab. It's coming any day now! > "... each person will be more load-bearing and have more scope and impact,” Wang writes It's only a matter of time before the superintelligence decides to lay off the managers too. Soon Mr. Wang will be gone and we'll see press releases like: > ”By reducing the size of our team, fewer convers…
> It's coming any day now! I'm loving this juxtaposition of companies hyping up imminent epoch-defining AGI, while simultaneously dedicating resources to building TikTok But Worse or adding erotica support to ChatGPT. Interesting priorities.
If the AGI is anything like its creators, it'll probably also enjoy obscure erotica, to be fair.
Re: Meta is axing 600 roles across its AI division
#139From a quick online search: - OpenAI's mission is to build safe AI, and ensure AI's benefits are as widely and evenly distributed as possible. - Google's mission is to organise the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. - Meta's mission is to build the future of human connection and the technology that makes it possible. Lets just take these three companies, and their self-defined mission…
Kinda ignoring Grok there which is the leader in many benchmarks.
Re: Meta is axing 600 roles across its AI division
#140“If I work in/with AI my job will be safe” isn’t true after all.
They are at the for front of training PCs to replace them and teaching management that they can be replaced.