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Meta is axing 600 roles across its AI division

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Re: Meta is axing 600 roles across its AI division

#151

From 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…

Why are you asking questions about their PR department coordinated "Company missions"?

Let me summarise their real missions:

1. Power and money

2. Power and money

3. Power and money

How does AI help them make money and gain more power?

I can give you a few ways...

Re: Meta is axing 600 roles across its AI division

#152
post #28
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I’m not understanding, but why is that wild? Is it just the fact that those people lost jobs? If it were a justification for a re-org I wouldn’t find it objectionable at all

It damages trust. Layoffs are nearly always bad for a company, but are terrible in a research environment. You want people who will geek out over math/code all day, and being afraid for your job (for reasons outside your control!) is very counterproductive. This is why tenure was invented.

But that doesn’t explain why this particular justification is especially ”wild”, does it?

Re: Meta is axing 600 roles across its AI division

#153
post #26
post #3

Because 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.

"Load bearing." Isn't this the same guy that sold his company for $14B. I hope his "impact and scope" are quantifiably and equivalently "load bearing" or is this a way to sacrifice some of his privileged former colleagues at the Zuck altar.

Seems like a purge - new management comes in, and purges anyone not loyal to it. standard playbook. Happens in every org. Instead of euphemisms like "load-bearing" they could have straight out called it eliminating the old-guard.

Also, why go thru a layoff and then reassign staff to other roles. Is it to first disgrace, and then offer straws to grasp at. This reflects their culture, and sends a clear warning to those joining.

Re: Meta is axing 600 roles across its AI division

#155
post #75
post #17

they've lost on basically all fronts of AI right?

I'm confused about Meta AI in general. It's _horrible_ compared to every other LLM I use. Customer ingress is weird to me too - do they expect people to use Facebook chat (Messenger) to talk to Meta AI mainly? I've tried it on messenger, the website, and have run llama locally. My (completely uninformed, spitballing) thinking is that Facebook doesn't care that much about AI for end users. THe benefit here is for thei…

Too much training on facebook and insta shitposts.

Re: Meta is axing 600 roles across its AI division

#156

From 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…

Why are you asking questions about their PR department coordinated "Company missions"? Let me summarise their real missions: 1. Power and money 2. Power and money 3. Power and money How does AI help them make money and gain more power? I can give you a few ways...

[flagged]

Re: Meta is axing 600 roles across its AI division

#159
post #107

Meta is fumbling hard. Winning the AI race is about marketing at this point - the difference between the models is negligible. Chat GPT is the one on everyone's lips outside of technology, and in the media. They have a platform by which to push some kind of assistant but where is it? I log into facebook and it's buried in the sidebar as Meta AI. Why aren't they shoving it down my throat? They have a huge platform of…

Surely winning the AI race is finding secret techniques that allow development of superior models, with it not being apparent that anyone has anything special enough that he actually is winning?

I think there's some firms with special knowledge: Google, possibly OpenAI/Anthropic, possibly the Chinese firms, possibly Mistral too, but no one has enough unique stuff to really stand out.

The biggest things were those six months before people figured out how O1 worked and the short time before people figured out how Google and possibly OpenAI solved 5/6 of the 2025 IMO problems.

Re: Meta is axing 600 roles across its AI division

#160

From 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…

Why are you asking questions about their PR department coordinated "Company missions"? Let me summarise their real missions: 1. Power and money 2. Power and money 3. Power and money How does AI help them make money and gain more power? I can give you a few ways...

To be even more specific, the company making money is merely a proxy for the actual goal: increased valuation for stockowners. Subtle but very significant difference
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