> Meta will allow impacted employees to apply for other roles within the company How gracious.
In addition, Meta will also allow impacted employees to continue breathing oxygen.
Meta is axing 600 roles across its AI division
231–240 of 506 posts
Re: Meta is axing 600 roles across its AI division
#232I’m kind of surprised Wang is leading AI at Meta? His knowledge is around data labeling which is important sure but is he really the guy to take this to the next level?
Re: Meta is axing 600 roles across its AI division
#233Earlier quoted context omitted.
In India
The new head is Chinese. There was a screenshot on Blind of his org at Apple and it was well over a hundred nearly exclusively Chinese reports
Where are all these genius American AI scientists that they should hire instead? Pull up a list of the top 1000 most cited AI research papers published in the last decade and look at the authors. You'll find them full of names from China, India, Russia, Eastern Europe, Israel. They are the ones getting jobs. This isn't discrimination, just reality.
Re: Meta is axing 600 roles across its AI division
#234Because 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.
This is happening everywhere. In every industry. Our economy is being propped up by this. From manufacturing to software engineering, this is how the US economy is continuing to "flourish" from a macroeconomic perspective. Margin is being preserved by reducing liabilities and relying on a combination of increased workload and automation that is "good enough" to get to the next step—but assumes there is a next step an…
We are all screwed even if it does pan out cuz they can ship every job overseas to the lowest bidder. Unless by “we” you mean the C-suite.
Re: Meta is axing 600 roles across its AI division
#235Earlier quoted context omitted.
> sometimes they manage to meld it into one goal, because money is power. Money is a measure of power, but it is not in fact power.
True, though money can buy influence and the opportunity to obtain power.
the people with all the firepower won't let you buy your own private military (or develop your own weapons systems without being under their control). The end-of-line power (violence) is a closely guarded monopoly.
Re: Meta is axing 600 roles across its AI division
#236Re: Meta is axing 600 roles across its AI division
#237Re: Meta is axing 600 roles across its AI division
#238I 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 really doubt that. Most of the profit-generating AI in most industries... decision support, spotting connections, recommendations, filtering, etc... runs on old school techniques. They're cheaper to train, cheaper to run, and more explainable.
Last survey I saw said regression was still the most-used technique with SVM's more used than LLM's. I figured combining those types of tools with LLM tech, esp for specifying or training them, is a better investment than replacing them. There's people doing that.
Now, I could see Facebook itself thinking LLM's are the most important if they're writing all the code, tests, diagnostics, doing moderation, customer service, etc. Essentially, running the operational side of what generates revenue. They're also willing to spend a lot of money to make that good enough for their use case.
That said, their financial bets make me wonder if they're driven by imagination more than hard analyses.
Re: Meta is axing 600 roles across its AI division
#239From 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…
I usually try not to be so cynical but just couldn't resist here: What if the future of human connection is to replace it with para social relationships that can be monetized?
That said I am not cynical about mission statements like that per se, I do think that making large organizations work towards a common goal is a very difficult problem. Unless you're going to have a hierarchical command and control system in place, you need to do it through shared culture and mission.
Re: Meta is axing 600 roles across its AI division
#240Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have you considered that people can just say things?
But we can still consider the consistency of their story, because they are telling that story to influence the perception of their actions.
The consistency of a mission statement? Are you guys for real?
To be clear: I'm not arguing that everyone at OpenAI or Meta is a bad person, I don't think that's true. Most of their employees are probably normal people. But seriously, you have to tell me what you guys are smoking if a mission statement causes you to update in any direction whatsoever. I can hardly think of anything more devoid of content.