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Mark Zuckerberg Shakes Up Meta's A.I. Efforts, Again

nytimes.com

21–30 of 73 posts

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Shakes Up Meta's A.I. Efforts, Again

#21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think he’ll be looked back as one hit wonder, lacking any ethics to grow his company. He pumped a whole bunch of money in VR that didn’t seem to go anywhere and now AI seems like a fine direction to go in, copying the herd, with dangerous disregard to ethics.

> I think he’ll be looked back as one hit wonder, lacking any ethics to grow his company. I can't take this seriously - it reeks of hindsight bias. Zuckerberg's "one hit" was thefacebook.com. After facebook.com went public he, seemingly immediately, decided to buy Instagram and go all in on mobile. At the time, people thought he had way too much power due to the stock structure and many people thought his bet on mobi…

"I don't think there is a single founder/CEO in the 21st century that is performing better than Zuckerberg. I understand he's not a likable guy, and neither are are his products."

Spot on.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Shakes Up Meta's A.I. Efforts, Again

#22
post #8

I really wonder how Zuckerberg will be looked back on. It's seemed obvious that he's an incredible CEO given the growth we saw with Facebook, but maybe he was just in the right place at the right time and had a cash cow that was difficult to mess up? Because when I look at the Metaverse and I look at this AI stuff... I dunno. Feels like throwing spaghetti at the wall.

Credits:

1. thefacebook

2. transition from desktop to mobile

3. building the machine that facebook became

4. buying out or building feature parity with competitors that took FB from its IPO market share of $104 billion to today's market cap of $1.89 trillion.

Has he innovated successfully since the o.g. thefacebook? Not really. Metaverse fell flat on its face. Hardware efforts over two decades have gained no meaningful traction. AI is a mess.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Shakes Up Meta's A.I. Efforts, Again

#23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think he’ll be looked back as one hit wonder, lacking any ethics to grow his company. He pumped a whole bunch of money in VR that didn’t seem to go anywhere and now AI seems like a fine direction to go in, copying the herd, with dangerous disregard to ethics.

> I think he’ll be looked back as one hit wonder, lacking any ethics to grow his company. I can't take this seriously - it reeks of hindsight bias. Zuckerberg's "one hit" was thefacebook.com. After facebook.com went public he, seemingly immediately, decided to buy Instagram and go all in on mobile. At the time, people thought he had way too much power due to the stock structure and many people thought his bet on mobi…

You make interesting points so let's take a more nuanced view of things:

I'll agree Zuck is amazing at spotting large macro trends in technology and capitalizing on them (VR he was a little early at, but I still buy it could be big).

However, he wasn't able to do that with AI, the big companies and startups weren't selling. So the question is, can he build a team? I'm skeptical, he put Alexandr Wang, someone who never built a foundational model in charge of all their AI efforts? It could be a great move, but might also be a swing and a miss.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Shakes Up Meta's A.I. Efforts, Again

#24
post #8

I really wonder how Zuckerberg will be looked back on. It's seemed obvious that he's an incredible CEO given the growth we saw with Facebook, but maybe he was just in the right place at the right time and had a cash cow that was difficult to mess up? Because when I look at the Metaverse and I look at this AI stuff... I dunno. Feels like throwing spaghetti at the wall.

[dead]

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Shakes Up Meta's A.I. Efforts, Again

#25
post #8

I really wonder how Zuckerberg will be looked back on. It's seemed obvious that he's an incredible CEO given the growth we saw with Facebook, but maybe he was just in the right place at the right time and had a cash cow that was difficult to mess up? Because when I look at the Metaverse and I look at this AI stuff... I dunno. Feels like throwing spaghetti at the wall.

Everything he's done was either copied or bought. The guy has never had an original idea in his life.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Shakes Up Meta's A.I. Efforts, Again

#26
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think he’ll be looked back as one hit wonder, lacking any ethics to grow his company. I can't take this seriously - it reeks of hindsight bias. Zuckerberg's "one hit" was thefacebook.com. After facebook.com went public he, seemingly immediately, decided to buy Instagram and go all in on mobile. At the time, people thought he had way too much power due to the stock structure and many people thought his bet on mobi…

"I don't think there is a single founder/CEO in the 21st century that is performing better than Zuckerberg. I understand he's not a likable guy, and neither are are his products." Spot on.

Right? "How Zuckerberg will be looked back on" involves far more than just business/fiscal metrics, especially when "he's not a likable guy, and neither are his products". He may be hailed as a significant success as a CEO, but there's also the impact to individual privacy, the emphasis to get users addicted in an effort to maximize "engagement", the impact that social media (of which it's being argued here that he is king) on youth/society and political discourse writ large, the brutal impact to our attention spans, so on and so forth.

If I'm a magic eight ball, I'm going to go with "Outlook not good" on how history's going to view him. Being a CEO that is "performing better" than all the others is but a single piece of the puzzle.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Shakes Up Meta's A.I. Efforts, Again

#27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think he’ll be looked back as one hit wonder, lacking any ethics to grow his company. He pumped a whole bunch of money in VR that didn’t seem to go anywhere and now AI seems like a fine direction to go in, copying the herd, with dangerous disregard to ethics.

> I think he’ll be looked back as one hit wonder, lacking any ethics to grow his company. I can't take this seriously - it reeks of hindsight bias. Zuckerberg's "one hit" was thefacebook.com. After facebook.com went public he, seemingly immediately, decided to buy Instagram and go all in on mobile. At the time, people thought he had way too much power due to the stock structure and many people thought his bet on mobi…

> go all in on mobile. At the time, people thought he had way too much power due to the stock structure and many people thought his bet on mobile would come crashing down

That feels like real revisionist history to me. He was late to mobile. Buying Instagram was the Hail Mary. and yes, it paid off. But a tech company with the resources of Facebook could have been where Google is today with Android if they’d acted at the right moment.

The Instagram purchase was in 2012. Who was still expecting mobile to come crashing down in the iPhone 5 era?

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Shakes Up Meta's A.I. Efforts, Again

#28
post #8

I really wonder how Zuckerberg will be looked back on. It's seemed obvious that he's an incredible CEO given the growth we saw with Facebook, but maybe he was just in the right place at the right time and had a cash cow that was difficult to mess up? Because when I look at the Metaverse and I look at this AI stuff... I dunno. Feels like throwing spaghetti at the wall.

one-hit wonder

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Shakes Up Meta's A.I. Efforts, Again

#29
post #8

I really wonder how Zuckerberg will be looked back on. It's seemed obvious that he's an incredible CEO given the growth we saw with Facebook, but maybe he was just in the right place at the right time and had a cash cow that was difficult to mess up? Because when I look at the Metaverse and I look at this AI stuff... I dunno. Feels like throwing spaghetti at the wall.

I think he’ll be looked back as one hit wonder, lacking any ethics to grow his company. He pumped a whole bunch of money in VR that didn’t seem to go anywhere and now AI seems like a fine direction to go in, copying the herd, with dangerous disregard to ethics.

100% agree, so many flops right at the top

VR/AR Threads AI

Probably missing some more..

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Shakes Up Meta's A.I. Efforts, Again

#30
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think he’ll be looked back as one hit wonder, lacking any ethics to grow his company. I can't take this seriously - it reeks of hindsight bias. Zuckerberg's "one hit" was thefacebook.com. After facebook.com went public he, seemingly immediately, decided to buy Instagram and go all in on mobile. At the time, people thought he had way too much power due to the stock structure and many people thought his bet on mobi…

> go all in on mobile. At the time, people thought he had way too much power due to the stock structure and many people thought his bet on mobile would come crashing down That feels like real revisionist history to me. He was late to mobile. Buying Instagram was the Hail Mary. and yes, it paid off. But a tech company with the resources of Facebook could have been where Google is today with Android if they’d acted at…

Yes FB was all about HTML 5 and didn’t adopt native mobile until around 2012.
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