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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

#241

Post by svara »

gloomyday wrote: post #198
Rebuff5007 wrote: post #126

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…

These "missions" cannot coexist with the single mission of every publicly traded company, which is to maximize shareholder value. It is really depressing how corporations don't look like they are run by humans.

This is too reductionist. When you go to work, do you go maximize shareholder value? Were you ever part of a team and felt good about the work you were doing together? Was it because you were maximizing shareholder value?

Re: Meta is axing 600 roles across its AI division

#242

Post by churchill »

jpadkins wrote: post #235
mmmm2 wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But, on the flip side, coercive power cannot stand on its own without money too. The CCP's Politburo know beyond a doubt that they have coercive power over billionaires like Jack Ma, but they try to accommodate these entrepreneurs who help catalyze economic growth & bring the state more foreign revenue/wealth to fund its coercive machine.

America's elected leaders also have power to punish & bring oligarchs to book legally, but they mostly interact symbiotically, exchanging campaign contributions and board seats for preferential treatment, favorable policy, etc.

Putin can order any out-of-line oligarch to be disposed of, but the economic & coercive arms of the Russian State still see themselves as two sides of the same coin.

So, yes: coercive power can still make billionaires face the wall (Russian revolution, etc.) but they mostly prefer to work together. Money and power are a continuum like spacetime.

Re: Meta is axing 600 roles across its AI division

#243

Post by echelon »

lkrubner wrote: post #194
Rebuff5007 wrote: post #126

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…

Meta's mission is to build the future of human connection -- this totally makes sense if you assume they believe that the future of human connection is with an AI friend. That https://character.ai is so enormously popular with people who are under the age of 25 suggests that this is the future. And Meta is certainly looking at https://character.ai with great interest, but also with concern. https://character.ai repre…

Character.ai over raised, the leadership team left, and there's no appreciable revenue AFAIK and have heard. Kids under 25 role playing with cartoons are hard to monetize.

Then there's also the reputational harm if Meta acquires them and the journalists write about the bad things that happen on that platform.

Re: Meta is axing 600 roles across its AI division

#244

Post by dheera »

Rebuff5007 wrote: post #126

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…

> - Meta's mission is to build the future of human connection and the technology that makes it possible

Meta arguably achieved this with the initial versions of their products, but even AI aside, they're mostly disconnecting humans now. I post much less on Instagram and Facebook now that they almost never show my content to my own friends or followers, and show them ads and influencer crap instead, so it's basically talking to a wall in an app. Add to this that companies like Meta are all forcing PIP quotas and mass layoffs which in turn causes everyone in my social circle to work 996.

So they have not only taken away online connections to real humans, they have ALSO taken away offline connections to real humans because nobody has time to meet in real life anymore. Win-win for them, I guess.

Re: Meta is axing 600 roles across its AI division

#245

Post by p1mrx »

hinkley wrote: post #165
scrollop wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Sometimes they mix it up and go for money and power.

minute after minute, hour after hour

Re: Meta is axing 600 roles across its AI division

#246

Post by kstrauser »

drivebyhooting wrote: post #179
freedomben wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can actually relate to that, especially in a big co where you hire fast. I think it's shitty to over-hire and lay off, but I've definitely worked in many teams where there were just too many people (many very smart) with their own sense of priorities and goals, and it makes it hard to anything done. This is especially true when you over-divide areas of responsiblity.

Those people have families and responsibilities. Leadership should take responsibility for their poor planning. Alas, the burden falls on the little guys. Especially in this kind of labor market.

Hard agree. It was management who messed up hiring. It’s management who should bear the responsibility for it.

Re: Meta is axing 600 roles across its AI division

#247

Post by jpadkins »

monkeynotes wrote: post #136
throwacct wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 folk…

> If consumers are out of work, who the hell is going to keep the economy going?

There is a whole field of research called post scarcity economy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-scarcity

tldr; it's not as bad as you think, but the transition is going to be bad (for some of us).

Re: Meta is axing 600 roles across its AI division

#248

Post by dekhn »

throwawayq3423 wrote: post #128
dekhn wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's more "move fast on a good foundation, rarely breaking things, and having a good team that can fix problems when they inevitably arise".

That's not what move fast in a large org looks like in practice.

Sometimes moving fast in a large org boils down to finding a succinct way to tell the lawyer "I understand what you're saying, but that's not consistent with my understanding of the legality of the issue, so I will proceed with my work. If you want to block my process, the escalation path is through my manager."

(I have more than once had to explain to a lawyer that their understanding was wrong, and they were imposing unnecessary extra practice)

Re: Meta is axing 600 roles across its AI division

#249

Post by ironman1478 »

ceejayoz wrote: 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.

Having worked at Meta, I wish they did this when I was there. Way too many people not agreeing on anything and having wildly different visions for the same thing. As an IC below L6 it became really impossible to know what to do in the org I was in. I had to leave.
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