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Meta's new A.I. superstars are chafing against the rest of the company

nytimes.com

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Re: Meta's new A.I. superstars are chafing against the rest of the company

#81

Post by mrits »

Eisenstein wrote: post #77
this_user wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way it sounds, Zuckerberg believes that they can, or at the very least has people around him telling him that they can. But Zuckerberg also though that the Metaverse would be thing. LeCun obviously thinks otherwise and believes that LLMs are a dead-end, and he might be right. The trouble with LLMs is that most people don't really understand how they work. They seem smart, but they are not; they are really just go…

> They seem smart, but they are not; they are really just good at appearing to be smart. Can you give an example of the difference between these two things?

Being able to learn to play Moonlight Sonata vs. being able to create it. Being able to write a video game vs being able to write a video game that sells. Being able to tell you newtons equations vs being able to discover the acceleration of gravity on earth

Re: Meta's new A.I. superstars are chafing against the rest of the company

#82

Post by milowata »

this_user wrote: post #74
dazamarquez wrote: post #47

Is Wang even able to achieve superintelligence? Is anyone? I'm unable to make sense of Wang's compensation package. What actual, practical skills does he bring to the table? Is this all a stunt to drive Meta's stock value?

The way it sounds, Zuckerberg believes that they can, or at the very least has people around him telling him that they can. But Zuckerberg also though that the Metaverse would be thing. LeCun obviously thinks otherwise and believes that LLMs are a dead-end, and he might be right. The trouble with LLMs is that most people don't really understand how they work. They seem smart, but they are not; they are really just go…

Wang is a networking machine and has connected with everyone in the industry. Likely was brought in as a recruiting leader. Mark being Mark, though, doesn’t understand the value of vision and figured getting big names in the same room was better than actually having a plan.

Re: Meta's new A.I. superstars are chafing against the rest of the company

#83

Post by laweijfmvo »

atonse wrote: post #5

When I read that the dude was asked to take $2b from reality labs and spend it on AI, I was shocked… that they were still spending $2b on virtual reality nonsense in 2025. That said, from what I understand, X is working on using grok to improve the algorithm. Why can’t fb do the same and coexist?

if you think Meta RL loses money wait until OpenAI goes public

Re: Meta's new A.I. superstars are chafing against the rest of the company

#84

Post by PaulHoule »

seizethecheese wrote: post #71
bloppe wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zuck has unilateral majority voting power. This was probably a good thing during the financial crisis, but appears to be more of a liability these days.

Perhaps, yet it’s a $1.6T company nonetheless.

Management can’t kill a company that dominates a two-sided market no matter how hard it tries —- this phenomena needs a catchy name, the ‘zombie dillemma’ isn’t quite good enough.

Re: Meta's new A.I. superstars are chafing against the rest of the company

#85

Post by bgirard »

hibern8 wrote: post #79
Mistletoe wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the differences between a person that is smart and an LLM that seems smart but isn't?

The ability to generate novel ideas.

What's your definition of a novel idea? How do you measure that?

I've had a 15 year+ successful career as a SWE so far. I don't think I've had a single idea so novel that today's LLM could not have come up with it.

Re: Meta's new A.I. superstars are chafing against the rest of the company

#86

Post by PaulHoule »

rchaud wrote: post #54
zeroonetwothree wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That framing is silly. “NBC doesn’t have a television business, they have an ad business”. “Google doesn’t have a search business, they have an ad business.” “Amazon doesn’t have a retail business, they have an ad business.” It doesn’t provide any value to reframe it this way, unless you think it’s some big secret that ads are the main source of revenue for these businesses.

NBC produces their own content, Facebook and Instagram meanwhile are the equivalent of public access TV with ads. There is no unique "brand" that Facebook has, anything posted on there is also posted everywhere else.

It’s crowded out craiglists and events boards.

Re: Meta's new A.I. superstars are chafing against the rest of the company

#87

Post by nl »

hibern8 wrote: post #79
Mistletoe wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the differences between a person that is smart and an LLM that seems smart but isn't?

The ability to generate novel ideas.

Well that's not true - see the Terry Tao article using AlphaEvolve to discover new proofs.

Additionally, "novel ideas" isn't something that is included in something that smart people do so why would it be a requirement for AI.

Re: Meta's new A.I. superstars are chafing against the rest of the company

#88

Post by this_user »

Eisenstein wrote: post #77
this_user wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way it sounds, Zuckerberg believes that they can, or at the very least has people around him telling him that they can. But Zuckerberg also though that the Metaverse would be thing. LeCun obviously thinks otherwise and believes that LLMs are a dead-end, and he might be right. The trouble with LLMs is that most people don't really understand how they work. They seem smart, but they are not; they are really just go…

> They seem smart, but they are not; they are really just good at appearing to be smart. Can you give an example of the difference between these two things?

Imagine an actor who is playing a character speaking a language that they actor does not speak. Due to a lack of time, the actor decides against actually learning the language and instead opts to just memorise and train how to speak their lines without actually understanding the content. Let's assume they are doing a pretty convincing job too. Now, the audience watching these scenes may think that the actor is actually speaking the language, but in reality they are just mimicking.

This is what an LLM essentially is. It is good at mimicking, reproducing and recombining the things it was trained on. But it has no creativity to go beyond this, and it doesn't even possess true reasoning, which is how it will end up making mistakes that are just immediately obvious to a human observer, yet the LLM is unable to see them, because it just mimicking.

Re: Meta's new A.I. superstars are chafing against the rest of the company

#89

Post by nl »

this_user wrote: post #74
dazamarquez wrote: post #47

Is Wang even able to achieve superintelligence? Is anyone? I'm unable to make sense of Wang's compensation package. What actual, practical skills does he bring to the table? Is this all a stunt to drive Meta's stock value?

The way it sounds, Zuckerberg believes that they can, or at the very least has people around him telling him that they can. But Zuckerberg also though that the Metaverse would be thing. LeCun obviously thinks otherwise and believes that LLMs are a dead-end, and he might be right. The trouble with LLMs is that most people don't really understand how they work. They seem smart, but they are not; they are really just go…

Humans aren't smart, they are really just good at appearing to be smart.

Prove me wrong.

Re: Meta's new A.I. superstars are chafing against the rest of the company

#90

Post by PaulHoule »

BoorishBears wrote: post #41
twodave wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> zuck saying he laid off poor performers (effectively screwing those people for no reason) Were they not actually performing poorly, then? Maybe I'm missing some context, but laying off poor performers is a good thing last I checked. It's identifying them that's difficult the further removed you are from the action (or lack thereof).

You're replying to someone (rightfully) pointing out that you can layoff poor performers without proclaiming it with one of the farthest reaching voices in the industry. Anyone who's worked in a large org knows there's absolutely zero chance that those layoffs don't touch a single bystander or special case.

Any kind of stack ranking privileges people who are good in presentation of self and high in pathological narcissism.
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