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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

#91

Post by Eisenstein »

mrits wrote: post #81
Eisenstein wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

So if an LLM could do any of those things you would consider it very smart?

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

#92

Post by g947o »

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?

Hallucinating things that never exist?

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

#93

Post by PaulHoule »

olyjohn wrote: post #70
lvl155 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s such a wasteland. I really think FB is fudging those Facebook user metrics. I might login once or twice a year and realize even marketplace is junk these days.

Marketplace is trash. It is severely broken, the search doesn't work, the filters don't work. It throws in shit you aren't looking for, and constantly misses things that are there. Yet they destroyed Craigslist. Unfortunately its where everybody posts everything and you will sell shit much quicker on there.

Craigslist had the same problem. Once you have a two sided market it is almost impossible to kill your business no matter how hard you screw it up. Unusually Facebook was able to muscle them out, but Craigslist was characterized by years of stagnation where the only thing that happened was they kicked out the prostitutes.

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

#94

Post by Eisenstein »

this_user wrote: post #88
Eisenstein wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 actual…

1. I would argue that an actor performing in this way does actually understand what his character means

2. Why doesn't this apply to you from my perspective?

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

#95

Post by nl »

leptons wrote: post #7
loeg wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bro they spend $4B on RL every quarter .

Well it's probably nowhere near the size of the money-pit that "AI" currently is in.

You realize that AI is driving huge advertising growth at Meta, right?

> Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, reported strong second-quarter 2025 earnings, driven primarily by robust advertising revenue growth. Total revenue reached US$47.52 billion, up 22% from last year, with advertising accounting for $46.56 billion, an increase of 21%, surpassing Wall Street expectations. The growth was fuelled by an 11% rise in ad impressions across Meta’s Family of Apps and a 9% increase in the average ad price. Net income climbed 36% to $18.34 billion, marking ten consecutive quarters of profit outperformance. The Family of Apps segment generated $47.15 billion in revenue and $24.97 billion in operating income, while Reality Labs posted a $4.53 billion operating loss.

> Much of this growth is credited to Meta’s AI advancements in its advertising offerings, such as smarter ad recommendations and campaign automation. Currently, over 4 million advertisers use the AI-powered Advantage+ campaigns, achieving a 22% improvement in returns. Building on this success, Meta plans to enable brands to fully create and target ads using AI by the end of 2026.

(emphasis mine)

https://www.campaignasia.com/article/metas-q2-ad-revenue-bea...

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

#96

Post by hshdhdhj4444 »

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?

If Zuck throws $2-$4Bn towards a bunch of AI “superstars” and that’s enough to convince the market that Meta is now a serious AI company, it will translate into hundreds of billions in market cap increases.

Seems like a great bang for the buck.

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

#97

Post by mycall »

g947o wrote: post #92
Eisenstein wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Hallucinating things that never exist?

Imagination?

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

#98

Post by nl »

mullingitover wrote: post #56
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.

I'd contrast this with Flickr. Flickr was the original social network. They have a modest loss leader, a reasonable free tier, but nothing like the permanent money bonfire that the big tech firms operate. They were kinda the first real Web 2.0 social media site, with a social graph, privacy controls, a developer API, tagging, RSS feeds. I feel that they never really got to their full potential exactly because these b…

Flickr failed because they sold to Yahoo which was bad place to end up. But a successful Flickr would look a lot like Instagram

Del.icio.us is the same story. Good product ahead of its time, bought by Yahoo and died. Could have been Pinterest.

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

#99

Post by anon84873628 »

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?

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