Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “A Dark Day for VR…”.
Legendary programmer John Carmack known for programming, the original Doom uh and his love for VR has stepped down as Consulting CTO for reality, Labs formerly Oculus, I actually didn’t know they were called reality Labs. I don’t know why. I didn’t know that yeah. I think that was a while back yeah.
I probably just didn’t care, because it’s a weird name change that doesn’t matter. Uh meta is famous for making and directing and directly breaking promises, not to F it up in quotes. You will not need a Facebook account to use or develop for the rift. That’S definitely not a thing anymore quotes. We are not going to track you flash ads at you or do anything invasive uh.
That’S not a thing anymore. In quotes we are going to. We are not going to lock people out because they compete. I actually didn’t know that was broken, but apparently that was broken in 2016., uh, yeah and then another one in quotes.
Facebook is going to give us access to massive resources, but let us operate independently, hey the first part they did. If anything, I pulled down yeah the first yeah, the first half of that is extremely correct, um and then in quotes. None of our gaming resources will be diverted. Oh yeah, that one uh not so much oof uh CarMax says that he has mixed feelings about leaving, stating that the Quest 2 in particular, was almost exactly what he wanted to see.
Despite complaints about the software yeah, the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back is apparently the the gaming resources being diverted one for him. I mean we know yeah John Carmack yeah he’s a gamer he’s not again he’s not a gamer. Oh he’s not a gay he’s not into gaming right right, John Carmack, not that into gaming, just a doom yeah, it’s not a game! Yeah yeah! It’S a wall! It’S real! It’S a wall painting! It’S really it’s how we protect the world from demons. You know the storyline behind Doom is, like surprisingly, in-depth yeah. It’S like there’s a ton of lore yeah. I had no idea yeah, I mean either anyway. Um Carmack has previously been critical of meta’s Direction, saying that they should focus on products to tap into the metaverse before building out initiatives uh, he worried that thousands of people’s efforts spanning years would be spent on things that didn’t contribute to the way people use devices. Today seems to be a little bit true. His biggest problem, however, is the efficiency and speed of development. He says that as someone who works hard at optimization, seeing gross inefficiency, hurts your soul likening to seeing five percent GPU utilization. That is not surprising from him. He has always been hyper into that.
This is one of the reasons why people still run some of his old games, unlike as many devices as they can possibly imagine, because they’re really really well built for for optimization for regard like basically, regardless of what platform you’re on reality Labs, he says, operates at Half the effectiveness that he’d like yikes, that’s a big hoop. I mean his standards are pretty high, yes, but there’s probably still room for improvement. Also, yes, his voice at the top of the company to his dismay, has not been able to persuade the organization to improve. He says uh that he has never been able to stop stupid things because they cause damage or set a direction and have the team stick to it. He blames himself for this, as instead of taking a leadership role and locking horns with Facebook on day one he focused on what he’s best at programming. That’S also not surprising, he assumed he would hate it, be bad at it and probably lose anyways.
So that’s why he stuck to programming, he still deeply believes in VR and that meta is best able to show its value. His parting advice in quotes is make better decisions and fill your products with give a damn now. Carmax Focus yeah me too. Actually, CarMax Focus will be on his artificial intelligence.
Startup Keen Technologies, which has received significant investment money in recent months. Artificial intelligence or AGI has the goal of making an artificial intelligence system that can theoretically do any task. A human can a truer definition of AI. What we call AI right now is far more limited in scope and oft and is often just a matter of observe and fail at one thing until it gets better.
Some, like meta Chief scientist, Yan Li Kun. Hopefully I said that right, I don’t know. Sorry if I did say that wrong uh doubt that AGI can or will ever become a reality.
Others fear what AGI could represent if created irresponsibly. The AI overloads overlords joke hits a little differently for AGI. Now, what I kind of want to raise here uh, is, I think, AI or AGI or whatever is what a lot of people definitely including myself, thought VR was going to be at this point in time.
Sure yep, I think it’s a huge disrupter. I think it’s going to change a ton of things I think it already has and the real usable levels of it have barely even existed yet um like when gpt4 comes out uh, if places like Google who have large language models similar to gp3 gpt4 whatever, if They start using those more publicly if other companies that have similar systems start using those more publicly. I think the impact of these things are going to be on the scale uh that when Oculus was first founded, people thought the impact of VR was going to be at so I think it is a much more significantly interesting thing to work on right now and I think Carmack is is quite interested in leading his own things, considering that the vast amount of his frustrations very clearly when leaving meta um was leadership, decisions, sure and and efficiencies and goals, and all that type of stuff. So if he can steer the ship more directly and you can do it on something that might be more Punchy and more fun right now, this is one of those things where I’ve.
I think I’ve talked to you about this, like not on the show just talking. Um, I don’t know how I would handle working for someone else yeah as long as they made decisions that I agreed were really great. It’D be fine yeah and it’s not going to be fine. I I I think it’s really hard to, and the thing is that I like to think that I try pretty hard to reach consensus when we make a decision as a company um. I have never experienced that anywhere else and I suspect that is not very common and I suspect that even as I’m talking about this and you’re sitting, there nodding I’m not always perfect at it um, but no, but there’s a reason.
I’M still. Here too I don’t know I just I don’t think I would. I don’t think I would find I wouldn’t need to agree with everything, but I don’t think I would find a place where I would agree with enough, and I think that’s basically what he’s run into here.
I’Ve said this literally on the wind chill before, like I don’t necessarily agree with everything we’ve ever done, but I think that would be basically impossible. Um and it’s fine – and I think I I do agree with the vast majority of things that we’ve done um. I might want to give her a little more juice way less than I thought. Hey, hey, all right, good enough, nice.
I do agree with the vast majority of things that we’ve done and even when I don’t agree with what we’ve done, I can usually at least see the logic behind it. I have worked places before where tons of things happen. Where no matter how hard I try. I can’t find the logic behind it: .