I am glad that he mentioned that he'll miss the flow state that he would enjoy while deeply focused in computer programming. That was also one of my worries. Gladly, I still have other ways to get there, and I hope that you'll find yours too.
Out of curiosity, what other ways do you have to reach flow state? I honestly struggle to name even one. And definitely not one that would pay the bills.
To name a few I have experienced: playing an instrument, sparring, meditation.
Paying the bills? I could have mentioned proving a theorem related to an algorithm at work ... but LLMs are also helping there now. The best I can come up with is: reading a book related to my current projects.
I initially learned about this from a luthier and plectrum designer, Hufschmidt Guitars, a one man shop in Switzerland. Some quotes from the update he sent to his customers:
"""
For a one-person workshop, the result has been pretty brutal.
[...]
The numbers simply do not work for a micro-business like mine. Even in France and Germany, I send only around 1 to 2 kg of cardboard per year. In some other EU countries, I may send less than 100 g in an entire year. Paying annual compliance costs for one or two parcels makes no economic sense.
[...]
I have therefore decided to maintain EU shipping only to: FRANCE GERMANY
"""
"""
[...] it is surprising that the discourse from many developing AI is so filled with doom. I do not understand why anyone who believes that AI will eliminate most jobs and much of humanity's relevance would rush to build that future. The notion that AI is so dangerous that the only safe path is an extreme concentration of power seems inherently problematic. Historically, hoping that an absolute power will benevolently provide for humanity if sufficiently enlightened has not led to safe or positive outcomes.
"""
Am I the only one getting the impression this dude was merely lucky back in the day, in fact at the right time, rather than having been super intelligent nor forward thinking… ?
I mean - given all his throw outs in media and his apparent burn of nearly 80bn for a failed 3D world?
Horizon was horribly managed, but also we threw all of our unannounced projects under that umbrella to make it look better for shareholders when we finally cut it. The original LLM research, smart glasses, and a bunch of other projects were under the "Reality Labs" business expense.
I mean, of course it was a matter of being at the right place and right time, and being able to execute. He definitely was lucky but that alone isn't enough
> I do not understand why anyone who believes that AI will eliminate most jobs and much of humanity's relevance would rush to build that future.
He does not understand his own motivations? Like he doesn't want to automate away his entire very expensive workforce and bunker/yacht service staff with robots. There is a pretty clear endgame here.
All dictators and Fascists in the history believe they are benevolent and doing best for the society/World. Fascism seems to be the dominant ideology among SV billionaires today. They want more control, not because they need more money, but because they want to do “good” to everyone in the world. They genuinely believe they can dominate the world using AI. They are playing the World domination game. They act and talk like the commanders of the armies and rulers of the nations. They are after the absolute power so nothing less is enough for them.
You clearly have an opinion you want to share, otherwise you wouldn't have written anything. Instead of just outright saying what you think, you are being vague. Why? It's true that Meta laid off a lot of people, and blamed refocusing on AI as the reason, but I still don't see how that somehow contradicts GP's quote above.
one time about 9 years ago I was in the comments of a stackoverflow question, and saying something like "an accessor function need not directly give the underlying structure of the data it's accessing, for example, just because in common lisp, (car nil) is nil and (cdr nil) is also nil, does not mean that nil is implemented as (cons nil nil).
The person I was responding to (who I recall was disagreeing with me on the more general principle) said something to the effect of "well you're wrong, in common lisp that's indeed how nil is implemented".
I was skeptical and asked for proof of this claim, and they responded clearly angrily with the link to the SBCL repo and said something like "the source code is right there. You can just look it up yourself instead of being so rude. I'm no longer going to interact with you and will delete these comments in 10 minutes."
I think I looked through the source code for a few minutes, but wasn't able to find any evidence of nil being pair of itselves.
We really don’t celebrate enough how much AI has saved us from terrible SO interactions. Not being entirely serious here, because the site had its good parts, but arguing in threads or having your questions randomly eviscerated or threads closed was a hard way to learn programming.
I've been fired (super early in my career I was a waiter) and laid off twice (Great recession and the covid overspend). If you think for even a second that an organization will put you before profits you have wasted that one second.
I am glad that he mentioned that he'll miss the flow state that he would enjoy while deeply focused in computer programming. That was also one of my worries. Gladly, I still have other ways to get there, and I hope that you'll find yours too.