Comment by andreygrehov

3 months ago

Who cares what Zuckerberg says about AI agents? He is a PHP developer from the early '00s who got lucky with Facebook. He's not an AI scientist or an AI researcher. What authority does he have to speak on the future of AI agents? Morale at his company is at an ATL, and that says more about his leadership skills he'd better off focusing on, otherwise the agents might replace him soon.

I don't like Zuckerberg whatsoever, but there are plenty of reasons you could potentially care about his opinion:

- He could be well-placed to see whether AI agent development is successful since at a high level he oversees much of it, and will be getting detailed metrics and things.

- Whether or not his opinion is correct, tech CEOs are notorious trend-chasers, and his opinion could set the tone for other companies.

- He himself might even be a trend-follower in this case, and is presiding over an early dialing-back of AI-hype.

  • Honest question, is there a single successful large investment made by Meta recently ? I just know about the abject failures :)

  • - Whether or not his opinion is correct, tech CEOs are notorious trend-chasers, and his opinion could set the tone for other companies

    exactly why I won't listen to someone who is falling behind.

  • Being a CEO of a large corporation doesn't guarantee you the latest tech insight. You will be easily surrounded by yes men who speak what you wanted to hear.

    • Agreed, all I'm saying is that his perception of the tech -- whether correct or incorrect could potentially either be trend-setting, or could be indicative of trends already in motion.

  • My thoughts exactly. I think he is well positioned to see edge of ai tech as the money he spent (if allocated well) could give him bit more insights. Although questionoble how much he is still able with his background to understand, I don’t think he is as much engineer as he was used to be

I like that the most sober thing a CEO has said in a long time is getting the “who cares what CEOs think?” treatment.

Yea he only runs one of the biggest technology companies in the world.

  • 1 ex-PHP-dev CEO != 100,000+ SWEs who actually build technology of FB/Meta/IG/Whasapp

    • You are correct. An individual developer's narrowly-scoped view of their work is not the same as an executive's view of the entire business.

  • what does "runs" actually mean? zoom calls from his private Hawai island to a bunch of buddies other C-level execs?

    • It means he has a controlling share over the money and all the power.

      This thread is bizarre.

      He can run the day to day string pulling however he wants, he is literally the one with all the power.

      3 replies →

Even if zero net new insight, he has access to information on most things, not just AI, that the layperson might never have, even in the future. Not intended as praise at all (i'd say this is true for a lot of C-level in a lot of big companies).

All this is happening because many Silicon Valley CEOs are totally disconnected from humanity. I actually dont think Mark even sees his employees as human beings but rather as training data from a future where AI agents will just replace most of his workforce.

Regardless of wether this is right or wrong, and not even getting into the correctness of such claims, the fact is that he fired 10000 employees, from what used to be, from the outside, an engineering first company. And he sent hints to the market that more layoffs would come as agents become better.

The first problem is: it looks we still need human beings, AI is great, but its not as awesome as we initially thought.

The second problem is: all people who can leave are leaving, and those who can't are looking for a job. Humans, we need stability, a steady flow of income, and joy in what we do. By firing people and putting them in permanent observation, for an AI that will replace them, he is destroying any reason anybody would ever want to work for such a company.

Mark would make a great Lumon CEO

Be honest, in the counterfactual where he had said that "AI" agents are the next industrial revolution and there is no future for human skills and so on -- would you have still valued his opinion as being effectively worthless?

> He is a PHP developer from the early '00s who got lucky with Facebook

Nice summary of a good hacker's viewpoint. All his money, power, and other non-technical signals don't really give him the technical authority to weigh on what really makes a technical difference.

That being said, depending on how good information-sharing is at the company, he might have a valuable perspective. But given that morale is low, it's doubtful that engineers feel free to tell the straight unvarnished truth without fear. And in typical large-company fashion, managers above them likely spin things positively as much as possible.

> He's not an AI scientist or an AI researcher

Perhaps he employs some, you know, to inform him on the topic?

  • The same folks who informed him about how awesome Behemoth was?

    • Snide remarks, both of you :)

      My point was not that Meta has the best AI researchers/engineers.

      My point was it should not matter if Zuck is a PHP developer or whatever, instead of an AI researcher, as he employs a lot of people with those exact skills.

      I made no comment about how Meta is doing in the AI race, so it’s a bit besides the point IMO, but you did make me smile :)

      1 reply →

He didn't "get lucky" with Facebook. He put in the time and effort to build, dropping out of Harvard, etc. It's all very well documented.

The cold hard reality is that, despite the attempt at creating a cult of personality around the man, he's far further along his journey of computer science than being a php dev from 2 decades ago. Boiling down his credentials to being simply a dev from a bygone era is hilarious

On that note, does anyone have the authority to speak about AI agents that would satisfy your requirements? It's not exactly quantum chromodynamics, it's glorified automation that costs a lot more and does it poorly.

Those who've made AI their entire personality really do seem to lack the emotional fortitude to deal with someone else having an opinion.

I'm anti Zuck, but it's mostly because he's a lizard man with no morals. You are anti Zuck because he's mentioned that the promise of AI isn't going to the moon as promised. We are not the same.

The most correct opinion

No disrespect to anyone that worked or works at meta:

We can build a better version of his whole platform in 30 mins.

He's incredibly rich. Americans greatly respect rich people, the richer the more respect. It's apparently a bizarre reinterpretation/misunderstanding of Calvinism.

  • The respect only goes as far as to listen to what they have to say. We navigate our experience based on the whims of the rich so it helps to know what they are thinking, but it certainly doesn't confer much respect. Most are completely out of touch.

    • I trolled there, with a kernel of truth. The neutral version is that wealth is a contributor to respect that's unusually strong in the US and I do think that it goes back to Calvinism.