Mixed thoughts on this, beyond the headlines:
1. Being an inventor is
separate from
being successful at business.
2. Age doesn't necessarily correlate to business, competency, cross-domain success, financial savvy, or management capabilities. Joan of Arc led armies at 17, Alexander the Great conquered at 18, and Augustus Caesar became emperor at 20. The "wiz kid" that the Twitter post mentioned is worth over $3.5 billion at 29 years old & sold a 49% stake in his company valued at $29 billion dollars to Facebook.
3. Likewise, being smart & rich doesn't necessarily make you the best at things like
highly-specialized research. Facebook has
lost $73 billion dollars in their Reality Labs Division so far! If they had simply invested that money into creating AAA AR/VR video games, they would have probably
tripled their profits! We have cheap, legitimately
incredible Quest VR headsets & everyone is
bored to death with them because of the dearth of quality content. They could have simple bought GTA 6, released it exclusively for VR, and made zillions of dollars off it
forever lol.
4. The reality is that everything & everyone in the world is run by
incentives. In America, corporations have spent over $46
billion in lobbying since 2015. Businesses are incentivized to
make money. We have a crazy AI arms race right now that I can't see as sustainable long-term, at least in terms of investments vs. payback...but then that's just the standard M.O. Same as the dot-com bubble & every other mad gold-rush endeavor ever lol.
Which results in:
1. Terrible side effects like AI pollution & rising utilities costs
2. Slow-to-react changes in country laws that protect its citizens
3. Wealthy people ignoring better practices (ex. proper research & good applications of technology)
Meta will continue to turn a profit because:
1. They have virtually unlimited money
2. They are led by Type A personalities who are driven by wanting to rule the tech world
3. There is no single researcher who constrains the market because there are
lots & lots of smart people out there who just need a job & funding to make a meaning contribution.
That AI founder isn't necessarily
wrong about the nature of LLM's, as much as just not fully aware of
marketplace feasibility. Self-driving electric cars will eventually be the best option for humanity's health & safety (53k deaths in America & 385k deaths worldwide are directly attributed to vehicle exhaust emissions alone!), but that doesn't mean that stick-shift, gas-powered cars don't have a place & profitability in the market, you know?
en.wikipedia.org
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