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Meta is axing 600 roles across its AI division

(www.theverge.com)
492 points Lionga | 6 comments | 22 Oct 25 16:44 UTC | HN request time: 0.02s | source | bottom
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Rebuff5007 ◴[22 Oct 25 18:46 UTC] No.45673440[source]▶
From a quick online search:

- OpenAI's mission is to build safe AI, and ensure AI's benefits are as widely and evenly distributed as possible.

- Google's mission is to organise the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.

- Meta's mission is to build the future of human connection and the technology that makes it possible.

Lets just take these three companies, and their self-defined mission statements. I see what google and openai are after. Is there any case for anyone to make inside or outside Meta that AI is needed to build the future of human connection? What problem is Meta trying to solve with their billions of investment in "super" intelligence? I genuinely have no idea, and they probably don't either. Which is why they would be laying of 600 people a week after paying a billion dollars to some guy for working on the same stuff.

EDIT: everyone commenting that mission statements are PR fluff. Fine. What is a productive way they can use LLMs in any of their flagship products today?

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scrollop ◴[22 Oct 25 18:59 UTC] No.45673603[source]▶
Why are you asking questions about their PR department coordinated "Company missions"?

Let me summarise their real missions:

1. Power and money

2. Power and money

3. Power and money

How does AI help them make money and gain more power?

I can give you a few ways...

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hinkley ◴[22 Oct 25 19:09 UTC] No.45673722[source]▶
Sometimes they mix it up and go for money and power.
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fragmede ◴[22 Oct 25 19:29 UTC] No.45673993[source]▶
sometimes they manage to meld it into one goal, because money is power.
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1. randmeerkat ◴[22 Oct 25 19:53 UTC] No.45674293[source]▶
> sometimes they manage to meld it into one goal, because money is power.

Money is a measure of power, but it is not in fact power.

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2. PaulHoule ◴[22 Oct 25 20:01 UTC] No.45674397[source]▶
Power is a measure of money, but it is not in fact money.

See https://hbr.org/2008/02/the-founders-dilemma

or the fact that John D. Rockefeller was furious that Standard Oil got split up despite the stock going up and making him much richer.

It's not so clear what motivates the very rich. If I doubled my income I might go on a really fancy vacation and get that Olympus 4/3 body I've been looking at and the fast 70-300mm lens for my Sony, etc. If Elon Musk changes his income it won't affect his lifestyle. As the leader of a corporation you're supposed to behave as if your utility function of money was linear because that represents your shareholders but a person like Musk might be very happy to spend $40B to advance his power and/or feeling of power.

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3. mmmm2 ◴[22 Oct 25 20:01 UTC] No.45674399[source]▶
True, though money can buy influence and the opportunity to obtain power.
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4. wslh ◴[22 Oct 25 20:17 UTC] No.45674611[source]▶
To clarify you can have power without money, for example initial revolutionaries. Money buys power, and power could convert into money depending the circumstances.
5. jpadkins ◴[22 Oct 25 20:18 UTC] No.45674623[source]▶
the people with all the firepower won't let you buy your own private military (or develop your own weapons systems without being under their control). The end-of-line power (violence) is a closely guarded monopoly.
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6. churchill ◴[22 Oct 25 20:26 UTC] No.45674723{3}[source]▶
But, on the flip side, coercive power cannot stand on its own without money too. The CCP's Politburo know beyond a doubt that they have coercive power over billionaires like Jack Ma, but they try to accommodate these entrepreneurs who help catalyze economic growth & bring the state more foreign revenue/wealth to fund its coercive machine.

America's elected leaders also have power to punish & bring oligarchs to book legally, but they mostly interact symbiotically, exchanging campaign contributions and board seats for preferential treatment, favorable policy, etc.

Putin can order any out-of-line oligarch to be disposed of, but the economic & coercive arms of the Russian State still see themselves as two sides of the same coin.

So, yes: coercive power can still make billionaires face the wall (Russian revolution, etc.) but they mostly prefer to work together. Money and power are a continuum like spacetime.