John Carmack leaves Meta and joins new AI startup – News

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John Carmacklegendary game designer (doom, quake) and former programming guru of id Software, most recently as consulting CTO for VR projects (Oculus). Mark Zuckerbergs media group, which is not named Meta, has left the company according to its own statements. In a published internal memo, he was not sparing in criticizing the work processes within the company and their efficiency. Carmack describes the processes in its exit statement as follows:

We had a ridiculous amount of people and resources at our disposal, but we were constantly self-sabotaging and wasting our energies. You can’t sugarcoat that. I think our organization was operating at about half the effectiveness that would have made me happy. It’s been a struggle for me. I did have a voice of the highest order, so you’d think I must have been able to make things happen, but obviously I wasn’t convincing enough.

[…] A good chunk of the things I’m complaining about here would certainly have changed my mind in a year or two, and there was some indication of that, but unfortunately I’ve never been able to nip stupid things in the bud before they do could do harm or set a direction in a way that a team could actually follow. I think my influence on the fringes has been positive but never the driving force.

Carmack, who has worked on VR projects since 2013 – a year earlier the controversial developer had Palmer Luckey the company Oculus, later founded Reality Labs – got its influential position in the meta group after the takeover by Facebook in 2014. But now he sees his “VR decade” coming to an end.

After retiring, the technology enthusiast wants to focus his full attention on his own new AI startup Keen Technologies. There he will research and develop with partners and seed capital of 20 million US dollars in the field of artificial intelligence, which, unlike the conventionally known AI in computer games, software, cars or industry, should be more oriented towards direct human tasks.

In the end, however, Carmack was optimistic: “Enough whining. I’m tired of fighting and now I have to run my own startup. But I am confident that the battle can still be won.”