Re:Meta Llama 3
by asadotzler on Thursday April 18, 2024 @11:14PM
(#40083118)
50 billion dollars and fewer than 10 million MAU. That's a massive failure.
A chunky portion of those dollars were spent on buying and pre-ordering GPUs that were used to train and serve LLaMa
Re:Meta Llama 3
by tmalsburg2 on Friday April 19, 2024 @01:44AM
(#40083770)
Yes, he got incredibly lucky that he found an alternative use for his GPU investment.
Re:Meta Llama 3
by whywhywhywhy on Friday April 19, 2024 @05:45AM
(#40084855)
It’s really obvious the actual “metaverse” goal wasn’t a vrchat/second life style product. It was another layer on top of the real world where physical space could be monetized, augmented and eventually advertised upon.
AR glasses in a spectacles form factor was the goal, it’s just to get there a VR headset includes solving a lot of the problems you need to solve for the glasses to work at all.
Apple made the same bet.
He sees the metaverse as the entire shared online space that evolves into a more multi-user collaborative model with more human-centric input/output devices than a computer and phone. It includes co-presence, mixed reality, social sites like Instagram and Facebook as well as online gaming, real-world augments, multiuser communities like Roblox, and "world apps" like VRChat or Horizons.
Access methods may be via a VR headset, or smart glasses, or just sensors that alert you to nearby augmented sites that you can then access on your phone - think Pokemon Go with gyms located at historical real-world sites.
That's what $50B has been spent on, and it's definitely a work in progress. But it sure doesn't seem dead based on the fact that more Quest headsets have been sold than this gen's Xboxes; Apple released Vision Pro; Rayban Smart Glasses are selling pretty well; new devices are planned from Google, Valve, and others; and remote work is an unkillable force.
The online and "real" worlds are only getting more connected, and it seems like a smart bet to try to drive what the next generation looks like. I wouldn't say the $50B was spent efficiently, but I understand that forging a new path means making lots of missteps. You still get somewhere new though, and if it's a worthwhile destination then many people will be following right behind you.