Meta's gamble on chatbots opens new wave of tech competition | Hacker News Reader

Meta's gamble on chatbots opens new wave of tech competition

ft.com

31 pointsbookofjoe16 comments

An article that says almost nothing. Here's the key bit:

> Zuckerberg has a new pitch: “Creator AIs”, personalised chatbots and agents that he hopes will provide a much more engaging way to reach customers. The idea of chatbots is hardly new — Facebook has tried them before without success. But what was new this week was the depth of Zuckerberg’s enthusiasm for the idea, and the extent to which he is swinging his company’s resources behind the new wave of generative AI.

Sounds like another advertiser/influencer-focused, walled-garden venture.

https://archive.ph/e6gTB

I've substituted Perplexity with Meta.ai for search.

I tried that because meta automatically hooks up websearch and looks nicer but meta doesn't "hold onto" multiple search items for as long or as well as perplexity does. pplx/sonar now uses llama3 32K context for its search but you have to intently start with it or change to it.

They are trying out all the fancy tech showcased in movies and science books from the last 100 years.

Hoping that one of them will be a consumer hit… but will the consumer want it?

I don't think so :D.

Just because they don’t want it doesn’t mean they won’t be forced to use it in some way

that only works if there's a platform lock in - so what will convince you to be locked into Occulus?

I feel validated by your comment. When I first read about the Metaverse, I thought to myself that Zuckerberg saw that movie and wanted to build it in real life.

Which movie do you mean?

Yeah, it's an advert on one of the houses in They Live.

Sam Altman should hand over company's name to Meta.

But more seriously I wonder if Elon Musk sometimes thinks that OpenAI was at the end a good move - being so closed that it sparked open research everywhere as competitive advantage.

He is always playing 4d chess... \s

Remember when Facebook had everyone make Messenger bots, then it turned out they were crap and no-one used them?

I’m sure this time will be different.

I think it's interesting that the press call it a 'gamble' and the company execs call it 'strategic investment'.

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