Do they not have anyone sensible left in the room? Like, you’d expect that at some point someone would have said ‘these are comically terrible, we cannot allow them to see the light of day’.
There's something essentially wrong with Meta and Google where they can do tech but not products anymore. I'd argue it's because the honest human desire that drives a product dies or is refined out of initiatives by the time it gets through the optimization process of their org structure. Nothing is going to survive there unless it's an arbitrage or using leverage on the user, and the things that survive are uncanny and weird because they are no longer expressions of something someone wants.
These avatars ticked all the boxes, but when they arrived, people laughed at them because objectively they were bureaucratic abominations.
Because AI is the hype thing and adding AI to your thing makes the stock price go up, because investors and stock evaluators don't know what AI is, nor do they care. They just know it's the hot thing and what you put in your product to make it look better to Wall St.
Meta AI, Google AI summaries, Apple Intelligence are all hilariously half-baked features designed to connect users with ChatGPT so the line goes brrrrrrr. Them being helpful, useful products that solve problems for users is a distant, distant next place to that.
I loaded them all up into NotebookLM.
I started asking it questions after uploading it all to NotebookLM like I would if I were starting from scratch with a customer. It answered the questions with citations.
And to hopefully deflect the usual objections - we already use GSuite as a corporate standard, NotebookLM is specifically allowed and it doesn’t train on your data.
One of my goals with my project I ended up taking on was to match/exceed NotebookLMs feature set, to ensure that an open source version would be available to people for free, with ownership of their data.
I'm not saying that as a slight or an insult, but right now the screenshot looks like a Gradio space someone would use to prove out the underlying tech of a professional product, not a professional product (unless you literally mean professionals are your target users as opposed to consumers).
I think an LLM would be able to very quickly tell you what most product builders would tell you at this stage.
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Also one of the key enablers of NotebookLM is SoundStorm style parallel generation. Afaik no open source project has reached that milestone, have they?
SoundStorm/Podcast creation is one of the big draws, but I would question as to whether its one of its most-used features, considering hallucinations and shallowness.
> SoundStorm/Podcast creation is one of the big draws, but I would question as to whether its one of its most-used features, considering hallucinations and shallowness.
You're questioning the one single feature that drove its entire success in distribution? Most people don't know any features except the podcast feature.
If your goal is to address the more underlying concept of getting across knowledge in a quicker more readily absorbed format using LLMs, there's already an insane amount of competition and noise.
The podcast thing was the only reason NotebookLM cut through that noise, so the question shouldn't be "is it one of the most used features" (due to the way conversion rates work it will be btw, it might not be the most used feature by people who stay but obviously the feature that's highest in the funnel drawing people in will be your most used feature) but imo the more relevant question is "is it one of the most important features", and the answer is yes.
Thanks for sharing your perspective though, I will keep it in mind. I disagree regarding podcasts being a ‘big thing’ past the initial honeymoon phase. I do think that custom generated audio is also a big thing and the podcasting is the first exposure a lot of people have had with that level of quality, and since it’s free and everyone already has a Google account, it makes it much easier for it to viral.
That’s roughly the implication of my original comment. Many developers, including you, have a higher standard. I’m not gonna use something that looks like an intern slapped a few REST calls together with MUI.
It’s 2025 dude, I can build that in an afternoon. They have to take the product a lot more seriously.
Google’s lack of taste on this front will be the success of another competing product (perhaps even yours).
This is a really nice insight. I hadn’t put it together this way before. It’s similar to design-by-committee, or movie script-by-committee (like Disney-era Star Wars movies, or a Netflix focus-group-driven script). The layers of bureaucratic filter have rubbed off all human influence, and all that’s left is naked profit motive.
The worst thing IMO would be if LLMs became able to convincingly fake these emotions. They’d become emotional pillows for the inhuman manipulative ambitions of their parent orgs.
You get into a room with a bunch of key execs who are not part of your project and then they tear your product/movie/idea apart.
You don’t have to implement any of their suggestions but since these are seasoned execs they see flaws readily.
The key is that the process encourages candid feedback without hierarchy or defensiveness.
This goes on for a couple of iterations until the idea is ready for production.
I think Apple has something similar.
Those types of folks are not representative of most tech C-Suite denizens.
I find this insight so frustrating though. Isn’t that exactly what upper management is supposed to be doing and what they’re paid for after all?
It doesn't scale. That model hasn't been utilized at Pixar lately - whatsm was the last good/hit Pixar movie that wasn't a sequel or side-quel? Like most companies, Pixar relies on a few great products or ideas, and then doubling/tripling down on them, to make sure the graph grows up and to the right for shareholders.
This is fiction though. Perhaps we didn't forget about that fake thing and we're critiquing this real thing that exists. How can you take a demonstrative position on "what we're going to use them for" and defend it with someone's contrived story?
> because objectively they were bureaucratic abominations
Yes, this is why criticism of this real thing isn't countered by claiming people "forgot" what occurred in a fantasy script about things that don't exist.
for the people who get it fiction is a public discourse about possibilities. to me seeing it as arbitrary would be like watching golf and thinking it's random. there's a literal mindedness or incapacity for abstraction I can't apprehend in that.
This is not to totally discard fiction as a way of reasoning. With regard to hypotheticals beyond our current reach it is often the only way to reason. So it's valuable, but we have to keep in mind that a story is just a story. Hard experience trumps fictional logic any day. And I can't assume that the same events in real life will lead to the same outcomes from a story.
Yea I love fiction. I certainly get it.
You should think this way about a particular thing because this one movie portrayed it that way, and if you don't it's because you forgot that this movie portrayed it that way according to its creators will, thoughts, ideas, motivated reasoning, worldview, whatever...is not compelling.
It's pretty obvious to me that the creative choices and ideas of certain people do not imply any demonstrative truth about reality just because they exist because there is not a direct connection between the two; someone can write or film or render whatever they want, even completely contradictory versions of the same topic. What if for example someone did watch that or any other thing and simply disagreed? Think the creators got it wrong?
> public discourse about possibilities. to me seeing it as arbitrary
It's not arbitrary. It can certainly be self-serving, it can be propaganda, it can be a good guess or a well-meaning statement about reality, or speculative fiction but also wrong. It's just the emphatic certainty in how you presented this media creation as proof of something inherently connected to truth about a complex future debatable quality of reality, as even a fictional account about history or the present day or politics suffers from obvious fundamental disconnects from being regarded as "truth", proof or evidence of anything. Again, different people can make multiple contradictory or competing portrayals of a certain concept or topic. This is no different than someone telling you what they believe about a thing; it's not "therefore true" as such, especially in the form of a prediction about the future.
someone says to you, at least the fences will keep them in. and you say, "what fences?" and when they say, "didn't you see jurrasic park?" your answer is, "why would I see that, it's fiction, and who cares it's just a 90's kids movie"
that's how dumb I'm saying this release was.
I think a lot of people are reacting to this are missing some of the point - fictions may not literally model reality, but what makes certain fiction memorable is it shines light on some under-expressed aspect of reality, which sticks with us when we encounter a similar pattern in our lives. Whether its also serving entertainment purposes or the author's pet peeves is beside the point, because that is not the part of the fiction to be taken seriously.
We have all sorts of relevant quotes about this:
> all models are wrong, some are useful
> truth is much too complicated to allow anything but approximations
> We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand. The artist must know how to convince others of the truthfulness of his lies. - Picasso
Aside from the obvious perception-is-reality aspect of fiction, it's especially important to take fiction seriously these days because the tech world is eyeing the many gray areas between fiction and reality as the next frontier for expansion. These avatars are a perfect example of this attempt to acquire more of the territory of human experience; not just the material reality but the many possible directions our hearts and drives may take us. If we dismiss fiction as something to take less seriously than 'reality', rather than something to be understood in a different way than rational analysis (and with its own skill tree), then we cede this territory to those that know how to wield it against us.
Sometimes its fun, but mostly it's stupid.
I'm listening to "Masters of Doom" on Audible. It's about the creation of Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, etc. Great book.
Something that's interesting about it, is that Id Software seemed to largely reject the idea of having a game where the players 'connected' to the characters or the story. They were laser focused on:
* Carmack creating a game engine that was the best in the world
* Romero and crew making the gameplay as fun as possible
But it sounded like they had folks on the team who wanted to make a story where the players could 'connect' with the protagonist. He was fired.
Some dude named "Tom."
Facebook, weirdly enough, seems to have the issue. Which is particularly odd considering that's their product!
I haven't played games in ages, but when I saw "Half Life" for the first time, it felt nearly as "revolutionary" to me as Wolfenstein 3D was.
Tom wanted elaborate lore and story-telling, while the rest wanted to make the game experience what the player connected to. The instant reaction to your input, seeing your bad-ass character (and by extension yourself) inflict awesome damage on the world.
This to me is more of a conflict of _what_ the player should connect to, as opposed to not wanting the player to connect at all.
It all stems from promo culture -- it doesn't matter what you build, as long as it ships.
Works every time.
Don't assume that you can simply pattern match because you've been at another big company. I've been at three, meta being one of them. And they have all operated very differently.
I’ve been at companies like this where you are told to build X, you laugh with your co-workers, and then get to work because you’re paid disgusting amounts of money to build stupid shit like this.
That’s part of why I quit to start my own company. It’s such an awful waste of resources.
Execs don’t need to stay at Meta for a decade. They succeed, then exchange musical chairs. On average, it will work well for several iterations.
Also, another note, these sorts of big swing and misses are actually still identified as a positive, even when looked at retroactively. They're "big bets" that could pay off huge if they hit. Similar to VC culture, Meta is probably fine with 99 misses if 1 big bet hits. If they increase engagement even 1%, they're raking in billions and it is worth it.
So many of these seven-to-nine-figure disasters are of the "Who thought this was a good idea?" class. They are often things that seem like they might appeal to folks that have never really spent much time, with their sleeves rolled up, actually delivering a product, then supporting it, after it's out there.
"When we have more users engagement goes up, let's just _make more users_".
The reason he never looks happy is because he is never happy. Same with his fellow oligarchs; they can get pleasure in bunches but never happiness, they can be smug but never have peace. Happiness is what happens as a result of your helping others become happier; there is no shortcut, there is no other way.
Zuck has only ever worked for himself and his "peers". History is riddled with those losers, the richer the worser. It is not just human nature but the nature of the universe vis a vis our human responsibility as choosers of goodness or its opposites.
Zack has a comic on a similar concept:
https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2009-11-18
Of course, the exact line of reasoning doesn’t quite work for the different formulation you stated. However, a different version of the line of reasoning seems to? How does one help another person become happier if helping another person become happier is the only way to become happier? One helps them help someone else to help someone to… ?
Or, I suppose if it is possible to be more or less unhappy for other reasons, so by helping another person become less unhappy (though not yet happy) one could thereby become happy?
We are rewarded for our efforts, not their effects. If we truly try to help someone, we get some measure of happiness for our attempt, even if they refuse it or are otherwise miserable. When I tell someone to care for others' happiness, I do so in order that they do not sow the seeds of their own unhappiness. If they use their free will to ignore my recommendation, I do not lose for their choices; in fact, I've gained because I tried to help them make choices that will increase their peace and happiness. We cannot convince anyone to not be (for example) a racist, but when we engage in such efforts, we have tried to make the world a better, less miserable place, and we gain for our valiant attempt.
The intention of our ethical karmic universe is to nudge us towards caring for others, instead of being selfish aholes callous to the misery of others. The feedback mechanism is our resulting inner peace and happiness (or lack thereof).
All our choices start with an intention, however muddled or unconscious our thought process is at the time. When MZ chooses profit over policing his platform, he has planted bitter seeds, indeed, for we all reap what we sow, for good or ill.
> Or, I suppose if it is possible to be more or less unhappy for other reasons, so by helping another person become less unhappy (though not yet happy) one could thereby become happy?
Yes, indeed. And selflessly making efforts for others' happiness creates a well of magic the universe can dip into and sprinkle you with at its leisure, which is sublime and loving at its Source. That is why giving charity is so essential on the Spiritual Path of Love: because our individual and cultural selfishnesses are so stubborn, we need all the help we can get to truly self-evolve our ideals, attitudes, and behaviors.
"Ask and ye shall receive, ..." --New Testament
There are about 70k engineers at facebook, I doubt its possible for zuckerberg to be aware of all the product changes that happen in meta.
However, it also shows that meta has no functioning marketing skills. This I suspect is also down to Zuck.
Had they marketed it, and more importantly, had the engineers had the training to talk to marketing first, then this wouldn't have been an issue.
It's so bad I have to wonder if there's a different angle here, maybe they think that releasing something so terribly bad will make it easier when they release something less comically bad? Idk.
Odds are the product team cherry picked conversations for internal demos, their management wanted press and promotions, KPIs were around engagement and not quality, and nobody had perspective and authority to say “this sucks, we can’t release it”.
I mean, just very basic QA, having someone talk to the damn things for a bit, would’ve shown the problem, in this case.
Or with nihilists who learned to say yes to everything, to at least get paid.
It'll be like entirely automated catfishing.
Sure, they faltered at Step 2, but how was this not the plan?
They'll reach out to users and talk to them about whatever they're interested in. They'll then make influencer-style native advertisements. If you're a middle aged man that likes video games when you see their picture posts they'll be "wearing" some vintage game t-shirt (that's for sale). If you're instead a twenty year old woman into yoga the same bit will be "wearing" some new Lululemon yoga pants.
The first pass of these bots failed because they used the follower mechanism. The next version will just follow you to push ads or scrape more data about you.
I have worked with competent product organizations. I know they exist. A few even exist in SV. But for some reason the largest players have just absolutely lost the plot beyond what can get them to favorable quarterly earnings, and that game eventually and fairly consistently doesn’t end well in the long term.
Meta in particular is clearly rudderless, lacking in vision and strategic leadership, and throwing whatever it can find at the wall hoping to find something that sticks. Facebook turned into a cesspool, Instagram isn’t as popular with the newest demographics Meta has traditionally wanted to court (young people), and Threads turned out to be a nothing burger. Their grand quest to unify messaging was a disaster, and mores the putty because they’ve basically delineated their ecosystem by demographic generation in what has to be an unintentional series of missteps. Their “metaverse” projects weren’t even compelling to the teams working on them, their foray into crypto was over almost as soon as it began, and their business products are a nearly unusable mess for those of us who have had the misfortune of using them.
You’d think eventually someone at Meta would hit upon an idea that goes somewhere. It’s like a more pathetic version of Google’s stagnation.
These AI products are not made for users. They're made for Wall Street. Wall Street expects big companies to 1. talk about AI in their earnings calls, and then 2. do something, anything, with AI. All of BigTech seems to be doing this now, and investors are rewarding them by buying their stock. So they're going to continue the cycle of building useless AI products and then canceling them when they have served their purpose (pleasing investors).
For larger orgs I can imagine that number is larger and we definitely get a ton of positive interaction from that. That might be swayed by demographics but I can tell you age isn't one of them because our interaction (on WhatsApp Business which is mostly where I interact with Meta products) is decently in the 20-40 range.
Worst of all, is that Facebook is a terrible platform for hobby stuff. Plain ol' PHP forums are much better for that; they're much easier to navigate, easier to search, easier to host pictures on, etc.
I frequently find myself posting something on one of the Facebook hobby forums, then realizing that:
* the signal to noise ratio isn't great, because there's a ton of people spamming those forums with products and other social media that they're trying to promote, YT in particular.
* Facebook isn't great for long posts.
I think a hangover from the last AI winter, after which everything that would previously have been called ‘AI’ got called ‘ML’, the term ‘AI’ then being shareholder poison. Anything older than the current AI bubble mostly gets called ‘ML’ still, with a possible exception for non-LLMish CV stuff.
Simply have your users give you all the info you need to serve better ads; while selling companies advanced profiles on people? User profiles built by them engaging the bot and the bot slowly nudging more and more info out of them?
I'd be very willing to believe something like this happens at Facebook, too.
1. To make you feel like there is activity. How would you simulate activity when you have no customer to start with? I suspect Youtube threw subscribers at you just to get you addicted to video production (the only hint that my Youtube subscribers were real, was that people recognized me on the street). And guess who’s mostly talking to you on Tindr.
2. For politics and geopolitics influence. Maybe Russia pays half the bots that sway opinions on Instagram. Maybe it’s China or even Europe, and USA probably has farm bots too for Europe, to ensure the general population is swayed towards liking USA.
3. Just for business, marketing agencies sometimes suggest to create 6x LinkedIn profiles per employees to farm customers.
Facebook doing it in-house and officially is just legalizing the bribe between union leaders and CEOs.
Nobody wants to deal with them, so they just kinda get what they want as long as they are mostly harmless.
Netflix failed because they didn't make games people are interested in, not because people don't want those types of games.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/inside-candy-crushs-success-s...
> The company had first introduced these AI-powered profiles in September 2023 but killed off most of them by summer 2024.
Also, they're deleting these profiles, which is a step away, not towards that idea. Although they're apparently leaving in some feature to make your own AI-profiles.