Zuckerberg's boring, bleak AI bet (opens in new tab)

I’m no fan of Zuck or Meta, but this take hits weird for me. It seems like the author is coming up with a bunch of justifications for being mad about meta prioritizing the leisure/social core of the business over the same exact work automation AGI stuff everyone else is chasing, as if there’s some moral imperative to do so. To me it sounds like a good move from a consumer perspective— Most people are more worried than excited about AI in their workplace, and brushing off the collapse of the labor market as “well sure lots of analysis says that, but some doesn’t, so whatever” feels pretty out of touch. The number of people in a position to consider that possibility so cavalierly is pretty small. Offering an alternate take approach people might be more comfortable with in their non-working life doesn’t seem like a foolish bet. I think this author would benefit from taking some time away from the tech business and SV in particular to get some perspective.

The US ad industry already makes about 1000 bucks a year from one person's attention (70 bucks of which goes to Meta every quarter). People have been arguing its very hard to extract anything more because hours spent viewing content is already peaking. There is more content being produced than there is people*free time. This is quite inefficient.

And that's what Zuck has been basically telling Wall Street, that the ad industry/attention economy is still too inefficient - ai will change this, and they can milk much more attention/intention without getting people to spend all day scrolling/consuming content.

And he is right. Which is why they are raking in cash and the META stock is skyrocketing.

The saddest thing about the Zuck is it's not even his line.

He lifted "Personal Superintelligence" and the "vision" word for word from far smarter people than himself from nearly a decade ago. That story was already reported on.