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[winjer]

Meta to lay off hundreds in Reality Labs amid shift from metaverse to AI

Remember how much faith Mark Zuckerberg had in the metaverse? He even renamed his company after the concept of a shared VR social platform. That was before AI became the tech industry's new obsession, of course. As a result of these shifting priorities, Meta is preparing to lay off hundreds of employees in its Reality Labs division this week.

The cuts are expected to affect 10% of Reality Labs' approximately 15,000 employees, reports The New York Times, which cites three people with knowledge of the discussions. The publication says that the final figure could be even higher.

The vast majority of those losing their jobs are working in the Metaverse unit on virtual reality headsets and virtual social networks, the report said. An announcement on the cuts could come as soon as today.

According to a memo obtained by the Times, Andrew Bosworth, Meta's chief technology officer who oversees the division, called a meeting for Wednesday and urged employees to attend in person. He described it as the "most important" meeting of the year.

Since Meta started reporting Reality Labs' revenue in Q4 2020, the division has reported total operating losses of around $70-75 billion (not million). It was more of the same in its most recent quarter: despite Meta posting strong results, the division reported $4.4 billion in losses on $470 million in revenue.

News of the job losses doesn't come as a surprise. It was reported in December that Zuckerberg was planning to slash Reality Labs' budget by 30%, with the cuts starting this month. A spokesperson confirmed at the time that the company was shifting some of its investment from the Metaverse group toward AI glasses and wearables as it looked to capitalize on the "momentum" in the segment.

Mark Zuckerberg is a certifiable asshole.

 

[Unknown?]

Does this mean no more huge subsidies and investments into quest?

 

[rochet]

Hope its the horizon crew and not the people working on the quest 4. Would love to see the boba 3 180 fov.

 

[jason10mm]

Hope its the horizon crew and not the people working on the quest 4. Would love to see the boba 3 180 fov.

Yeah, I have little to no desire to stroll around some virtual shopping mall filled with goofy avatars, but DO want higher res, higher refresh rate, wider FOV headsets. Virtual pinball, paired with a physical mount you can lean on, is a sublime experience.

 

[ThroatPie]

I don't know what to think about the whole AI thing. My only experiences with it have been less than stellar. We use it at my hospital to co-diagnose imaging procedures and it's hit or miss. It's pretty much mandatory to use but thankfully not mandatory to rely on.

 

[Fake]

Yikes.

 

[Bojji]

But remember folks: Don't be mean to corporations pushing Ai because Jensen and Nadella will cry.

 

[Sonik]

Zuck goes from one gimmick to another, first it was metaverse, then virtual reality and now AI. The funny thing he's spending billions and every time he's late at it

 

[AJUMP23]

More ways to target ads.

 

[Baemono]

Reminds me of Google trying to diversify its activities, and failing a lot of the time, only saved by buying Youtube and Android at the right moment.

 

[The Cockatrice]

Evil corporation does corporation things. Who knew?

 

[ChorizoPicozo]

 

[Cyberpunkd]

I don't know what to think about the whole AI thing. My only experiences with it have been less than stellar. We use it at my hospital to co-diagnose imaging procedures and it's hit or miss. It's pretty much mandatory to use but thankfully not mandatory to rely on.

I cannot wait for the gigantic lawsuits and payouts from people who will be misdiagnosed by an AI when an intern could do a better job. I don't really think any hospital is going through thousands of images per day that would make AI more efficient.

 

[Cyberpunkd]

Zuck goes from one gimmick to another, first it was metaverse, then virtual reality and now AI. The funny thing he's spending billions and every time he's late at it

Because he is a cuck that got lucky with a single thing only (which by itself started as a creepy project for losers that objectify women).

 

[IAmRei]

i'm one of those people who skeptical at the time, and proofed, they got many resources but the development is stuck at the wii's style era, not only the graphic, they didn't have clear idea and clear roadmap, this is no surprise

 

[jason10mm]

Zuck goes from one gimmick to another, first it was metaverse, then virtual reality and now AI. The funny thing he's spending billions and every time he's late at it

Massive organizations are slow to react. How do you even BEGIN to spend 600 BILLION dollars? No way anyone is carefully looking at the building plans, equipment contracts, and hiring sprees to ensure it's all being done efficiently, effectively, and with unity of purpose. Wouldn't surprise me at all if Meta has thousands of employees sitting at home waiting for their data center to even be built. Allllll them H1B visa folks flooding the US probably have no where to go other than virtual work they could be doing back in their home country.

 

[DR3AM]

 

[ReBurn]

Just further proof that Zuckerberg has no vision. His vision of the metaverse was never going to materialize. At least AI is proving to have practical applications.

Meta needs a capable leader. Zuckerberg isn't that person.

 

[ForAcademicPurposes]

I'll never understand why these goomba looking motherfuckers are hell bent on taking over Earth.

 

[DeepEnigma]

I'll never understand why these goomba looking motherfuckers are hell bent on taking over Earth.

So wealthy that waving a victory flag is emotionless boredom.

 

[Magic Carpet]

The only meta device I own is a quest 3. I don't see much meta labs content.
15,000 people working there and I don't engage with much of anything they do.
horizon worlds is not good place to be, I don't like going in there. It looks like an unfinished wireframe placement walls before textures load, only the textures never load.

It's too bad they dont release a dedicated 6ghz dongle that connects directly to my PC, no routers. I have a PC I can move to any room in the house, I'm not going to move my router for the quest 3.
Dedicated running in the headset games are nice, but I want more from a VR world.

Maybe AI can fill out those wireframe walls with something to actually look at and interact with.

 

[Represent.]

Zuck goes from one gimmick to another, first it was metaverse, then virtual reality and now AI. The funny thing he's spending billions and every time he's late at it

You think ai is a gimmick?

 

[StueyDuck]

All of these "we fired everyone for ai" companies are sure gonna have a fun time when Nvidia single handedly causes the bubble to burst.

It does also seem like the best and least controversial way for these companies to clean up house on slacktavists.

 

[jason10mm]

The only meta device I own is a quest 3. I don't see much meta labs content.
15,000 people working there and I don't engage with much of anything they do.
horizon worlds is not good place to be, I don't like going in there. It looks like an unfinished wireframe placement walls before textures load, only the textures never load.

It's too bad they dont release a dedicated 6ghz dongle that connects directly to my PC, no routers. I have a PC I can move to any room in the house, I'm not going to move my router for the quest 3.
Dedicated running in the headset games are nice, but I want more from a VR world.

Maybe AI can fill out those wireframe walls with something to actually look at and interact with.

Yeah, this would be awesome but of course that would mean you never needed to buy meta games ever again. They are subsidizing the headset in the hopes of software profit on the backend, I think. With an optimizer program the headset alone runs pretty damned good. I need to play with wired PC VR more though, but I"m afraid it will spoil me

 

[MidGenRefresh]

Zuck wants AGI by any means necessary. But it's a dead end. How many billions will he burn before he realizes?

 

[StueyDuck]

Just further proof that Zuckerberg has no vision. His vision of the metaverse was never going to materialize. At least AI is proving to have practical applications.

Meta needs a capable leader. Zuckerberg isn't that person.

I doubt zuckerberg is actually leading or running anything anymore, hes just the figurehead all the real misers use to get their ideas greenlit.

Bezos, gates, zuck, lucky, most these guys relinquish control outside of votes when they reach that level of wealth. The zucks just doing mma, simping his wife, surfing and shit.

 

[Cyberpunkd]

You think ai is a gimmick?

Did it really advance past asking ChatGPT to make eggs or funny videos in the last 2-3 years? Sure, for artistic vocations the impact has been much bigger, but that is like 5% of all the jobs. Meanwhile the new generation is getting even more stupid than using social media since you can just ChatGPT the answer or assignment, so why bother learning?

 

[StueyDuck]

Did it really advance past asking ChatGPT to make eggs or funny videos in the last 2-3 years? Sure, for artistic vocations the impact has been much bigger, but that is like 5% of all the jobs. Meanwhile the new generation is getting even more stupid than using social media since you can just ChatGPT the answer or assignment, so why bother learning?

Thats why I alway hated the term AI being used for it because it never has been actual AI.

Its always been deep learning and machine learning.

 

[Cyberpunkd]

Thats why I alway hated the term AI being used for it because it never has been actual AI.

Its always been deep learning and machine learning.

Bingo, and to add to that the LLMs will always be prone to hallucination, which OpenAI admitted because the way they are designed. And just as we went through the phase of "if it's on the Internet it must be true" we now have "the AI said so, so it must be true", whereas the AI is making sometimes shocking mistakes.

 

[ThroatPie]

I cannot wait for the gigantic lawsuits and payouts from people who will be misdiagnosed by an AI when an intern could do a better job. I don't really think any hospital is going through thousands of images per day that would make AI more efficient.

Nope and I work at a community hospital that's only 300ish beds. Sometimes we don't have a radiologist on and have to send images out to third party companies like trident care who confirmed they use AI. There's been a good amount of cases where the AI missed basic stuff like multifocal pneumonia that we caught in the ER.

Some of the bigger hospital systems like Geisinger (now absorbed by Kaiser Permanante) utilize AI recording to "help" diagnose patients seen either in office or in the hospital by examine the symptoms the patient is describing when the physician is doing their exam. My kids goto a Geisinger pediatric sub-branch and we refuse the AI "tablet" they bring in.

Hell, a lot of those doctors at Geisinger use a more advanced Web-MD when doing exams. Pay attention next time you goto the doctors when they're on the computer and if they're entering info when you're telling them. Theyll system they use pretty much takes all the information and spits out a most likely diagnosis. If it's meshed with EPIC it can pull your most recent labs, images, etc and put it all together.

I'm sure it has its place and be a good tool for nurses to cross check allergies or contraindications of medications but for us providers I don't care for it an it takes away the hands on approach to healthcare and puts it into the hands of something that isn't really proven.

 

[Mr Reasonable]

I cannot wait for the gigantic lawsuits and payouts from people to the families of people who will be misdiagnosed by an AI

Amended that for you.

 

[Trunx81]

Did it really advance past asking ChatGPT to make eggs or funny videos in the last 2-3 years? Sure, for artistic vocations the impact has been much bigger, but that is like 5% of all the jobs. Meanwhile the new generation is getting even more stupid than using social media since you can just ChatGPT the answer or assignment, so why bother learning?

 

[Magic Carpet]

Yeah, this would be awesome but of course that would mean you never needed to buy meta games ever again. They are subsidizing the headset in the hopes of software profit on the backend, I think. With an optimizer program the headset alone runs pretty damned good. I need to play with wired PC VR more though, but I"m afraid it will spoil me

Meta does have a PC app, They could still release games there.
BUT, My last interation with that was downloading Asguards Wrath, They purposfully made it so that the game took several days to download. They made it have dial up speeds to download on PC.
But I download games in the headset full speed.

 

[Cyberpunkd]

Nope and I work at a community hospital that's only 300ish beds. Sometimes we don't have a radiologist on and have to send images out to third party companies like trident care who confirmed they use AI. There's been a good amount of cases where the AI missed basic stuff like multifocal pneumonia that we caught in the ER.

Some of the bigger hospital systems like Geisinger (now absorbed by Kaiser Permanante) utilize AI recording to "help" diagnose patients seen either in office or in the hospital by examine the symptoms the patient is describing when the physician is doing their exam. My kids goto a Geisinger pediatric sub-branch and we refuse the AI "tablet" they bring in.

Hell, a lot of those doctors at Geisinger use a more advanced Web-MD when doing exams. Pay attention next time you goto the doctors when they're on the computer and if they're entering info when you're telling them. Theyll system they use pretty much takes all the information and spits out a most likely diagnosis. If it's meshed with EPIC it can pull your most recent labs, images, etc and put it all together.

I'm sure it has its place and be a good tool for nurses to cross check allergies or contraindications of medications but for us providers I don't care for it an it takes away the hands on approach to healthcare and puts it into the hands of something that isn't really proven.

Insightful to know, thank you. I'm in France and such a system will cause a shitstorm here, so no sane politician will ever entertain it.

 

[Mr Reasonable]

I'm sure it has its place and be a good tool for nurses to cross check allergies or contraindications of medications but for us providers I don't care for it an it takes away the hands on approach to healthcare and puts it into the hands of something that isn't really proven.

With things like this, I always think that human error is there and having a second pair of eyes - even virtual ones - isn't a bad thing.

But here, I think there's a chance that the skills needed by a trained clinician could end up not including these kinds of diagnostic skills, and eventually nobody has the skills except for AI.

A bit like trying to get a human to do something that post industrial revolution was machine led. Possible, but things just aren't set up to work that way anymore.

 

[jason10mm]

I cannot wait for the gigantic lawsuits and payouts from people who will be misdiagnosed by an AI when an intern could do a better job. I don't really think any hospital is going through thousands of images per day that would make AI more efficient.

Humans misdiagnose shit ALL THE TIME.

The value in AI is that hopefully it will remind the doc that you are allergic to the drug he's about to give you, that you already failed a trial of a specific antibiotic and you need to switch, telling the nurse that your catheter needs to be changed out, or that your mammogram is done and someone needs to inform you that there is a suspicious mass. It's all the little shit that slips through the cracks that kill a large chunk of people, not that a human can't see that you have leukemia but an AI somehow will.

 

[GymWolf]

Meta to lay off hundreds in Reality Labs amid shift from metaverse to AI

Mark Zuckerberg is a certifiable asshole.

As long as he can be useful to volk in his ufc career, we forgive these little mistakes

 

[IntentionalPun]

I doubt zuckerberg is actually leading or running anything anymore, hes just the figurehead all the real misers use to get their ideas greenlit.

Bezos, gates, zuck, lucky, most these guys relinquish control outside of votes when they reach that level of wealth. The zucks just doing mma, simping his wife, surfing and shit.

Nah Zuck runs the place as a very involved CEO. Those other guys left their positions to be just board members often without much voting power but Zuck hasn't.

 

[GymWolf]

Homeboy look like a fucking cyborg even with a childish avatar...

 

[jason10mm]

Nah Zuck runs the place as a very involved CEO. Those other guys left their positions to be just board members often without much voting power but Zuck hasn't.

You can tell he's active there by the number of mice that keep getting delivered to Meta HQ...

IYKYK

 

[dem]

They are blowing INSANE amounts of money on VR

I got more money in Meta quest cash from referrals than I paid for the dang headset.

I haven't spent a real dollar in the store and i still have hundreds in credit.


That said.. the headset is cool as fuck. My kid still plays it all the time.
And the glasses look pretty dang cool as well.

 

[DKehoe]

It can be easy to imagine yourself making the decisions required to run a company of that size without fully realising how difficult they actually are. But I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have spent $75 billion on the metaverse. It always reminded me of when people were acting like Second Life was going to be the future.

 

[Bojji]

 

[StreetsofBeige]

That VR/metaverse department was always junk. They were losing $10B/yr even way back 4-5 years ago making that shitty looking metaverse thing where player profiles looked like Kinect characters.

What a waste of money.

 

[Bojji]

 

[Powerhouse]

 

[TransTrender]

I forgot the part where Oculus VR which acquired studios like Beat Games and Ready at Dawn were renamed to Reality Labs with the Metaverse push, and at one time had a reported headcount of 17,000 (per Wikipedia), when not too long before they had a headcount in the hundreds or even up to one thousand. 10% out of the reported 15K isn't much, I expect most of these are really expensive "Day in the Life Of..." people who don't contribute anything, and many more larger layoffs will happen.

 

[xrnzaaas]

VR was hurting society, AI is the answer.

 

[Haint]

Imagine where VR would be if they spent $75 Billion on content. For perspective, Half Life Alyx was probably a $75 Million dollar project. So they've literally spent enough money to fund 1000 Alyx scale games, or a Netflix scale service of blockbuster VR movies/TV shows, or their own proprietary displays AND manufacturing. Where did it all go? They could have literally given out their 30 million headsets FOR FREE and only been down 15 billion. The scale of waste and fake-work-do-nothings in that division has to be the most egregious malfeacance in all of human history and will be studied by business schools for hundreds of years.

 

[OLED_Gamer]

Zuck should focus on getting Facebook back to what made it good, not whatever this current version is.