Some interesting thoughts from readers on news that John Carmack is almost completely quitting Oculus to work on artificial intelligence. My take was this:
It's hard to escape the conclusion that Carmack has decided that virtual reality won't or can't be improved, or sufficiently matured into a mass market product, within the span of his career...
The statements also stand in sharp contrast to how Carmack fairly recently described the importance of bringing VR to the masses -- as "a moral imperative"... Somewhere since then, it seems, that moral imperative became less imperative. It's possible he still believes in VR with the same zeal, but just lost interest in developing it on a daily basis.
In Comments, VR blogger "Grey" has a more quotidian ass theory which is possibly more plausible -- Carmack just got sick of corporate life at Oculus:
What I'm "reading between the lines" is that Carmack feels constrained by the "corporate" culture a Facebook, one in which he's held back from working on truly next gen products.
Take the cancellation of the Rift 2, and all the work going into Oculus Link after it was decided not to put dedicated hardware in the Quest for connecting to a PC.
Carmack admits he's grumpy at work, which is a very good sign it's time to move on.
And with that in mind, given that he likely has a non-compete clause, what can he do?
What is the next most exciting computer and programming technology he could work on?
AI seems like the most obvious choice.
That's certainly likely! However, if Carmack really wanted to quit day-to-day activity at Oculus but still work on truly next gen VR products in the quiet of his own home on his own schedule, I'm sure the company would gladly let him do so. And so I'm not convinced this is the reason.
VR developer Kim Baumann Larsen believes Carmack's move to AI is actually part of his ambitions with VR:
The advancement of Artificial General Intelligence is paramount to moving VR forward so this is actually great news. Getting Carmack’s brilliant mind into AGI will be great. Furthermore you can’t pin the success or not of future development of Oculus VR and AR hardware on one guy. There are many talented people at Oculus just not all that visible to us outside.
If I'm reading that right, to have truly immersive engagement with NPCs and other interactive content in VR, you need truly categorical advancements in AI. That's another possible theory, one I've seen many other VR developers make. But if that was the case, wouldn't Carmack have come out and say that in his announcement?
This also brings up a recurring challenge with virtual reality: There's always some barrier that supposedly stands in its way for mass adoption. It's the heavy headset, or the price, or the lack of content, or the nausea, etc. But anytime any of these problems are addressed -- and they have been -- there always seems to be some new barrier that pops up. And a categorical leap in artificial general intelligence is one hell of a barrier!
Anyway, I have actually e-mailed Carmack asking about my interpretation, and will update this post if/when he replies.
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