John Carmack Steps Down at Oculus, Will Tackle AI

Image credit: Drew “Prognar” Campbell

Developer icon John Carmack announced that he is stepping down as Oculus CTO so that he can focus on artificial general intelligence (AGI).

“When I think back over everything I have done across games, aerospace, and VR, I have always felt that I had at least a vague ‘line of sight’ to the solutions, even if they were unconventional or unproven,” Carmack wrote of his future. “I have sometimes wondered how I would fare with a problem where the solution really isn’t in sight. I decided that I should give it a try before I get too old.”

Carmack says that he has what he feels is a “non-negligible chance of making a difference” in his pursuit of artificial general intelligence (AGI), which I think of as “full AI,” where a machine can literally understand or learn anything that a human being can. By contrast, the AI we see today in digital assistants and the like is “weak AI” or “narrow AI.”

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Carmack is, of course, most famous for his seminal and award-winning work at Id Software, where he led the development of several major, trend-setting 3D games—Wolfenstein 3D, DOOM, and Quake key among them—and related technologies. He joined Oculus in 2013, and says that he will move to a “Consulting CTO” position with the firm that will “only be consuming a modest slice of [his] time.”

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Conversation 4 comments

  • christianwilson

    Premium Member
    14 November, 2019 - 11:33 am

    <p>As someone who has followed id Software since the Commander Keen days, I have always kept an eye on what John Carmack is up to. He is a fascinating person whose work has always been beneficial to whatever project he's been involved in. This sounds like a great challenge for one of the great computer science minds in the world. Can't wait to see what he does with AI. </p>

  • ErichK

    Premium Member
    14 November, 2019 - 2:16 pm

    <p>And I'm still trying to figure out how ray casters work!</p>

  • chaad_losan

    14 November, 2019 - 6:31 pm

    <p>Good luck with that…</p>

  • atlisd

    Premium Member
    15 November, 2019 - 4:00 am

    <p>Highly recommend the Joe Rogan interview they did recently</p>

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