John Carmack Leaving Oculus VR; Shifts Focus Towards AI Development

It’s an end of yet another era at Facebook’s subsidiary, Oculus VR. John Carmack, the company’s chief technology officer (CTO) and the man who previously co-founded id Software, announced that he was resigning from his position in an official capacity.

Carmack explains in a Facebook post that he would still be around in Oculus, but only in the capacity of a “consulting CTO”. And that he will still have a “voice in the development work” but that it will only be “consuming a modest slice of his time”.

As to what he plans to do next, Carmack says that will be going off to work on artificial general intelligence (AGI). One of the reasons he has decided to dedicate more time to this area stems from one query: how would he fare with a problem that didn’t have a solution in sight.

Carmack believes that working on AGI would be “enormously valuable” and that he would have a non-negligible chance at making a difference, albeit in a “Pascal’s Mugging sort of logic”.

Carmack is nothing short of a legend in the gaming industry. As one of the co-founders and video game developers of id Software, the man is responsible for laying down the foundations for the modern first-person shooter. During his tenure at id Sofware, Carmack gave us DOOM, Quake, and Wolfenstein 3D.

John Carmack laid the foundations for many of today’s modern first-person shooter. Including the DOOM reboot and its sequel.

To be fair, Carmack’s writes that AGI wasn’t exactly his first project choice. Prior to this, coming up with a way to build cost-effective nuclear fission reactors was a close second. Something he says wouldn’t have been suitable for his style of work.

(Source: Facebook // Image: Engadget)

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