John Carmack: Doom, Quake, VR, AGI, Programming, Video Games, and Rockets | Lex Fridman Podcast #309

link for people that want to watch it: ▶ this video i would also recommend another two of his interviews: Todd Howard link Guido van Rossun link

Lex Fridman. He does long form interviews (~4 hours) on more than just tech, and all of the guests he interviews are fascinating. He simultaneously approaches his interviews from a scientific background (MIT AI lecturer) and a love for humanity. If you like tech, one episode I'd like to recommend is episode #309 with John Carmack. ▶ this video

The interview with Lex Fridman that he was referring to: ▶ this video The entire video is worth viewing, an impressive 5:15h!

"I am not a madman for saying that it is likely that the code for artificial general intelligence is going to be tens of thousands of lines of code, not millions of lines of code. This is code that conceivably one individual could write, unlike writing a new web browser or operating system." - John Carmack, Lex Fridman Podcast (August 4th, 2022) This was around 3 months before ChatGPT's initial release. Timestamped: ▶ this video

Sorry, but I don't believe this. Surely someone would have noticed that coffee drinkers are slow learners. I'd say that on the contrary many life-long learners like computer programmers are known to consume copious amounts of caffeine. John Carmack drinks 8-9 cans of diet coke a day [0], and he said that he is still as sharp as he used to be [1]. [0] ▶ this video [1] ▶ this video

Carmack talked about how they released those first games on the Lex Friedman podcast. Having a previous framework and pipeline seemed to help get them out really quick. ▶ this video

Carmack is no doubt brilliant and it shows through Oculus as a product. But AGI is not about algorithm optimization the way 3D graphics were in the 90s. I am not sure the approach he takes (let’s find a way to write this in assembly) can apply here. He’s said before that AGI is going to be a few thousands of lines of code, ultimately [1], and it’s hard to believe that’s really the case. That said, I did get a chance to speak with him one on one last year and he really emphasized a few things; the need for being product oriented and giving customers what they want rather than chasing cool engineering (über)solutions; not being careless with resources just because we have more power with modern hardware (he poked fun at React where you spin up a new thread just for an interactive button); and being aware of the inefficiencies brought on by infinite resources (# of engineers and/or funding, which make you think less critically about timelines and delivering within bounded means) [1] ▶ this video

This is something I've been thinking about a lot recently, especially since listening to John Carmack interview ( ▶ this video ) and him saying that almost nobody uses IDEs at Meta. I think it is totally possible to be (even very) productive in VIM. I do think, though, that a person who is productive in VIM would be more productive if he used a proper IDE. This is my experience after I had been using VIM for about 10 years and switched to an IntelliJ IDE (and actually learned it) (This, of course, assumes that there is a proper IDE for your language)

Carmack says he wasn't the first to find it[1], and the other person had "done that somewhat before" [1] ▶ this video

Lately I've been wondering if the army of 100% remote folks realize their shift to entirely virtualized interactions creates opportunity for AIs to compete on equal grounds. An AI assistant won't be taking your place in the office anytime soon. But the writing's on the wall for AI assistants to start appearing in your Zoom meetings [0]. Once they can churn out code 24x7 without eating or sleeping, glwt. [0] ▶ this video

John Carmack's view [0] on debuggers (from Lex Fridman Podcast podcast video) TLDR: He doesn't understand why a lot of SV big-tech companies are hostile to debuggers. [0] ▶ this video

I was listening to the Lex Fridman interview of John Carmack[1] the other day and find myself agreeing with Carmack. Essentially, building the metaverse is insanely difficult but also desirable for a variety of reasons. I'm glad that someone (sucks that it is FB) is investing heavily into the R&D to make it a reality. As for the new avatar, it's just the first draft so to speak. Given the talent at Reality Labs, I'm certain that things will look much better a few years from now. People often have this vision of what VR/AR should look like and will be disappointed that v1.0 does not live up to those expectations. As long as incremental progress is made, it will compound over time and eventually we'll get there. [1] ▶ this video