| ▲ | brador 14 hours ago |
| I feel top level AI creation is beyond his skill set. He’s a AAA software engineer but the prerequisites to build out cutting edge AI require deep formal math that is beyond his education and years at this point. Nothing to stop him playing around with AI models though. |
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| ▲ | kriro 14 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| I think you overestimate the level of math required in AI and at the same time I think you underestimate the math skills of John. AI runs on GPUs, Quake 2 engine was one of the first to optimized for GPUs (OpenGL). I'm pretty excited to see him in this domain. I think he'll focus on some DeepSeek style improvements. |
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| ▲ | horsellama 14 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | this. Having JC focusing on, say, writing a performant OSS CUDA replacement could be bigger than any of the last 20 announcements from openai/goggle/deepmind/etc | |
| ▲ | cmpxchg8b 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | GLQuake was released 11 months before Quake 2. | |
| ▲ | lyu07282 13 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | This feels like an understatement. At the time, young me had the impression Carmack came first, then the industry created 3dfx/OpenGL to run his games better. I still have nothing but respect for his skills decades later. |
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| ▲ | threeseed 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| John Carmack: So I asked Ilya, their chief scientist, for a reading list. This is my path, my way of doing things: give me a stack of all the stuff I need to know to actually be relevant in this space. And he gave me a list of like 40 research papers and said, 'If you really learn all of these, you'll know 90% of what matters today! And I did. I plowed through all those things and it all started sorting out in my head. |
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| ▲ | abraxas 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I'd love to have a copy of that list. Just to see how much I've yet to absorb. | |
| ▲ | foldr 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | What this misses is that research is a competitive endeavor. To succeed as a researcher you don’t just need to know the bare minimum required to do research in your field. You need to be able to do it better than most of the people you’re competing against. I know that HN as a collective has near-unlimited faith in Carmack’s abilities (and he is no doubt Very Smart). But he’s competing with other Very Smart people who have decades more experience of AI research. To put it another way, the idea that John Carmack is going to do groundbreaking research in AI is roughly as plausible as the idea that Yann LeCun is going to make a successful AAA video game. Stranger things have happened, but I won’t be holding my breath. | | |
| ▲ | RetroTechie 9 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | You're forgetting that a whole string of breakthroughs are all fairly recent (like in the last decade). Everyone, including the pro's, is treading new ground. In that context anyone can make progress in the field, as long as they understand what they're dealing with. Better regard mr. Carmack as an X factor. Maybe the experts will leave him in the dust. Or maybe he'll come up with something that none of the experts cared to look into. | | |
| ▲ | foldr 9 hours ago | parent [-] | | Lots of scientific fields have seen breakthroughs in the past decade. Doesn’t mean that any random smart person can jump in and start doing groundbreaking research. | | |
| ▲ | Jensson 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | But a random smart person will jump in and make groundbreaking research. |
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| ▲ | sergiotapia 39 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The difference is Carmack is literally a T-shaped dude -- hell, he's a T-shaped dude with lots of vertical lines :P I believe all his in-depth experience in other areas will heavily unlock him to bring about another breakthrough. He's that good. | |
| ▲ | secondcoming 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Why does it need to be competitive? Maybe the guy has enough money to let him do whatever he wants regardless of the outcome and he chose AI because it's interesting to him. | | |
| ▲ | foldr 9 hours ago | parent [-] | | In research you have to succeed before your competitors. It’s not research if it’s already been done. | | |
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| ▲ | Cthulhu_ 13 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| What do you mean "beyond his skill set"? He effectively invented 3D gaming, which led to major leaps and investments into graphics cards which are now used for cryptocurrency and AI. He also did significant contributions into VR. He's probably one of the most qualified people around. |
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| ▲ | johnb231 14 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| The formal math takes a few months to learn. He is more than smart enough to figure that out. |
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| ▲ | jimbohn 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| The math around machine learning is very manageable, and a lot of research in that area is throwing heuristics at a wall to see what sticks |
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| ▲ | novosel 14 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| There is no deep formal math in AI. It is a game of numbers. All deep formal math is a boundary to a thing. |
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| ▲ | akomtu 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| AI creation is more like Alchemy than science, and breakthroughs come not from math background, but from intuition and a bit of math skills. Transformers behind the chatbots isn't a rocket science and were discovered almost by accident. The next breakthrough will come a similar way. I'd frankly bet on someone like Carmack than on some theoretical researcher who is churning out papers. |
