Honestly, having gone through the slides, it's a bit painful to see Carmack "rediscover" stuff I've learned in a reinforcement learning lecture like ten years ago.

But don't get me wrong! Since this is a long-term research endeavor of his, I believe really starting from the basics is good for him and will empower him to bring something new to the table eventually.

I'm surprised though that he "only" came so far as of now. Maybe my slight idolization of Carmack made me kinda of blind to the fact that this kind of research is a mean beast after all and there is a reason that huuuuge research labs dump countless of man-decades into this kind of stuff with no guaranteed breakthroughs.

https://x.com/unixpickle/status/1925795730150527191