Oculus founder Palmer Luckey is the latest to slam Meta’s metaverse, saying it’s “not good.”
Meta is investing billions to build out its vision of the metaverse, but the response has been tepid at best. Everyone from Mark Cuban to major Meta investors are not sold on the company’s vision or the amount of money it is taking to create it.
According to Business Insider, Luckey has likewise spoken critically of Meta’s efforts, saying they are largely driven by Mark Zuckerberg’s obsession with virtual reality.
“Mark Zuckerberg is the number one virtual reality fan in the world,” Luckey said. “He’s put in more money and time to it than anyone ever in history.”
Luckey went on to describe the metaverse as a “project car,” something an owner sinks untold money into in the hopes it will one day be valuable. In the interim, though, Luckey says the metaverse is not very good.
“It is terrible today, but it could be amazing in the future,” he said. “Zuckerberg will put the money in to do it. They’re in the best position of anyone to win in the long run.
“You hack at it and maybe no one else sees the value,” Luckey continued. “Will they stumble? Yeah sure. Will they waste money? Will they add things to their project car that they later hack off? Yes.”
With some already calling for Meta to cut back on its investment in the metaverse, only time will tell how patient the company’s investors are for what is increasingly looking like a financial black hole.
“I don’t think that Microsoft, Amazon, or any of these big tech companies are going to go all-in and say we are going to build products that are going to be controversial, part of the kill chain, and designed specifically for DoD,” says the founder of Oculus VR and Anduril, Palmer Luckey. “Because if it reduces their consumer enterprise sales by one percent or increases controversy by one percent it’s likely not worth doing.”
Luckey added, “I don’t think that the United States leads in the technologies that are going to be relevant to the warfare of the future. I think that the US is falling behind in areas like autonomy and artificial intelligence.”
Palmer Luckey, the founder of Oculus VR and Anduril, discusses how Anduril can compete and win against behemoth defense contractors and big tech in an interview on CNBC:
Big Tech Won’t Build Products That Are Part of the Kill Chain
No, (I don’t think Microsoft is a rival to Anduril). Actually, I think that we’re going to be doing a lot of work with Microsoft on a lot of this stuff. You’re not going to have one company owning everything anyway. I’m glad that Microsoft and Amazon are vigorously competing for this Jedi contract. Contrast that with Google that dropped out because they said they couldn’t be sure the government was going to abide to their internal corporate ethics principles. I think that there’s a big difference though between what Amazon and Microsoft are doing with Jedi and what we’re doing. Microsoft has said that the military will always have access to their best technology and that’s true. But they also are selling to everyone. They’re building a product that’s for everyone.
Everything that we’re building is specifically for the Department of Defense. We’re not going out there and saying, let’s resell the thing where we make 90 percent of our money in the consumer or the enterprise space. We’re going to say what do they need and what is the absolute perfect thing? I don’t think that Microsoft, Amazon, or any of these big tech companies are going to go all-in and say we are going to build products that are going to be controversial, part of the kill chain, and designed specifically for DoD. Because if it reduces their consumer enterprise sales by one percent or increases controversy by one percent it’s likely not worth doing.
US Is Falling Behind In Autonomy and Artificial Intelligence
In China, you have lots of new companies doing defense work and lots of consumer technology companies doing really strong defense. China has a very strong pipeline from new tech to military deployment. I think the United States knows that they can learn a little bit from that and that they’re going to have to if they’re going to keep up with our adversaries who are honestly much better at that innovation pipeline than we are right now.
I think that we lead right now especially when it comes to conventional military force and when it comes to conventional military operations. I don’t think that the United States leads in the technologies that are going to be relevant to the warfare of the future. I think that the US is falling behind in areas like autonomy and artificial intelligence. I think that China has structural advantages over the United States because they’re willing to surveil their entire population and use it as a training system for their artificial intelligence models. I’m not saying that we should do that. I’m very much against that in fact. But we do have to realize that China has certain structural advantages.
In China, the government by law is able to take any technology they want from the private sector and use it for military purposes. In the United States, we’re lucky that our companies are even able to say I don’t want to work with the government. I don’t agree with Google’s decision to pull out of the Jedi contract, for example, but I am very supportive of their right to do so. Again, I’m not saying we need to be more like China on this. I think that would be terrible. But we do have to recognize that there are structural advantages in what they’re doing and so we have to not just do the same thing they’re doing. We have to try new things, better things, and alternate routes where they don’t really have such a strong advantage.
Lockheed, Raytheon Do Not Have The Best New Tech Talent
I think our (smaller) size actually works in our favor. If it was a big landscape of smaller highly competitive players I think we actually would have a harder time raising money. As it is investors look and they say, hey, the whole field is dominated by a handful of players that make all of the money. They’re old, they’re very slow-moving, they don’t have all the best talent. That type of market is the one where you can believe the most that somebody can come in and disrupt it.
We’re a defense technology company first. We’re not a consumer technology company dabbling in defense work. We from day one said what can we develop that really helps the US Department of Defense and that helps keep America and our allies safe. That’s why we’re building artificial intelligence powered hardware and software. I think that we have a few big competitive advantages. The first thing is that we have a really strong team that comes from areas where the experts in autonomy, computer vision, machine learning, networking, those types of things, actually are.
Lockheed, Raytheon, the traditional defense primes, they’re good at building aircraft carriers and good at building fighter interceptors but they do not have the world’s best talent when it comes to artificial intelligence, computer vision, and machine learning. That’s why our company is focusing on that. We think we can add a lot of value there that other people cannot necessarily add.
Big Tech Won’t Build Products That Are Part of the Kill Chain, Says Anduril Founder Palmer Luckey
If Donald Trump can’t build his wall across the border to Mexico, Oculus founder Palmer Luckey will build him one—at least in the virtual sphere.
Luckey, who is a known Trump supporter, has been putting his genius and resources toward a Big Brother technology that will effectively shut down efforts by illegal immigrants from across the pond to enter U.S. territory.
“We need a new kind of defense company, one that will save taxpayer dollars while creating superior technology to keep our troops and citizens safer,” hesaid in an emailed statement.
Forbes magazine estimated Luckey’s net worth to be around $700 million. The company he founded, Oculus, was acquired by Facebook in March 2014 for $3 billion. Two years later, he left after admitting that he donated $10,000 to Nimble America, a pro-Trump organization accused of initiating underhanded tactics to defame Hillary Clinton.
Luckey founded a startup based in Southern California which utilizes LiDAR or Light Detection and Ranging for border security. The remote sensing technology is used in geographic mapping, hydrographic survey, coastal risk analysis, and disaster-mitigation efforts like storm surge modeling.
Apparently, Luckey and Steve Bannon, the political strategist for Trump, as well as Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, reportedlydiscussed the idea of using accurate sensors and cameras for border security.
In a Reddit thread with the title Steve Wozniak says he’s disappointed in Palmer Luckey, the 24-year-old said that “founders” should not dissociate themselves from politics just to please everybody. In that particular article, Apple co-founder Wozniak said that the only reason Luckey donated to Nimble America anonymously was that he thought he was doing something wrong.
But Luckey said that anonymity doesn’t necessarily mean guilt.
“The idea that anonymity=wrongdoing is a dangerous one,” hewrote. “It is a significant factor in the ongoing erosion of our digital liberties and is used to justify things like mass data collection and encryption backdoors. Nothing to fear if you are not doing anything wrong, right?”
Luckey, who is apparently a “prepper”—a person who prepares for doomsday scenarios by shoring up defenses and stockpiling food—has shown his passion for missile silos, as his two properties in upstate New York and Chico, California are built on top of decommissioned Atlas and Titan 1 missile silos, respectively. He also reportedly owns several military vehicles, particularly vintage ones, as well as three helicopters. He has a license as a student pilot.
