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Subtext: how Zuck’s obsession with VR lost him AI leadership and “the greatest deal Google ever made.”

“if Facebook didn’t buy DeepMind, they would end up in the arms of Google. Hassabis came out to the West Coast to have lunch with Larry Page, still the strongest suitor. Zuckerberg got wind of his visit and invited him to dinner.

Arriving at Zuckerberg’s Palo Alto home, Hassabis administered a subtle test on him. The two men discussed the potential of AI, and Zuckerberg expressed appropriate excitement. But then, as the dinner continued, Hassabis brought up other hot technologies: virtual reality, augmented reality, 3-D printing. Zuckerberg sounded equally excited about all of them.

‘That told me what I needed to know,’ Hassabis said. ‘Facebook offered more money, but I wanted somebody who really understood why AI would be bigger than all these other things.’ After the dinner, Hassabis got back to Larry Page. ‘Let’s go further,’ he told him.” — book excerpt from today’s WSJ: 

Zuck’s misplaced devotion to VR and the metaverse hurt the company much more than the $80 billion of wasted spend.  It’s the reputational hit.  @DemisHassabis divined it in his final test, and Zuck didn’t even know that he blew the opportunity.  Eight years later, he renamed the company Meta, doubling down on what anyone with tech savvy knew was DOA.

Then, in a 2025 attempt to play catchup,  Zuck spent $14 billion on a data labelling company with a salesy leader and upended his AI team.  Once again, anyone with tech savvy rolled their eyes on the acquisition and management changes, further evidence that the tech leadership at Meta was seriously lacking.

TLDR; beware the metaverse.  It is a dystopian vision at best, and luckily for humanity, headsets are still nowhere near readiness for mass adoption.

<p>Subtext: how Zuck’s obsession with VR lost him AI leadership and “the greatest deal Google ever made.”

“if Facebook didn’t buy DeepMind, they would end up in the arms of Google. Hassabis came out to the West Coast to have lunch with Larry Page, still the strongest suitor. Zuckerberg got wind of his visit and invited him to dinner.

Arriving at Zuckerberg’s Palo Alto home, Hassabis administered a subtle test on him. The two men discussed the potential of AI, and Zuckerberg expressed appropriate excitement. But then, as the dinner continued, Hassabis brought up other hot technologies: virtual reality, augmented reality, 3-D printing. Zuckerberg sounded equally excited about all of them.

‘That told me what I needed to know,’ Hassabis said. ‘Facebook offered more money, but I wanted somebody who really understood why AI would be bigger than all these other things.’ After the dinner, Hassabis got back to Larry Page. ‘Let’s go further,’ he told him.” — book excerpt from today’s WSJ: 

Zuck’s misplaced devotion to VR and the metaverse hurt the company much more than the $80 billion of wasted spend.  It’s the reputational hit.  @DemisHassabis divined it in his final test, and Zuck didn’t even know that he blew the opportunity.  Eight years later, he renamed the company Meta, doubling down on what anyone with tech savvy knew was DOA.

Then, in a 2025 attempt to play catchup,  Zuck spent $14 billion on a data labelling company with a salesy leader and upended his AI team.  Once again, anyone with tech savvy rolled their eyes on the acquisition and management changes, further evidence that the tech leadership at Meta was seriously lacking.

TLDR; beware the metaverse.  It is a dystopian vision at best, and luckily for humanity, headsets are still nowhere near readiness for mass adoption.</p>

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False equivalence — treating unequal things as equally important — is a costly cognitive trap in business, policy, and career decisions. Power laws mean a small number of things matter disproportionately more than others. The author shares rules for avoiding this trap: bet on a small set of things, avoid hedging while maintaining reversibility, set monitoring triggers for being wrong, and double down early when you're more right than expected.

False equivalence is a trap I’ve been consciously steering away from in my work the last 5 years. in Zuck’s case it cost him @GoogleDeepMind.

in content/strategy it is common to go wide than deep: “oh we do a, b, c, and d” and put equal weight on all of them. But the world is not fair and power laws compound. Most school systems, bureaucrats, managers, and content curators are not set up for one thing to matter 50x more than the next thing. False equivalence killed my first devtools startup. False equivalence plagues policy making in my home country. False equivalence makes you underpay your top performers and spend too much time on lost causes. 

Rules:

Carefully bet on a very small set of things. 
Don’t hedge, but keep reversibility.
Set triggers/levels to monitor if you are wrong.
Set tests to DOUBLE DOWN EARLY if you are more right than you thought.

<p>False equivalence is a trap I’ve been consciously steering away from in my work the last 5 years. in Zuck’s case it cost him @GoogleDeepMind.

in content/strategy it is common to go wide than deep: “oh we do a, b, c, and d” and put equal weight on all of them. But the world is not fair and power laws compound. Most school systems, bureaucrats, managers, and content curators are not set up for one thing to matter 50x more than the next thing. False equivalence killed my first devtools startup. False equivalence plagues policy making in my home country. False equivalence makes you underpay your top performers and spend too much time on lost causes. 

Rules:

Carefully bet on a very small set of things. 
Don’t hedge, but keep reversibility.
Set triggers/levels to monitor if you are wrong.
Set tests to DOUBLE DOWN EARLY if you are more right than you thought.</p>