Sam Altman talks with Mark Zuckerberg about how to build the future [video]

Refreshing advice: Work on a problem you care about and don&#x27;t worry about the rest until it&#x27;s working.<p>&gt; Sam: So you were 19 when you started Facebook. One question we hear a lot at Y Combinator is, &quot;I&#x27;m 19 today. I really want to do whatever I can to make the world better. What should I do?&quot;<p>&gt; Mark: I always think that the most important thing that entrepreneurs should do is pick something they care about, work on it, but don&#x27;t actually commit to turning it into a company until it&#x27;s working, and I think that...if you look at the data of the very best companies that have gotten built, I actually think a tremendous percent of them have been built that way and not from people who decided upfront that they wanted to start a company because you just get locked into some local minimum a lot of the time. A local maximum, sorry.

The TL;DR of how Zuck wants to build FB&#x27;s future w&#x2F;his quotes:<p>1) &quot;Connectivity, so getting everyone in the world on the Internet.&quot;<p>2) &quot;The next one is AI. I think that that&#x27;s just going to unlock so much potential in so many different domains.&quot;<p>3) &quot;[The next computing platform] - I think that&#x27;s going to be virtual reality and augmented reality.&quot;<p>For all the flack that Zuck is getting in this thread he lays out a pretty concise vision of what he needs to do to continue the FB&#x27;s juggernaut run.

&gt; I heard this story recently that at this conference where<p>&gt; someone has built a machine learning application where you<p>&gt; can take a picture of a lesion on someone&#x27;s skin, and it can<p>&gt; detect instantly whether it&#x27;s skin cancer with the accuracy<p>&gt; of the best dermatologists and doctors in the world. So who<p>&gt; doesn&#x27;t want that, right?<p>I wonder what that app is? Is it SkinVision[1] or IBM&#x27;s proprietary medical techonology from T.J Watson Research Center[2]?<p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=12299930" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=12299930</a><p>[2]: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.computerworld.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;2860758&#x2F;ibm-detects-skin-cancer-more-quickly-with-visual-machine-learning.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.computerworld.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;2860758&#x2F;ibm-detects-ski...</a>

&gt; <i>And just to make this point, how far into Facebook did it actually become a company?</i><p>&gt; <i>I don&#x27;t know. I think it became a formal Delaware company when Peter Thiel invested about six months in.</i><p>Isn&#x27;t this an outright lie? He sure stammered over his answer. He&#x27;s joked himself about the fact that Edwardo incorporated Facebook as a Florida LLC originally.<p>This is how history gets rewritten to be more streamlined...<p>The fact is Zuckerberg was extremely ambitious about starting a company and had many attempts. That Florida LLC could&#x27;ve been dissolved easily if Facebook had failed. There&#x27;s no downside to incorporating really.

Interesting interview, but I felt Sam could have asked more probing questions (for the lack of a better phrase) and I don&#x27;t mean the controversies from the early days of Facebook.<p>What was the thinking behind acquiring WhatsApp for such a large amount of money and how will they monetize the platform? How is WhatsApp going to be an important part of the future?<p>Facebook&#x27;s mission is to connect the world, but in the case of Free Basics, they violated net neutrality principles which is clearly not in the best interest of the users.<p>Mark Zuckerberg also mentions that he finds it frustrating that people talk about AI turning against humanity, which is one of the things that Elon Musk, Sam and OpenAI are trying to educate the population about. Maybe a discussion about that could have been included in the interview.<p>If any of the mods are reading this, maybe there could be some way that future interviews can include questions from HN? We could have a discussion about the questions that the HN community wants to ask, and the mods can pick out the questions that generate the most interest from the community?

&quot;I think Peter [Thiel] was the person who told me this really pithy quote, &#x27;In a world that&#x27;s changing so quickly, the biggest risk you can take is not taking any risk.&#x27;&quot;

I&#x27;m not sure what to think about Mark&#x27;s non-answer to:<p>&quot;So can you tell us about some of the hardest parts in the history of the early history of Facebook?&quot;<p>(He basically says the hardest point was not selling for $1 billion, and that it was a non-issue months later.)

Two things that need to be highlighted:<p>I came looking for a video that would talk about building the future and I am surprised Sam &amp; Mark spent lot of time talking about FB origins and other things related to FB and talk future only for the last few minutes.<p>Its almost palpable the cold nature of the interview, they don`t shake hands nor greet each other as someone else noted the conversation seems very detached to say the least.

Is Sam consciously mirroring Mark&#x27;s body language and style of dress, or is that just a weird coincidence?

He gave away, or atleast appeared to give, 99% of his wealth away. I can think of better PR stunts for much less money. He is still a net positive person for me, who inspires me more than most others.

Peter Thiel view on the $1B offer from Yahoo<p>Starts at 1:15 <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;54NIcx3HJSE?t=75" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;54NIcx3HJSE?t=75</a>

All these comments, yet no mention of how Zuckerberg stole the project from the Winklevoss twins? My, the memory hole is really working great.

Election campaigners of Trump&#x2F;Hillary would cringe at this video.<p>Zuck&#x27;s body language looks bad because of the chair their are using. It is slanted and Zuck is sitting straight. It makes him look less relaxed (like a job interview). Same with Sam Altman.<p>Complete lack of emotions in Zuck&#x27;s eyes. It might be part of his personality but it makes him look very detached from what he is talking about.

Calling BS on Mark, with FB new sponsored links in FB feed... this is total Business, not solving my problem or making my life better. To make the world a better place, Mark should have worked for FriendFeed.

Is the photo below the future? Zuckerberg zombies living in a virtual Plato&#x27;s Cave.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.dailymail.co.uk&#x2F;i&#x2F;pix&#x2F;2016&#x2F;02&#x2F;22&#x2F;16&#x2F;3173A83C00000578-0-image-a-1_1456157751384.jpg" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.dailymail.co.uk&#x2F;i&#x2F;pix&#x2F;2016&#x2F;02&#x2F;22&#x2F;16&#x2F;3173A83C0000057...</a>

Anyone have a link to the transcript that&#x27;s not trapped inside scribd?<p>Really, just plain HTML would&#x27;ve been fine, but instead it&#x27;s trapped in a PDF that&#x27;s trapped inside Scribd!

Is someone else surprised that Peter Thiel invested in Facebook when it had 100000 users and Mark Zuckerberg said that he planned to go back to college? What are the chances of that happening with a product today?

It&#x27;s somewhat comforting to know that Facebook relies on the learn startup framework to constantly experiment and innovate.

No mention of MySpace?<p>Because that was a pretty big deal back in the day.<p>The Lycos or Excite of Social ...<p>Without MySpace, I&#x27;m not sure if FB would be.<p>Oh - and remember &#x27;Friendster&#x27; ?<p>:)

After turning down the YHOO offer:<p>&gt; ...It was the fact that after that, huge amounts of the company quit because they didn&#x27;t believe in what we were doing. If you look at the management team that we had...<p>&gt;Interviewer: Did that whole management team leave?<p>&gt;Mark: The whole management team was gone within about a year after that.<p>That&#x27;s an eye opener. Guess most people are in it for short term cash. I bet a lot of them regret leaving now.

Σ$0.02: Perhaps a way to contribute to the world would be to figure out how to get rid of Facebook: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;stallman.org&#x2F;facebook.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;stallman.org&#x2F;facebook.html</a><p>Σ$0.04: Mark Zuckerberg mentions talk on the threat of AI as fear mungering, however, <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;intelligence.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;intelligence.org&#x2F;</a> (MIRI) argues that advanced AI is a legitimate existential threat. Note that when MIRI speaks of &quot;AI&quot;, they are not talking about fancy neural networks, but the fact that since humans are no where near any kind of upper bound on intelligence, and the space of possible Turing machines and self modifying algorithms is overwhelmingly large, plus reams of other arguments you , humans will eventually be able to produce computer programs with the capability of destroying civilisation. N.B: This is my brief summary of what their stance seems to be, and isn&#x27;t a direct quotation or paraphrasing of MIRI&#x27;s official opinion.

Founders of successful companies don&#x27;t spend their time reading about how other founders became successful. When Zuckerberg was 19 do you think he spent all his time reading interviews about billionaire startup founders? Thinking that copying their traits, following their do&#x27;s and don&#x27;ts and imitating them will lead to success? No, he spent his time working on the product. That and being lucky. Some of these people lucked out more than others, and because of that they get famous, get interviewed and spiel out some B.S. about how to be successful as if everyone could do it (and that they &#x27;made it&#x27; because of intelligence, skill, and hard work).

is this available as a podcast?

His low point was when Yahoo offered to buy FB for a billion dollars. Dark times.

Sigh. Mark Zuckerberg is not the fellow to listen to if you want to build the future. He&#x27;s only managed to re-invent the past. AOL, MySpace, FriendFeed, and probably a few others I&#x27;m forgetting.<p>edit: Folks are getting a bit philosophical so I&#x27;ll clarify. There are better models to look up to if you want to invent the future: Bret Victor, Elon Musk, Alan Kay, Richard Feynman, etc. Each of those people did invent the future or is currently in the process of actually doing it. Study the great minds, not the great businesses and business practitioners.

Does this include Internet.org, the &quot;wolf in sheep&#x27;s clothing&quot; of technology initiatives?

Seeing how he behaved while getting to his success i don&#x27;t think he should be idealized. I would rather listen to what Elon Musk has to say about future than Mark Zuckerberg.

Why is M. Zuckerberg qualified to tell us how or to build us our future? Because he built brain dead website where people waste their precious time and lives?<p>Building facebook - glorified yellowpages - is somehow a sign of high knowledge or achievement these days?

Fyi, the parent of the OP (<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;themacro.com&#x2F;future&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;themacro.com&#x2F;future&#x2F;</a>) has a header image that breaks on mobile.

I&#x27;m sure the hardest part was backstabbing all his partners.

Link to Scribd is broken.

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