Derek Sutherland

Beautiful morning in DC! Lots of blossoms and kites.

@FutureJurvetson @GoogleDeepMind I’m much more excited about the prospect of AR over VR. Adding a layer that enhances your experience with reality while staying completely connected with it, and then being able to wave it away with a gesture when you choose to. How do you feel about AR @FutureJurvetson?

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: wsj.com/tech/ai/deepmi… 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.

@bscholl Better yet, make it explicitly non-partisan. Set the party politics aside and address the problem with the focus and intensity it deserves. Otherwise the pendulum will just continue to swing between red and blue as the debt ticks upwards.

We need a bipartisan Congressional campaign to balance the budget. Right now no one wants to cut only their pork. We need everyone to opt in for the pain together. I’d support any pol who signs on to cut across the board. Who will stand up and lead this in the midterms?

And we can do so much better on cost and schedule than we are doing now while still ensuring public health and safety. @NRCgov and various fission companies are making good progress towards this end, but there is so much more we can improve.

@brian_yinger @ENERGY @elonmusk 🥲 I hope I’m not. I haven’t posted that much yet, I figure that’s the reason.

@_dasutherland @ENERGY Why are the most intelligent, nicest people shadowbanned @elonmusk ? It must be the aliens. 👽

Looking forward to my first meeting as a member of SCAC tomorrow. Let’s make the @ENERGY science portfolio as productive and impactful as possible!

Whoever is running visualizations @NASA now deserves a raise!

Best quote of the day thus far: you have to compete, “there is no divine right to success” - Jamie Dimon At @HillValleyForum, packed to the brim with passionate builders!