Meta Exit Interview — With Mike Schroepfer

Mike Schroepfer is Meta's former chief technology officer and currently a senior fellow at the company. He joins Big Technology Podcast for a look back at his time as CTO: What went well? What could've been better? What changes would he have made in retrospect? Listen for an episode about the challenges of enabling massive scale, both from a technical and societal standpoint. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 0:43Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 1:03Speaker 01

  LinkedIn Presents.

• 1:27Alex Kantrowitz?

  Hello and welcome to the Big Technology Podcast, a show for cool-headed, nuanced conversation of the tech world and beyond. We are joined today by Mike Shrempf, a senior fellow and former CTO at Facebook, aka Meta. This is going to be a, the first time we ever do a show like this, and I'm really excited about it. It's going to be exit interview format. We're going to talk to Shrep about what went right, what went wrong at Facebook, what he can learn from his tenure. And then I also got a bunch of questions from the exit interview handbook that I promised I will ask. So stay tuned, it's going to be fun. Shrep, welcome to the show.

• 2:04Speaker 02

  Thanks. Excited to be here.

• 2:06Alex Kantrowitz?

  How did you get your nickname? Were people too lazy to say the whole Shreppfer? Because it doesn't sound too difficult for me to pronounce. Or is that something that you insisted on?

• 2:15Speaker 02

  I think, no, I've definitely not insisted. And Michael was like the most popular name for like 20 years. So I think it was just, it was in college and there were too many Michaels around. So it was just easier and shorter. And my very first job out of college was in a big open floor plan. And I remember being like, okay, I'm a professional now. People should know me as Mike. Shrep doesn't really sound that professional. So everyone in that company knew me as Mike, except when some college friends came to visit in my big open office. Like, hey, Shrep, what's up? And everyone's like, oh, Shrep, that works a lot better than Mike. And so I just gave up.

• 2:49Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right, yeah. And I think that out of everybody at Meta, there's two people who are one named People. There's Zuck and there's Shrep. So it's nice to be on the line with you. So I want to, first of all, get a sense as to how long you were at Meta for our listeners, if you can share that. And then how did the company change over your time there?

• 3:10Speaker 02

  Well, I joined in, it was late summer, fall of 2008. And so to put it in context, at that time, MySpace had more users than Facebook. So MySpace was the big social network on the block. And Facebook was the new up and comer. And so it's been about, you know, coming up on about 14 years since then. And so obviously, we have changed a lot over the years. It was a much smaller company, much smaller website at the time. You know, that was just around the launch of the mobile app store. And so mobile was a distance away. And so it was, it has changed a lot in those 13, 14 years.

• 3:51Alex Kantrowitz?

  And what position did you come in as?

• 3:54Speaker 02

  So I joined and I was, actually, my very first job was Director of Engineering. And for about two or three weeks, I ran part of engineering and actually part of product management and design. And then I had a pre-planned vacation that I had planned like a year in advance. So I took off for a while and came back. And when I came back, Mark, you know, sat Chris and I down and said, Chris Cox, Chris Cox was running HR at the time. And It was like this sort of half engineering and Chris is in HR. It just makes sense. Like, how about, Chris, you run product and Shrep, you run engineering? And we're like, that makes a lot more sense. And so we swizzled around and Chris became the head of product. And I became the head of engineering. And this was in early or fall of 2008.

• 4:37Speaker 02

  And that's how we operated for quite a long time.

• 4:41Alex Kantrowitz?

  I'm going to get to some of the what went well, what went wrong questions. But I, you know, you mentioned that it was just around the time of mobile getting off the ground. I remember I was at ad age, maybe it was 2010 or 2011, where I wrote the story that for the first time ever, more media was consumed on mobile devices than it was on desktop. And it was all of a sudden, after everybody was yelling, year of mobile, probably since the moment you began. It had come and it came fast and it didn't really lead anyone to have any time to spend

• 5:16Alex Kantrowitz?

  a while making that transition. Facebook had a very interesting moment there where, if I'm not mistaken, Mark Zuckerberg was very intent on a mode of developing where you would build hybrid apps and then moved to a mode of building native only for, for Apple and Android devices. So I'm curious from, from your seat, what that was like making the transition to mobile inside Facebook?

• 5:45Speaker 02

  Well, it's, I mean, it's important to back up because it did occur very fast, but there were many years. When I first got there, mobile wasn't on the horizon in 2008. I mean, I remember when I was thinking about joining Facebook, I had friends try to convince me not to join because the issue actually was, could you build a business in a social network? And the word on the street in 2008 was no, you know, that MySpace was having a lot of trouble. If you remember, they had signed this big deal with Google that had minimums that they were going to meet and they couldn't meet them. And then people had a long list of companies before Friendster, AOL Instant Messenger and, and, and, you know, the word on the street was like, well, lots of people use these things, but you can't actually build a interesting company, business out of it.

• 6:27Speaker 02

  And so really, the first job was A, just keep the site scaling because Friendster had blown up because it couldn't actually keep up the load. It kept crashing. And then B, assuming we could actually scale it to the demand of users, how do you build a business on this? And that was sort of building the ads business on the web, which started as the right-hand column. So you had kind of your nav on the left and your feed in the middle and these ads on the third column on the right. And we had like kind of just gotten that working. And that was like the can this company survive moment? And then all of a sudden, you know, it's like 2011-ish timeframe, 12, you know, we saw the user base shift very dramatically from web to mobile. And so you had a double problem here.

• 7:11Speaker 02

  You know, the problem number one was we had built everything on the web using PHP, JavaScript, web technologies. And now you moved to mobile and it's a whole different technology stack. So you need Objective C, you're building an iOS, on Android, you're building a Java. So like the language that our programmers work in is now totally different. All the tooling is different. And then you have this like giant screen going to a tiny screen. So where we had three columns on the web, you have one column on mobile. And we had built our business on the third column. So it's kind of like, what do you do with that third column? And so we basically had these two challenges at once, which is technologically, how do we build on mobile?

• 7:54Speaker 02

  And then business-wise, how do we actually make our business work on mobile? And we kind of had to tackle both at the same time. So, you know, when we looked around, I said, look, we've got hundreds of engineers who are trained up and best in the world at building web technologies. We've got to either cross-train all of them into a brand-new technology stack on iOS, you know, or if we can bring some of their knowledge and expertise over onto mobile, that will allow us to move much faster. Said much more simply, like you have a whole bunch of people writing one version of your product here, you know, in this form. And then on mobile, you had to basically like copy the whole thing and do it again in a totally different language. And then, by the way, do it again a third time if you want to also do it on Android, since it's totally separate. And that just felt untenable at the time.

• 8:38Speaker 02

  So we tried to figure out how much basically code and knowledge could we share between web development and mobile. And that was, you know, our first sort of attempt to scale up on mobile. And as, as you say, it, it sounded good at the time, but it was quite challenging technically to build a product that was what people expected, which was high performance. When you scroll, you know, a feed on your phone, you don't expect it to stutter and judder in a loading wheel. You just expect kind of buttery smooth, you know, feed. And that was quite challenging to do at that time.

• 9:14Alex Kantrowitz?

  Hybrid.

• 9:14Speaker 02

  With that technology stack.

• 9:16Alex Kantrowitz?

  Those apps did not, did not work very well.

• 9:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, we had to basically reverse course. And we built a new version. We started on iOS and we basically started from scratch and said, rewrite the whole thing, start from scratch, and your number one feature is performance. And everything else kind of could fall off the boat in order to make the performance target. And this is, you know, all seems great now because it all worked out. But at the time, you know, we had tons of business objectives, tons of ideas, and we basically had to say, no new features on the existing app, because we still had the existing app in the App Store, still a product that hundreds of millions of people use. And we said, stop development on that, except for security and major bug fixes.

• 10:02Speaker 02

  And everybody just wait nine months-ish until this new version comes out and you don't get to deploy any new features. And being able to sort of silo and focus that team and build it, who built a sort of native first product, was a, was a huge challenge at the time. But when it came out, people, people loved the new version. And this was the 5.0 version of the iOS app. And it was a, you know, built a huge success from there.

• 10:28Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. And it's interesting that you started talking about with, how can you build a business for Facebook? And this is a story, the stat that, you know, I like to cite whenever I talk to people about this, is that now Facebook's revenue is 95 to 98% mobile, or something like that, somewhere in that range.

• 10:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, and this is the sort of platform transition that typically kills companies. So we built a business on the web, different technology stack, different product experience, moved to mobile. That's the time when usually most companies hold on too tight to their existing business because it's getting disrupted. And it's hard to remember at the time, most people say like, ah, people aren't going to buy stuff on their phone. Like, who wants to type their credit card into this little device? Like, eh, that's not going to happen. And so it wasn't even just like, it's hard. It's like, people didn't believe it would exist. And so my experience at Meta has been like, every three years, there's some, what feels like an existential crisis. When I got there, it was like, can we scale the site? Can we build a business? And it's like, cool, we're kind of getting through that.

• 11:28Speaker 02

  It's like, oh, you gotta do it all over again on a whole new platform and like, do it fast. And this is, you know, part of the, honestly, the power of a founder, CEO, engineer is, you alluded to this, is Mark at the time, basically just threw the switch all the way to mobile and said, we've got to do mobile. It's the future. And not only were we able to silo this team and like, stop development, which is a big deal for a company. He said, look, anytime you come in and bring me a preview of a new product, new experience, it has to be on mobile. Like, I don't want to see anything that's a web mockup. And people didn't think he was serious. And I remember the first team that rolled in is like, here's our new thing. And like, and he's like, wait, these are web box. Like, yeah, like, mm-mm, like, come back with with mobile box. I don't want to do this review.

• 12:13Speaker 02

  And they're like, oh, you're, you're serious? So like, that sort of thing, I think, is, is needed in these transitions.

• 12:19Alex Kantrowitz?

  Does Facebook go a debt of gratitude to Android and Apple for developing mobile operating systems that could take people from that, oh, no one will ever transact on phones to actually, hey, wait a second, advertising is legitimate business on phones?

• 12:35Speaker 02

  I mean, I think it's fair to say that, you know, Facebook obviously wouldn't exist without the internet first, and a lot of technology is built on there. And then the explosion of consumers on, on mobile devices. You know, there are more people with mobile phones than, you know, would ever have desktop computers. So, so I think it's a huge part of the growth story. And part of why we're so interested in building the next platform, AR, VR and the metaverse, is because I think these platform shifts can be You know, big danger for companies, but for a company like Meta, Facebook, I think it's a huge opportunity for us in the future.

• 13:08Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, but so that sounds like a yes in terms of some form of, you know, debt to these companies for creating the conditions that you were able to do business on their operating systems.

• 13:18Speaker 02

  I think like having mobile operating systems out there and ability to deploy our apps has been been really great for Facebook. Yeah.

• 13:24Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. Okay, let's get to some of these. That was, I'm glad, again, I'm glad we did that diversion. So here, I wrote some exit interview questions. Maybe that our discussion just now leads into the first one, which is, you know, you go from being smaller than MySpace to being 3.6 billion people using your products every month. What went well?

• 13:47Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, I think the fact that it worked, like, there's a huge survivor bias in everyone. It's just like you assume because this thing exists, it was easy along the way, or even that it was bound to happen. And I think this is this like techno determinism that these technologies will exist or these companies exist is just not my personal experience. It was, you know, one fire after the other along the way. And I think that, you know, looking back at the time.

• 14:12Alex Kantrowitz?

  This is a heck of an answer for the what went well part. Sorry, go ahead.

• 14:15Speaker 02

  Well, no, I just like what went well is like we survived is like part of it. And like back in the day, there wasn't a software stack for us to build on. Like, people had built, you know, web search, they had built news sites where you could serve the same article to billions of people, no problem. You just copy it, C Z P Z. At the time, we were like trying to build this thing where anyone could write on anything, they could comment or like, and then anyone could view that thing. And they expected to get the most recent version at any point in time. And so at the time, it was, I remember Justin, it's like, oh, gosh, is Justin Bieber gonna post today? Because Justin Bieber posts, and all of a sudden, millions of people want to like and comment, and like, the whole world expects that to just like work. And there wasn't like, a product I could buy on the internet

• 14:59Speaker 02

  or go to Fry's and buy, like, we had to build a whole new software stack to do this that worked and worked at like massive scale. And then we had to kind of build the whole team along the way that built this. And then while we were building this new software stack to scale, we also sort of made this decision, said, look, Consumer preferences change. We have to have this culture of speed, our ability to deploy code. So we actually accelerated our ability to deploy code over time. When I first got there, it was a weekly push. So we would change the site in major ways once a week. It's now a continuous push, which means literally as we're doing this podcast, like changes are happening. And so, and everyone I get asked for advice, I was like, no, no, no, you go slower as you get bigger because it's harder. And we said, no, we thought

• 15:44Speaker 02

  ability to move quickly was important. So what we needed to do is build really robust tools and really robust process to make this all work. And so I think that that, you know, a lot of that is what went right. You know, the other thing I'd say is, along the way, we built a lot of tools for ourselves that have become a sort of industry standard for how people build stuff. Like if you talk to someone, like they're going to build a web app, they're going to build a mobile app, they're going to use React probably, or React Native on mobile. And these are how we build our own products. And if you're doing state of the art AI research right now, you're, you know, three out of four times going to be using PyTorch, which is a tool, again, we built for ourselves, you know, and if you're going to do storage, you're going to use RocksDB. If you're running PHP, you're going to use HHVM. Like, these are all products that we built and have open

• 16:29Speaker 02

  sourced and have become sort of part of the DNA of how people build things on web, on mobile, and in AI. So it's not just one technological realm, it's sort of several. So that ability to sort of scale, solve problems, and then do it in a way that like people kind of love as a developer is, is I think one of the things that went really, really well.

• 16:52Alex Kantrowitz?

  Why open source those code bases?

• 16:55Speaker 02

  There's lots of reasons. I mean, I think that, you know, one is just leverage. So

• 17:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  This is basically, it's just for definitions. You're giving this stuff away to developers that could potentially compete with you.

• 17:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, everyone can use the same tools we're using. And we actually did this in our hardware too. So, most people don't know about Open Compute, but it's basically like, go use the designs for our servers and data centers yourself. But, you know, when you talk about things like an AI research framework, or a web development framework, or mobile development framework, that's a like need, tons and tons of people have. And so I'd rather people collaborate together to build the best one, rather than everyone build their own special version that's not as good. And I also like, My favorite part about it is it keeps us honest because our culture inside the company is one of developer pull rather than centralized push, meaning you don't have a mandate in the company that you must use this technology, which happens in big companies.

• 17:51Speaker 02

  And what happens is that technology sort of was really good and then sort of isn't as good as what everyone else could use. And so you're fundamentally slower than every other company out there. And by using open source, like everyone else who uses these products outside the company doesn't have to. So it's got to be good. And if people stop using it, that's a really important signal to us that there's something wrong with it that we need to fix, or we should switch to a different technology. Because like my job is to always have our teams on the absolute latest, greatest, best technology, so they're as productive or more productive than anyone else in the industry. And being an open source on the core of what we build is a really good way to ensure that. And so it's, you know, why we did it way early day in the early days with HHVM, then we did it with React, and then when AI has been the big revolution, it's PyTorch.

• 18:36Speaker 02

  And again, back to what you're saying, it's, I think the thing I'm most proud of is us ability to jump from platform and technological realm, web, mobile, AI, AR, VR. That is pretty unusual. Usually have a company gets really good in one thing and they sort of miss the motion. So it's actually our ability to migrate these things and take our approach to them that I'm most proud of.

• 19:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  And, okay, what went wrong?

• 19:02Speaker 02

  What went wrong? Well, there was, you know, lots of challenges along the way. You know, I think we've seen over the last five plus years, you know, the, the sort of struggles with content moderation and, you know, how to manage that. I think the world is still sort of sorting through this. And, you know, not only what the right rules of the road are in terms of what policies people want, you know, for, for, to balance sort of safety versus expression, but then how to implement them and how to build them in an operationally robust way so they scale to billions of users. Like, I think that's been a real challenge. And I think

• 19:43Speaker 02

  One of the lessons we're trying to take to the metaverse is to think a lot further in advance of all of those things. So what are the downsides? What are the possible ways bad actors could abuse the system? And if I knew that that was going to happen, what are all the tools and features I can build in my products now rather than wait for it to be a big issue? And I think that's been a big lesson for us over the last many years.

• 20:09Alex Kantrowitz?

  Few people have built a product or helped build the infrastructure to enable a product to scale in the way you have. I'm curious if, looking at the way that Facebook in particular scaled over time and having built the infrastructure to enable it to scale, sometimes critics would say too fast. Do you have any reflections on products becoming that big that quickly?

• 20:36Speaker 02

  Well, look, I think that what attracted me to Facebook in the early days was the basics of what the company was trying to do was filling a fundamental human need, which is like, do people want to stay in touch with other people they care about around the world with as little friction as possible? And I think that's an emphatic yes. And I think that that is definitely a net good to society in terms of people being able to keep in touch across the world. And I think there are some challenges that come along with it. And that's what we just talked about and what we're learning about. But it's hard for me to sort of run the reverse and say like, actually, let's go back to

• 21:18Speaker 02

  a time when messaging someone cost you 10 cents a message. Like, I don't think that that's a better world for people. And so I think there's a question of, how much of this, I think when anyone's building in a high-growth industry, how much of this is truly unknown versus if you just sat and think about it, say, let's spend the time to red-team this, so we're game it, let's think about all the ways in which people might use this for ill, and let's like plan out our defenses upfront. And I think that's the big lesson for me and how we're building for products in the future.

• 21:52Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, and just one last question about growth. I think sometimes people will look at growth and they say as long as that line is going up and to the right, then life is good. Things are going well for the company. What would you say to people who look at that as the sole metric?

• 22:06Speaker 02

  I mean, I think a single metric is always dangerous and never how we've operated the company because there's so many ways in which that can go wrong. Among them can be, you could be at a really near term, local maximum where it's going up, but it's going to stop and it's going to come back down the other side. There's been plenty of businesses that look like that, plenty of fads that occur in the industry. And so you always got to be clicking one level down and looking at the fundamentals. Like, are people happy? Are they enjoying it? Do they, do they want to come back over the long term? Because if you're building a multi-decade business, that's, that's what matters, not like, is next quarter good? And then, you know, all the other things we talked about in terms of understanding the, the other consequences of the business you're building. So I think that the sort of, anyone who ever operates, who's operated anything knows

• 22:50Speaker 02

  that a, a single metric is a great way to, to really get yourself in trouble and not in how we've operated the business.

• 22:56Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, well, I want to put one finer point on it because I feel like maybe this is a better way to ask the question because I feel like this is what people have, have said in the past. Do you think the company grew faster than it could handle?

• 23:08Speaker 02

  I think it's really hard to run the like historical A B comparison. So like, I, I think that, you know, I, I don't know. So I, I think that, because you'd have to ask what would have grown in its stead? What would people be using instead? And would those things be better or worse? It's, it's really hard to know. I think all I know is what I have learned and what I can take forward now, which is, you know, what I said, just thinking hard about, you know, about what we could know and how we can prepare for those things right now.

• 23:36Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yep. Another question that I wanted to ask you is looking at, I'm, I always look at the, um, the reports that Facebook puts out on takedowns. And oftentimes it's like, you know, millions of terrorism posts, hundreds of millions of, you know, pieces of child pornography. We all know, you know, what some of the content moderators have said about like the effects some of this stuff has on their mental health. I'm curious what you've learned about the nature of humanity. I mean, seeing how much bad people have the ability to produce, has it changed your perspective at all?

• 24:12Speaker 02

  I mean, look, I'm probably at heart a massive optimist. But I would say that my optimism armor has been severely dented over the last five years. It is hard to not have it when you experience some of these things firsthand and actually look at the content and look at what people do and realize that sometimes some people are capable of great evil and harm. And you have to understand that to be real about it, to be willing to fight and fight those things and say, these things exist. We can't just plan for the happy path and assume everyone's going to be nice all the time because they won't. It doesn't mean most people are or that I'm despondent about humanity, but it does mean

• 24:54Speaker 02

  that a loud minority can be really terrible and it's our job to fight against them and make it good for the average person on the product, which I think is achievable. And I think, you know, when you look at content moderation, for example, you know, on the platform, you know, I know this is probably not going to resonate for people, but the numbers tell the story. If you look at our quarterly reports where we lay this out, what you've seen is a steady decline in the occurrence of these things on our product. What we say prevalence, how likely are you to see one of these things? You know, and in some cases like hate speech, it's gone down by 5X in 18 months, you know, and it's from 0.1 to 0.02%.

• 25:35Speaker 02

  You know, and I'd ask, how many people listening to this have seen nudity on Facebook in the last, you know, three, six months? And, you know, this is a product where there's a big button on your phone where you can just say, upload image and you can upload whatever you want. And it could be adult nudity, but that's against our policies and it's up to us to find that before you do and get rid of it. And six, seven, eight years ago, we would have to do that by someone seeing it and reporting it. And now 95 to 99% of the time, we catch it first and pull it down before anyone's seen it. And that, I think, you know, that gives me some hope that we can sort of build the right sort of guardrails around these systems to allow people free expression, not restrict

• 26:17Speaker 02

  what you want to say, but like remove the worst of the worst so that people can have a safe and enjoyable experience.

• 26:23Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. And by all the nature of humanity question in particular, like I have tended to think that the nature of Of humans is good. However, like if I think if I was sitting in your chair where I saw how many awful images are uploaded, and I'm not saying that people see them. You've you're basically you've been behind some of the AI systems that catch this stuff before before it happens, the fact that Facebook blocks nudity largely due to AI systems that you've built to detect it before it ever can be posted. So I'm curious if you maybe you don't want to answer this one, but what your view on the nature of humanity, good or something else?

• 27:02Speaker 02

  Look, I won't lie, and I say that there's been mornings that that my faith in humanity have been been tested. I think particularly acts of violence and hate, you know, the Christchurch shooting, you know, the recent shooting of Vivaldi, like, it's really hard to wrap my brain around the

• 27:25Speaker 02

  the pain people cause and choose to cause. But I think that if you sort of zoom out and look at the numbers and say that, you know, the vast, vast majority of people don't do this and are good and help their neighbor across the street. And like, our job is to bend the arc of society positively. And if you zoom in history, like, despite all of the terrible things happening, we're in the least violent time in humanity. And a lot of that is because of progress and because of opportunity and generating wealth and technology. And so, you know, this is where it gets me, you know, there are times that I am on the floor and I got to pick myself back up. The reason I get back into the chair and get back at it is I say, what we can do is

• 28:10Speaker 02

  make tomorrow better than today. I can't, I can't fix today or yesterday. But if if we can make people more prosperous, give them hope, give them ability to connect with other people, then I know that that makes tomorrow better. And and when we open those opportunities, I think people are wonderful.

• 28:28Alex Kantrowitz?

  Interesting. I'm glad we spoke about this. Let's talk about open culture. Facebook has an extremely open culture. You've been part of the leadership. I'm using Facebook and Meta interchangeably. Please forgive me. You've been part of the leadership for a long time. And when the documents that Francis Haugen leaked came out, I actually saw your name in a lot of the conversations. I'm curious, and afterwards, Facebook did take some of the permissions that there used to be, some of the openness, and closed it up a little bit. I'm curious what your view is on the culture and the openness perspective in particular. Was that just a little too optimistic? Or are you still a believer in the open culture?

• 29:13Speaker 02

  Look, I still believe that you want everyone involved in an endeavor to have... I mean, the source of the open culture was very practical. Sort of like, if you are missing some piece of information that would help you do your job better, that's like on us, right? Like, my job was to make sure that every engineer in the company had the best tools, were working in the right direction, and had all the information they needed to make the right decisions. And then I got out of the way. Like, all the best stuff we built was not me showing up and saying, "I have this great idea." It was creating the conditions for those ideas to emerge. And then, in some cases, being an editor and curating, saying, "That's a really good idea. I'm going to accelerate that or protect it." And so, I think that requires information.

• 29:56Speaker 02

  I think, on the flip side, you know, there's a reason why people don't livestream their living room conversations. Right? If you know the entire world is watching, you will think a lot before you say things, right? And I think when you're having a knock-down, drag-out conversation about a policy, or a product, or a thing, you kind of want people to say, "Here's what I think. I think this product's dumb. I think we shouldn't do this. I think this is the wrong strategy." And if you're like, "Oh geez, this is going up on YouTube," you may be quiet and not express important things. And so, I do think that shining a spotlight on these conversations causes people to clam up. And so, I think that that is a challenge.

• 30:40Speaker 02

  It's like, we want to get all the information we can to people, want to distribute, be as open as possible. But we want to create an environment where people are comfortable expressing their views, their opinions, and add it to the conversation. And that requires some guardrails to say that, like, "Look, you're not..." You know, your comments aren't going to be live tweeted on the internet. And so you could be wrong. You can use inflammatory language, you know, about how terrible this product is, even though it's probably overstated from how you really feel, but your emotions are catching on. Like, I think that people miss that. And so I think what we're trying to do is say, look, look, we want the information, but we've got to create safe spaces for people to have really direct, honest conversations.

• 31:22Alex Kantrowitz?

  So trying to put a finger on what exactly your view is on this. So yes, to open culture, but...

• 31:31Speaker 02

  I think, I think you start with openness and say like, we want to get as much things out to as many people as possible. Except when the sort of, the largeness of that, you know, the extreme of openness is like live broadcast on the internet, right? And when that starts to cause people to not provide critical information or not express their true views, then you need to create safer contained spaces. And it's, it's never been one or the other, even back in the open culture days. It's not like every team meeting would be broadcast to the entire company. You could have a short team meeting. It's like, oh, we're really like, not sure about, is it React? Is it this? Is it FaceWeb? Is it native? I mean, when we chose, we went through three different technology stacks for the mobile app that we talked about earlier.

• 32:15Speaker 02

  We had three teams out there propose three different ideas and we had a closed meeting to decide which one to use. We didn't invite the whole company, like in a stadium to like, watch that decision happen. Because that would have really, I wanted everyone to critique everyone else's approach. It was like a dozen people in a room, right? So I think this idea that open means that there's like a stadium for everyone to watch everything. It like misunderstands how that affects people's ability to have an honest conversation. Once we have that conversation, said, this is what we're doing, share that on the rooftops, explain why, talk about the pros and cons, like, don't sugarcoat it. Like, so I think there's this balance of allowing people to have safe conversations. And then, once you've done that, like,

• 32:58Speaker 02

  spread information far and wide, and making sure that everyone can be involved.

• 33:03Alex Kantrowitz?

  Interesting. It's interesting that you said back in the open culture days. So obviously things have shifted after.

• 33:08Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, I think as we've discussed, it's harder, you know, when at our, when stuff is, you know, in this mode, you have to adjust, you know, what conversations happen. But I'm just saying that like, it's not like everything was, you know,

• 33:24Alex Kantrowitz?

  Open to begin with.

• 33:24Speaker 02

  livestreamed to the whole company in 2008.

• 33:26Alex Kantrowitz?

  A lot was open.

• 33:27Speaker 02

  Now it's closed.

• 33:28Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 33:28Speaker 02

  But, but it's hard to measure these things because like the company was also a thousand people. Now it's, you know, tens of thousands of people. So, and even back then, we had these, you know, 10 person conversations about critical issues. So I think it's like, it's always just a balance of, like I said, I think you start with like, get everyone the information they need, but don't, but make sure you can have a critical conversation where people feel ability to be open. And those two things pull against each other. And I think the question is like at any one instant in time, how to, how to perfectly balance them. Like a lot of things in life, it's balancing equities. There's no like magic right solution to these things.

• 34:03Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yep. Every exit annual, every, every exit interview manual that I've read has said, you really got to try to figure out why the person's leaving. And you're still senior fellow at the company, but no longer chief technology officer. What's the story?

• 34:18Speaker 02

  I didn't know there were manuals out there. Can you send some to me?

• 34:21Alex Kantrowitz?

  Oh yeah. I mean, just Google exit interview questions on the internet. And there's some wild questions out there. Some of them I knew I wasn't going to get a good answer from you. So I didn't ask them. So.

• 34:30Speaker 02

  Oh, okay. Well, thanks for doing your homework.

• 34:33Alex Kantrowitz?

  But this is one I think that everyone has. And yeah, I would like to hear about it.

• 34:38Speaker 02

  I mean, it's pretty simple. It's basically, look, I've been at the company coming up on 14 years, which is a long run by any tech, tech. I've been in tech for 25 years. So, you know, and seen, started my own company, seen a lot of different things, things happen. You know, the last few years, I've, I've built a particular passion in. Putting my own personal time and energy into fighting climate change. I started doing this philanthropically kind of years ago. We have a bunch of stuff cooking there. And I just, I really was a tale of two loves, which is, look, I want to invest more of my time and energy in this work on, on climate change. And I feel like if I can put more days of the week in there, I can do more. But there's a bunch of things that Meta is doing that I really love as well and think

• 35:19Speaker 02

  are fundamental to the prosperity advancement in humanity, particularly AI and AR, VR and our metaverse work. And so it really was this question of like, how do we, how do I do both of these things at once? And this is why, I mean, people are surprised when I say I'm a senior fellow. They think of it as a perfunctory title. I'm, I'm at the company two days a week, you know? You know, it's, it's a, I'm doing serious work there and able to continue to work in AI and it's freed up some time for me to, to work on, on my work on climate.

• 35:48Alex Kantrowitz?

  Mike Trupfer is with us. He is a senior fellow at Meta, formerly the chief technology officer. We're talking about a reflection of why he decided to leave and everything he saw at the company. And he just teed up an amazing second half where we'll talk about AI, VR, AR, and I'm going to toss in some climate change. We'll be back right after this. This episode is brought to you by App Point. Everyone's racing to roll out AI right now. Co-pilots, chatbots, agents doing real work. But here's the part nobody loves talking about. All that AI runs on your data and most teams have no single way to see it, secure it and prove it's under control. That's exactly what App Point does.

• 36:29Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 37:09Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 37:54Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 38:13Alex Kantrowitz?

  And we're back here on Big Technology Podcast with Mark Schaefer, senior fellow at Facebook, oh, sorry, Meta, did it again, and formerly the chief technology officer there. Actually, let's start with the climate change question. During COVID, myself, and I think a lot of people who I spoke with, said if we can't get people to adopt vaccines and protect themselves, or we can't get people to stay inside and protect others, and we have an immediate threat in front of us, we've really lost faith that we can actually do anything toward the climate change problem. I find it interesting that climate change is your next big thing that you want to tackle. I'm sure you might have had some of the similar thoughts. So why are you optimistic that we can actually solve the problem?

• 38:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think if you come at it from asking overloaded people to do one more thing, you're going to get pretty down about the whole thing. But when you actually look at it and say, wait a second, what are the technological advances we can make that make this an easy yes for people? It's just strictly better. For example, we're now at the point where solar plus batteries is cheaper than coal. And whatever you think about climate change, nobody likes air pollution. And you put a coal power plant, and a bunch of people are going to get sick and die. And you replace that coal power plant with solar and batteries. People don't die, it's good for their health, and it's cheaper. And by the way, it also helps with climate change. So like, there are a lot of those wins on the board yet to be had in a lot

• 39:38Speaker 02

  of interesting industries. If you've driven an electric car, and you realize how little service it takes, there's no oil change, there's no spark plugs, no timing belt, no transmission. I mean, there's just like a ton of stuff. You just don't have to do anymore. It's basically a vacuum cleaner on wheels. Like, and the cost of operating is so much lower, especially in today's crazy gas prices. You say, okay, if we can bring those to market at reasonable costs, that's good. And you just sort of say, what are all the advances in materials, in computing, in AI, and in others, that are going to bring things that people are like, nah, I want that, because that's better. And oh, yeah, it happens to help with climate change. But like, also, it's better. So that's the opportunity ahead of us. And this is why I'm personally so excited about it, because so much of what I've learned is how to build

• 40:19Speaker 02

  and scale technological operations, how to do R and D in new areas like AI and AR and VR. And that's what I want to, you know, help accelerate in this industry.

• 40:28Alex Kantrowitz?

  And I've always felt that, well, not always, actually, in particular after COVID, that climate change was going to need a technological solution versus like a mass conservation solution. You know, after we use technology via the vaccines to actually help get us out of COVID versus anything else. It sounds right to you, it sounds like.

• 40:46Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, I think, you know, people have readings of history. My reading of history is like, technology is the great accelerator of prosperity, because it increases productivity and it removes like, trade offs. And that's one of the few things out there. And I talked about solar. I mean, LED lighting is another one, you know, 1000x reduction in cost over the last 20 years, which is just crazy. Genome sequencing, you know, is just fallen, you know, these curves, you just don't see these curves in nature that look like these massive down to the right. But you see them in technology. And when you get on one of these curves, it just like, throws off all sorts of benefits to humanity. And that's, that's what's exciting about this space, especially batteries, electrification. There's so much to do. I think it will make us a like, less polluted, better, happier,

• 41:29Speaker 02

  more prosperous, productive world, that also will happen to help the climate change problem.

• 41:34Alex Kantrowitz?

  That would be neat. Okay, so let's round this out talking about AI VR and AR. What's the state of AI right now? Because you know, I think a few years ago, when Facebook was working on, you know, M, which was this AI, AI train, training messaging bot, which I wrote about while I was at BuzzFeed. You know, you built Facebook AI Research with Jan LaKoon, who we've had on the show. There was a moment, maybe in 2017, where it seemed like AI was rocketing in terms of its ability to do things. And then the buzz died down. It was like, it was like when people were putting blockchain in the name of their company to, you know, increase their valuation.

• 42:14Alex Kantrowitz?

  You looked at earnings reports and people were saying machine learning in the same way, just a couple of years ago. And it looks like people have moved on from that fat. Now, obviously, AI is still continuing to move. I'm curious what you think has been happening as people have been more quiet about it. And, you know, for those listening, Shrep just gave me a face from across the screen. So I think he's going to dispute my characterization of the buzz dying down.

• 42:38Speaker 02

  Well, I think certainly like the hype train and sort of throwing crazy money at it. Like any new technology, you unfortunately have some over exuberance, you know, and you can debate whether it's a, you know, a boom or a bubble. And we certainly have had that in AI. But if you sort of zoom out a little bit and even just take a very short term, like 10 year look at AI. And, you know, back in 2012 is around the time when the first deep learning network won this thing called ImageNet, which is a challenge Fei Fei Li now at Stanford created to like, to help people build AI systems that can recognize objects and images. And she built this in the late aughts and, and for years, it was like this backwater project that nobody cared about.

• 43:19Speaker 02

  And then all of a sudden, AlexNet showed up and it, you know, was a 10% better than the next entrant because it used deep learning. And that was 2012. And then it took us a while, we talked about content moderation, it took us years to get this technology to be useful enough in productive scale in this sort of supervised training mode, where you kind of feed the AI lots of handcrafted sort of data, you kind of spoon-feed it data from a human. And that's sort of what got us through years. And if you, again, go back to these standards reports and look at our advancements, it's all from this for the early years. And then in the last few years, we've actually had a second acceleration, which was, you know, I remember we were just like getting this stuff to work and Jan LeCoon, who we hired a couple years later, was like, "Yeah, the supervised learning thing is not going to scale. So we've

• 44:04Speaker 02

  really got to figure out how to make unsupervised learning work. We're like, the machines just like figure stuff out on their own." And I remember like, I was like, "Are you kidding me? We're like, just got this stuff to work." And you're telling me it's like, it's like the mobile thing all over again. It's like, "Oh, my God, it just got this to work. Oh, nope, change the platform." And here we are on AI. He was right. And we've gotten unsupervised or self-supervised learning to work across the industry, where you build these massive language models that basically can build kind of training sets on their own just by looking at the data and doing tasks like giving a sentence, predict the next word, which you kind of gives you the test and the answer all in one by just finding text to look out there. And we've seen this massive sort of improvement in the capability of AI systems

• 44:46Speaker 02

  even in the last few years. We've deployed them internally and we've built models. This is the other thing that like, people are probably going to get bored of, but I just got to say it. It's just like, a couple of years ago, we're like, "Hey, can we build a model that understands a concept in more than one language?" So this idea of hate speech, can we build, instead of building an English one, and then a French one, and then a, you know, a Spanish one, can we just build one model across multiple languages that understands this concept? And for a long time, the team building this multimodal model was like getting worse results than the best of the monolingual model, except one day they didn't. And they're like, "Huh, it turns out there's a lot of data in English, and the more you train in English, the better you get in smaller languages." And that gap has just increased over time. And so we now have these models that are not just multilingual,

• 45:28Speaker 02

  they're multimodal, so they understand text, images, video, audio, and then they're multitasked, so they're not just like... Like hate speech, it could be bullying, hate speech, or writing about things. So you have these models that just understand more and more and more over time. And they're getting better and better. So I, I think that, and it's hard for people to see because most of what AI does is that like, it's like we went into the engine and like souped it up. It's like, I just showed up with a, like a hundred more horsepower every year and, and like this magic went into it. It's kind of the way AI is manifesting itself in the world. It's not so obvious to people yet, but it will be more and more obvious over time. As this technology gets deployed in ways that people can see.

• 46:08Alex Kantrowitz?

  People are asking, when's it gonna do stuff for me? Like I set it out on tasks and it completes them. Is that 10 years away?

• 46:15Speaker 02

  I, you know, I, I don't ever give the, the 10 year-ish directions. I mean, I think, um, I don't know. I think that, you know.

• 46:21Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, you guys tried to do it with M and eventually gave up on the project, the chatbot.

• 46:26Speaker 02

  It was too early.

• 46:26Alex Kantrowitz?

  So how far away are we?

• 46:29Speaker 02

  I think years, not decades.

• 46:31Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay. Interesting. Did you, by the way, did you see, uh, have you seen this Dolly stuff that OpenAI is doing where it's drawing pictures?

• 46:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:39Alex Kantrowitz?

  That stuff really blows me away.

• 46:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, the idea that you could, you know, type, you know, pandas playing, you know, tennis on the moon. And it produces an image that looks reasonable is, is sort of mind blowing to people. And I think, I think we're going to continue to see these advances. I mean, we've seen this scale out too, where you just, you kind of build bigger models and you scale them. And we haven't yet seen like the limit to what can happen there. And there's more that needs to be figured out, but I think there's, it's going to be exciting couple of years as, as we advance. I, I, the reason I gave you that frowny face is like, despite all the hype, I expected things to slow down more than they have in terms of actual progress.

• 47:16Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 47:17Speaker 02

  So people have made actual like useful production ready progress in these, these models faster than I thought for a longer period of time.

• 47:24Alex Kantrowitz?

  Do you think we're gonna get within our lifetimes? Oh, this is already in a question that's gonna annoy you, but I'm gonna ask it anyway. To artificial intelligence that can mirror or surpass human intelligence.

• 47:36Speaker 02

  I mean, I think this is a it's a tough benchmark to talk about because humans embody so many different things. And there's, you know, there's so many different ways to look at the delta between AIs. And now, I mean, the human brain uses like 20 watts. Most AI systems are using hundreds, thousands, megawatts. So we're like, we're missing some algorithmic tricks for sure. And even if you look at the biggest AI systems out there, and you try to do some like, rough comparison to synapses in the human brain, they're not perfect, you know, parameters of synapses, but you're still in the like, less than a percent of the scale. So like, we're way off in terms of getting anything that looks like, or computes like, the human brain. I do think what we're gonna see, though, we already see this, where specialized systems can work better than humans. It's like, can

• 48:20Speaker 02

  you identify objectionable content as good or better than a like, well-trained person? Yeah, we're getting there. You know, can you translate in hundreds of languages? Yeah. Can you read x-rays, you know, and assist humans? And the other thing is, I think that the best systems are actually combinations, because computers are good at things that humans aren't, and vice versa. And so people always are obsessed with this replacement. But like, for in x-rays, for example, I think you're gonna see computer-assisted radiologists, and they'll be the best out there, because the humans will add to it, and they'll be better with a computer, but you still want the human in the loop. So I think we're gonna see a lot of those things occur over time. I think you're gonna see self-driving, you know, as much as that's been, you know, sad for everyone. We're making real progress.

• 49:04Speaker 02

  There are level, you know, level four systems out there in the world. And they, you know, can perform really well in certain circumstances. And so I think people will be surprised how quickly these things show up, you know, in the coming years.

• 49:17Alex Kantrowitz?

  Do you trust a Tesla on full self-driving mode?

• 49:20Speaker 02

  That's a tough question. I have a Tesla, and I do not run it in self-driving mode.

• 49:25Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, interesting. AI, no, sorry, AR. Google tried it with Glass. The problem wasn't technology. The problem was that it was awkward, where people felt that there was a spy cam on people's faces at all times. Now we're in a mode where everyone wants to do AR again. Why do you think it will be different this time? I mean, Apple's out there trying to do their own device. People think, oh, it'll be stylish. It will solve all the problems. Again, it wasn't the technology. What do you think?

• 49:54Speaker 02

  I disagree. I mean, did you use the Google Glass?

• 49:56Alex Kantrowitz?

  I did.

• 49:57Speaker 02

  I think it was just too early. Like, I think they tried really hard and they built something great using the technology at the time. But if you remember the display, like, I had to go like this to look at it, and it was a tiny postage stamp little image there in the corner. And it was like, what does this do for me? There wasn't a good answer. So I think the consumer utility was extraordinarily low. And then the sort of the side effect factor was really high, as you say. And I think we're just not there yet. But if I told you, look, you know, these glasses that I'm wearing now, they allow me to live caption the world. So if I'm in a noisy room, I can get like subtitles. And oh, by the way, it'll live translate. So if I'm traveling around the world, someone could be speaking at me and I can get a live translation. People are gonna like that. They're gonna wanna use that.

• 50:42Speaker 02

  And the more that the AI develops, the more as I'm walking around, I'm like, ah, where did I put, you know, I gotta beep beep my phone. It's like, you say like, hey, where's my phone? Like, you left it on your desk, and here's a photo of it. Like, people are gonna like that. So, so I think we haven't delivered the, the utility sort of compromise trade off to like, get product market fit yet for AR. That's why you don't see those products even today in 2012, years and years after Google Glass, because they're still too bulky and the AI needed to provide the, the real awesome experiences isn't there yet. But we're making advances. Like, I always look at the slope, not, not, not the intercept. So like, where are we making progress? And we're making progress along all dimensions. Lighter, better displays that are brighter and wider, wider field of view. AI technology that will deliver amazing experiences.

• 51:27Speaker 02

  I don't exactly know when they'll intersect, but they will eventually intersect. And I think that it will be amazing.

• 51:32Alex Kantrowitz?

  On VR, I'm of the belief that outside of gaming, VR is gonna be an enterprise tool for a long time. I think Facebook has done this, built some of the rooms where you can speak with your colleagues. Makes a lot of sense. Most people actually don't live very far from the friends and the family members that they'd wanna be in presence with. Do you think there's anything to that? Is it gonna go enterprise first and then consumer? And if so, is it gonna be like a weird position for Facebook to be like, an enterprise technology provider, whereas like, the social network might come sometime in the future?

• 52:03Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, I think you've nailed one thing here, which is, which is, the enterprise use case is definitely product market fit, like, right now. We have people doing meetings. I do meetings in VR right now, and there are attributes of it that are way better than a video conference. And we have a lot of technology coming down the pipeline to make that even better. Less friction, you know, more value. So like, I, I think that, like, meetings are gonna be there. I think what we saw with Zoom is like, Virtual meetings aren't just for work anymore. So like, I don't think there's this massive distinction between consumer and enterprise anymore. And so I think if it's like, meeting with other humans remotely is like better in VR. I think you're going to see consumer applications of that today. I mean, if you look at how people are using VR, social applications are a huge part of it already.

• 52:45Speaker 02

  Like, so I think we're already seeing that sort of desire to use new technology for connection, which we've seen throughout humanity.

• 52:52Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, well, with the Zoom, you know, not just for enterprise. It was if you were in a lockdown, you might want to Zoom with your friends. Thank goodness, most of us are not in that situation anymore. I never want to look at a friend through a Zoom window again.

• 53:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, I have family that lives on the other coast. Like, you know, I FaceTime with them. Like, yes, I would rather meet them in person, but that's not practical. And so I'm not saying it's a replacement, but it is an option.

• 53:17Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, okay, we're coming in for a landing here. Two more questions. If you could change anything over the course of your, let's see, 14 years at Meta, Facebook, what would it be, one thing?

• 53:32Speaker 02

  Ooh, can you give me the second question so I can think on that one? Because that's a, that's a hard one.

• 53:35Alex Kantrowitz?

  Second question is, what do we have to look forward to? Technology-wise?

• 53:40Speaker 02

  At Meta or in the world?

• 53:41Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, just put on your technology hat. What technology do we have to look forward to that we're most excited about?

• 53:46Speaker 02

  I mean, I think, so I'm going to answer that one while I think about the other one is, I think we have a ton to look forward to. I think we're going to have, you know, new ways to travel. So not just electric vehicles, but, you know, boats that are flying over the water on hydrofoils with electric powertrains that are smooth and fast and carbon-free. I think we'll have electric vehicles that'll fly you from destination. So a bit of a transport around. I think we will see robotics actually enter, you know, more and more applications over the coming decades. I think we'll see AI move into realms that will be more obvious to the average consumer in the coming decades. I think this idea of AR/VR as a, as a commonplace way for people to communicate will be very clear in the, in the next decade or so,

• 54:29Speaker 02

  especially as you look at advances in technology and avatars and others. So I think we have a lot to look forward to. And all of those things are, I'm, I'm, what I care about is like, what makes people's lives better? And I, and I think all of those, all of those things do. And I could go on for a long time, but those are the ones that I'm, I'm particularly excited about. Because they're just like, better with no compromise. And that's what technology can do uniquely, I think. In terms of, you know, what to do different, I mean, you know, I'm, I'm, and I know this may not resonate with people. It's like we, I, we poured our heart and soul and I took our, our, you know, the world's best AI team and concentrated them on this, this content management problem

• 55:12Speaker 02

  from the very early days. And this is why most of our work you see in those results and not in other splashy demos, um, you know, and I, you know, I guess I wish we could have done that even earlier because there's just a ton of work to do. And, you know, every bad experience people have on the product, I, I feel terrible about and personally responsible for. So I think, you know, the more we could do to, to stop those bad experiences. So people can just connect and communicate and have fun, which is what they're supposed to do. Um, the, the better I feel.

• 55:40Alex Kantrowitz?

  Sharp, it's really always great to talk. I appreciate you spending time with me again, and, um, sharing so much of your perspective and being candid about, you know, the good and the bad. So thank you for being here.

• 55:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's always fun. Thanks for taking the time.

• 55:52Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, we'll do it again soon, hopefully.

• 55:53Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 55:54Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, thanks again for joining us. Thank you, Nick Watney, for doing the editing and mastering the sounds. Uh, here we are. We're back on the horse again after the Davos chats. Uh, thank you, LinkedIn, for having me as part of your podcast network. And thanks to all of you listeners for being here once again, joining us on a Wednesday, or whenever you listen on the Big Technology Podcast. Uh, we will be back next week with another show with a tech insider and, or an outside agitator. Until then, take care.

• 56:27Speaker 03

  Now, more than ever, we need someone on our side. But Rob Whitman? Whitman's votes drove up costs, cut Medicaid, and risked 350,000 Virginians' healthcare to pay for tax breaks for himself and his donors. He's not on our side. Shannon Taylor will fight corruption, cut taxes, and bring down costs. This November, vote for Shannon Taylor. She's for us. Paid for by HMP, the HouseMajorityPac.com. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

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