At one point, gaming legend John Carmack was set to be the defining voice for Facebook’s Oculus technology. But it looks like that time is over, as he will now focus on other things. In a Facebook post, Carmack announced today that he is stepping down from his role, moving over to a “Consulting CTO” position. He noted that he will move on to work with artificial general intelligence.
He’s not leaving the company completely, though. He noted, “I will still have a voice in the development work, but it will only be consuming a modest slice of my time.”
Where will John Carmack go from here?
According to the post, Carmack felt that working with artificial intelligence tech would be a better use of his time. “I think it is possible, enormously valuable, and that I have a non-negligible chance of making a difference there, so by a Pascal’s Mugging sort of logic, I should be working on it.” He also wants to go after it now, before he gets “too old.”
There’s no word if Oculus has a replacement CTO in mind for Carmack, or if his new role will be enough to fulfill it.
Carmack has gone through ups and downs with the company over the past few years. This includes a lawsuit from ZeniMax, in which Oculus had to pay $500 million in damages (it came down to $250 million). Carmack counter-sued at the time, saying the company didn’t pay him his due for its purchase of id Software. It saw a resolution later on.
Where Oculus goes from here is hard to tell. But we’ll let you know if we hear anything further on the matter. We wish Carmack the best of luck on his latest work.
You can read his full statement here. If you’re interested, you can check out the newest trailer for Oculus’ latest project below.
