John Carmack built some of the most technically impressive software in history. He co-created Doom and Quake, pioneering real-time 3D rendering techniques that defined an entire era of computing. As CTO of Oculus VR, he pushed virtual reality hardware and software forward until leaving Meta in 2022 to pursue what he considers the most important engineering challenge remaining: artificial general intelligence. Carmack founded Keen Technologies with $20 million in funding and partnered with reinforcement learning pioneer Richard Sutton to build a research team focused on fundamental questions about AI architecture and learning. His approach is characteristically hands-on. He recently built a system where a camera watches a screen while a robot controls a joystick to play games, combining robotics, simulation, and reinforcement learning in a sim-to-real loop. Carmack estimates a 50-60% chance of AGI showing signs of life by 2030. His track record of solving problems that others considered impossible, from real-time ray casting to standalone VR, gives his AGI pursuit unusual credibility. He has argued that the code for AGI could conceivably be written by a single individual, a contrarian view rooted in his experience building complex systems from first principles.
Key contributions
- Co-created Doom and Quake, pioneering 3D rendering
- Served as CTO of Oculus VR, advancing virtual reality
- Founded Keen Technologies to pursue AGI
- Partnered with Richard Sutton on reinforcement learning approaches to AGI