Skip to main content

John Carmack moves to "consulting CTO" role at Oculus

Industry veteran will focus on AI, with Oculus now taking a "modest slice" of his time

John Carmack has effectively stepped down as chief technology officer of Oculus VR, moving into a consulting role as he focuses his mind on artificial intelligence.

Carmack, who joined Oculus in August 2013, announced his decision to move into a "consulting CTO" role on Facebook. The new position will allow him "a voice in the development work," but it will occupy "a modest slice" of his time.

"When I think back over everything I have done across games, aerospace, and VR, I have always felt that I had at least a vague 'line of sight' to the solutions, even if they were unconventional or unproven," Carmack said.

"I have sometimes wondered how I would fare with a problem where the solution really isn't in sight. I decided that I should give it a try before I get too old. I'm going to work on artificial general intelligence."

Carmack declared that he has a "non-negligible chance of making a difference there," but in the near term he will be working on it from his home, in partnership with his son -- what he described as "Victorian Gentleman Scientist style."

This isn't the first high-profile personnel change at Oculus in recent times. In August, Nate Mitchell departed the company, the last of the original founders to leave the organisation.

Read this next

Matthew Handrahan avatar
Matthew Handrahan joined GamesIndustry in 2011, bringing long-form feature-writing experience to the team as well as a deep understanding of the video game development business. He previously spent more than five years at award-winning magazine gamesTM.
Related topics