Opinion
Luckey: Magic Leap botched launches and over-promised on display technology
“They basically botched their hardware launch, they botched their software launch, but most importantly, they over-promised. I think Magic Leap was at its best when they were non-specifically hyping themselves up, but then when they started to say, we're buildi…”
Opinion
Luckey: Optically transparent AR is a dead end in the long run
“Optically transparent AR is a path that has been so widely explored, I think it's a dead end, it's a great hack in the near term, because it gives you Real world fidelity in terms of focus and convergence and resolution of the real world. But I think it's a de…”
What-if
Luckey: Stronger US deterrence would have changed Ukraine, Taiwan, and Hong Kong
“And if we had been in a better place, not just the United States, but our partners, I think that things would, I think things would be very different in Ukraine. They would be very different in Taiwan. Maybe they'd even be different in Hong Kong.”
Opinion
Luckey: Humanity should actively biologically uplift other animal species into sentience
“Are we playing God with AI? Maybe a little bit but I actually wish we were playing God more. I wish we were just straight up, you know, hauling other species up into sentience. Let's, like, humans have done pretty well. Let's bring some other guys along for th…”
Opinion
Luckey: Meta's Horizon Worlds is 'absolutely terrible'
“Horizon Horizon Worlds is, is absolutely terrible. It's that, that is, that, that's not the metaverse that anyone wants.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Luckey: Smaller startups will figure out the metaverse before Big Tech
“Honestly, my bet is that a smaller player will Figure it out first, just because there's so many different approaches and it's very hard as a large company to pick one approach that will out-compete every one of the myriad of other approaches that are all comi…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Luckey: Current VR hardware will not achieve mainstream everyday adoption
“None of those things are going to be ready for quite some time, and the hardware that we have today, it's good for enthusiasts, but the hardware we have today is not going to be something that the majority of people want to use, certainly not as part of their …”
What-if
Luckey: Most Americans would abandon a free Quest 2 after a week
“Even if it was literally free, if Oculus Quest II was literally free today, you gave it to every American, I think the majority of people would not continue to use it every day after the first week or so.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Luckey: Apple will make VR cool through celebrity adoption
“I think Apple's gonna have a really big impact on that, because in addition to the hardware advancements that they've been making, I think they're going to make VR headsets cool simply by making sure that all the rich and famous people are wearing one.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Luckey: VR will be visually indistinguishable from reality within 5-10 years
“There's actually a pretty clear path to VR that is visually indistinguishable from reality in the next five to seven years, certainly not more than 10.”
Prediction Open · timeframe Apr 2028
Luckey: Photorealistic VR will rely on Micro-LEDs and advanced optics
“People, people often seem to think that there's got to be this big breakthrough, like that we're going to be scanning lasers. I'm like, no, I think actually things are going to look pretty similar. You're going to have micro LED displays that are very high bri…”
Opinion
Luckey: Meta's $13B spend only works if you believe in the metaverse
“They can't say it's only for gamers or it's specifically for these niche enterprise use cases and then spend thirteen billion dollars because it just doesn't spreadsheet out. It only works as an investment if you believe in this long-term vision of the metaver…”
What-if
Luckey: Meta might have fared better using Magic Leap's closed mystique approach
“I sometimes wonder if that might have been the better play on this metaverse front, to basically tell the public, hey, we're investing in this, and it's going to be amazing, to build some internal prototypes that don't, where you don't have to spend all this m…”
Insight
Luckey: Reprojected AR is the only path to superhuman vision
“The Apple headset, it's a, you know, it's a re-projected virtual, it's a re-projected augmented reality headset, which by the way, I believe is the future. Without a doubt, it is the only path to better than human vision.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Luckey: Apple headset software will take two years, but hardware will impress
“The Apple one, it, because so few people have them, it, I think it's going to take a year or two before people feel like the software side is really there. But the hardware is gonna impress people.”
Disclosure
Luckey says unreleased Apple headset prototype hardware is going to be great
“I've used things that are, I've used things that are not quite what it will be, but are better than what it was. And so you know, I can't say I've used the final device, but based on everything that I have seen, it's going to be great.”
What-if
Luckey: Microsoft, Apple, or Google would have ruined or canceled Oculus
“VR wasn't on their roadmap, certainly not their ten-year or, you know, long-term roadmap. It was just an interesting thing going on. So even if they would have bought us, it would have been to, you know, use us as a gimmick to sell game consoles, or as an inte…”
Insight
Luckey: Cost-plus contracts incentivize defense contractors to maximize costs and delays
“Most companies in this space are defense contractors. They work on cost plus contracts where they get paid for their time and their materials, and then a fixed percentage of profit up to on top of that. Usually a very small percentage of profit. And so the onl…”
Disclosure
Luckey: Anduril was founded so moral actors have superior weapons
“We started this company because we think that there is no moral high ground in leaving the most moral people with the least effective weapons, because at the end of the day, wars start when bad players believe that they, when they incorrectly assess the risk.”
Insight
Luckey: Overwhelming military superiority is the best deterrent to war
“The best way to deter warfare is to have such an overwhelming advantage that there's no question as to the outcome.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Luckey: US will avoid large-scale ground deployments in our lifetimes
“I think the big change you're going to see going forward, and this has really been because of Ukraine, the, I think the United States within our lifetimes is not going to get boots on the ground in a big way in major conflicts.”
Insight
Luckey: Adversaries fear VTOL weapons, not runway-dependent drones
“They're not that afraid of, let's say, you know, Things like long range surveillance drones that have to operate off of 5000 foot runways, because they know they're gonna bomb those runways in the first day or the first week of the war. They're, what they're t…”
Assertion Contradicted
Luckey: Anduril's submarines are the world's longest-range electric vehicles
“And I think actually our submarines are the longest range electric vehicles of any kind anywhere in the world.”
Prediction Open · timeframe Apr 2028
Luckey: US military will not remove humans from AI kill decisions
“We have a strong, actually, system for accountability, where it's always a person, as they say, on the loop. A person is always making that decision to kill. I don't think that we're going to get away from that anytime soon.”
Palmer Luckey