The secret behind Meta’s Muse

Substack · Watch/Read · (gathered 2026-09-23)

• Gary Marcus argues that Meta’s new AI agent, Muse, is merely a rehash of their failed 2015 “Project M,” asserting that “the new secret is the old secret” and that Meta hasn’t learned from past mistakes.
• He details how the original “Project M” by Facebook in 2015 failed to scale, was expensive, and famously relied on human operators (likened to “Mechanical Turk”) for over 70% of requests before its cancellation in 2018.
• Marcus expresses strong skepticism about Muse’s prospects, highlighting Zuckerberg’s “tone-deaf” approach to privacy and suggesting a pattern of repeating past errors despite claims of “AI-powered experiences” and “privacy-enhancing technologies.”