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Yann LeCun to depart Meta and launch AI startup focused on 'world models'

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Re: Yann LeCun to depart Meta and launch AI startup focused on 'world models'

#71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LeCun always said that LLMs do not lead to AGI.

He also said other things about LLMs that turned out to be either wrong or easily bypassed with some glue. While I understand where he comes from, and that his stance is pure research-y theory driven, at the end of the day his positions were wrong. Previously, he very publicly and strongly said: a) LLMs can't do math. They trick us in poetry but that's subjective. They can't do objective math. b) they can't plan c) b…

That's true but I also think despite being wrong about the capabilities of LLMs, LeCun has been right in that variations of LLMs are not an appropriate target for long term research that aims to significantly advance AI. Especially at the level of Meta.

I think transformers have been proven to be general purpose, but that doesn't mean that we can't use new fundamental approaches.

To me it's obvious that researchers are acting like sheep as they always do. He's trying to come up with a real innovation.

LeCun has seen how new paradigms have taken over. Variations of LLMs are not the type of new paradigm that serious researches should be aiming for.

I wonder if there can be a unification of spatial-temporal representations and language. I am guessing diffusion video generators already achieve this in some way. But I wonder if new techniques can improve the efficiency and capabilities.

I assume the Nested Learning stuff is pretty relevant.

Although I've never totally grokked transformers and LLMs, I always felt that MoE was the right direction and besides having a strong mapping or unified view of spatial and language info, there also should somehow be the capability of representing information in a non-sequential way. We really use sequences because we can only speak or hear one sound at a time. Information in general isn't particularly sequential, so I doubt that's an ideal representation.

So I guess I am kind of variations of transformers myself to be honest.

But besides being able to convert between sequential discrete representations and less discrete non-sequential representations (maybe you have tokens but every token has a scalar attached), there should be lots of tokenizations, maybe for each expert. Then you have experts that specialize in combining and translating between different scalar-token tokenizations.

Like automatically clustering problems or world model artifacts or something and automatically encoding DSLs for each sub problem.

I wish I really understood machine learning.

Re: Yann LeCun to depart Meta and launch AI startup focused on 'world models'

#72

Making LeCun report to Wang was the most boneheaded move imaginable. But… I suppose Zuckerberg knows what he wants, which is AI slopware and not truly groundbreaking foundation models.

In industry research, someone in a chief position like LeCun should know how to balance long-term research with short-term projects. However, for whatever reason, he consistently shows hostility toward LLMs and engineering projects, even though Llama and PyTorch are two of the most influential projects from Meta AI. His attitude doesn’t really match what is expected from a Chief position at a product company like Fac…

I would pose a question differently, under his leadership did Meta achieve good outcome?

If the answer is yes, then better to keep him, because he has already proved himself and you can win in the long-term. With Meta's pockets, you can always create a new department specifically for short-term projects.

If the answer is no, then nothing to discuss here.

Re: Yann LeCun to depart Meta and launch AI startup focused on 'world models'

#73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In industry research, someone in a chief position like LeCun should know how to balance long-term research with short-term projects. However, for whatever reason, he consistently shows hostility toward LLMs and engineering projects, even though Llama and PyTorch are two of the most influential projects from Meta AI. His attitude doesn’t really match what is expected from a Chief position at a product company like Fac…

I would pose a question differently, under his leadership did Meta achieve good outcome? If the answer is yes, then better to keep him, because he has already proved himself and you can win in the long-term. With Meta's pockets, you can always create a new department specifically for short-term projects. If the answer is no, then nothing to discuss here.

I believe that the fact that Chinese models are beating the crap of of Llama means it's a huge no.

Re: Yann LeCun to depart Meta and launch AI startup focused on 'world models'

#74

Making LeCun report to Wang was the most boneheaded move imaginable. But… I suppose Zuckerberg knows what he wants, which is AI slopware and not truly groundbreaking foundation models.

That was obviously him getting sidelined. And it's easy to see why.

LLMs get results. None of the Yann LeCun's pet projects do. He had ample time to prove that his approach is promising, and he didn't.

Re: Yann LeCun to depart Meta and launch AI startup focused on 'world models'

#75

Making LeCun report to Wang was the most boneheaded move imaginable. But… I suppose Zuckerberg knows what he wants, which is AI slopware and not truly groundbreaking foundation models.

When I first saw their LLM integration on Facebook I thought the screenshot was fake and a joke

Re: Yann LeCun to depart Meta and launch AI startup focused on 'world models'

#76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah honestly I'm with the LLM people here If you think LLMs are not the future then you need to come with something better If you have a theoretical idea that's great, but take to at least GPT2 level first before writing off LLMs Theoretical people love coming up with "better ideas" that fall flat or have hidden gotchas when they get to practical implementation As Linus says, "talk is cheap, show me the code".

Well, we will see if Yann can.

[deleted]

Re: Yann LeCun to depart Meta and launch AI startup focused on 'world models'

#78
post #10
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He is also not very interested in LLMs, and that seems to be Zuck's top priority.

Yeah I think LeCun is underestimating the impact that LLM's and Diffusion models are going to have, even considering the huge impact they're already having. That's no problem as I'm sure whatever LeCun is working on is going to be amazing as well, but an enterprise like Facebook can't have their top researcher work on risky things when there's surefire paths to success still available.

> but an enterprise like Facebook can't have their top researcher work on risky things when there's surefire paths to success still available.

Bell Labs

Re: Yann LeCun to depart Meta and launch AI startup focused on 'world models'

#79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're at most in an "AI Autumn" right now. The real Winter is yet to come.

We have already been through winter.Ffor those of us old enough to remember, the OP was making a very clear statement.

Winter is a cyclical concept, just like all the other seasons. It will be no different here; the pendulum swings back and forth. The unknown factor is the length of the cycle.

Re: Yann LeCun to depart Meta and launch AI startup focused on 'world models'

#80

Making LeCun report to Wang was the most boneheaded move imaginable. But… I suppose Zuckerberg knows what he wants, which is AI slopware and not truly groundbreaking foundation models.

Zuckerberg knows what he wants but he rarely knows how to get it. That's been his problem all along. Unlike others he isn't scared to throw ridiculous amounts of money at a problem though and buy companies who do things he can't get done himself.
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