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.
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'
#92Zuck is definitely an idiot and MSL is an expensive joke, but LeCun hasn’t been relevant in a decade at this point. No doubt his pitch deck will be the same garbage slides he’s been peddling in every talk since the 2010’s.
Re: Yann LeCun to depart Meta and launch AI startup focused on 'world models'
#93Making 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'
#94Making 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.
I won't be surprised if Musk hires him. But I hear LeCun hates the guts of Musk.
If LeCun can't cough up some research that's directly applicable to Grok or Optimus, Musk wouldn't want him.
Re: Yann LeCun to depart Meta and launch AI startup focused on 'world models'
#95Change my mind, Facebook was never invented by Zuck's genius All he's been responsible for is making it worse
Almost every company in Facebook's position in 2005 would have disappeared into irrelevance by now. Somehow it's one of the most valuable businesses in the world instead. I don't know him, but, if not him, who else would be responsible for that?
Re: Yann LeCun to depart Meta and launch AI startup focused on 'world models'
#96Making 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…
Re: Yann LeCun to depart Meta and launch AI startup focused on 'world models'
#97Good. The world model is absolutely the right play in my opinion. AI Agents like LLMs make great use of pre-computed information. Providing a comprehensive but efficient world model (one where more detail is available wherever one is paying more attention given a specific task) will definitely eke out new autonomous agents. Swarms of these, acting in concert or with some hive mind, could be how we get to AGI. I wish…
Can you explain this “world model” concept to me? How do you actually interface with a model like this?
Re: Yann LeCun to depart Meta and launch AI startup focused on 'world models'
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
There is someone else at Facebook who's pet projects do not get results...
Re: Yann LeCun to depart Meta and launch AI startup focused on 'world models'
#99Earlier 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.
If you follow LeCun on social media, you can see that the way FAIR’s results are assessed is very narrow-minded and still follows the academic mindset. He mentioned that his research is evaluated by: "Research evaluation is a difficult task because the product impact may occur years (sometimes decades) after the work. For that reason, evaluation must often rely on the collective opinion of the research community through proxies such as publications, citations, invited talks, awards, etc."
But as an industry researcher, he should know how his research fits with the company vision and be able to assess that easily. If the company's vision is to be the leader in AI, then as of now, he seems to have failed that objective, even though he has been at Meta for more than 10 years.
Re: Yann LeCun to depart Meta and launch AI startup focused on 'world models'
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
> it is exactly a researcher's purpose to do the risky things that may not work Maybe at university, but not at a trillion dollar company. That job as chief scientist is leading risky things that will work to please the shareholders.
They knew what Yann LeCun was when they hired him. If anything, those brilliant academics who have done what they're told and loyally pursued corporate objectives the way the corporation wanted (e.g. Karpathy when he was at Tesla) haven't had great success either.
Yes but he was hired in the ZIRP era where all SV companies were hiring every opinionated academic and giving them free reign and unlimited money to burn in the hopes that maybe they'll create the next big thing for them eventually.
These are very different economic times right now, after the FED infinite money glitch has been patched out, so now people do need to adjust to them and start actually making some products of value for their seven figure costs to their employers, or end up being shown the door.