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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'

#121

Post by rob_c »

xuancanh wrote: post #65
sebmellen wrote: post #2

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…

tbf, transformers from more of a developmental perspective are hugely wasteful. they're long-range stable sure, but the whole training process requires so much power/data compared to even slightly simpler model designs I can see why people are drawn to alternative complex model designs down-playing the reliance on pure attention.

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

#122

Post by yawnxyz »

nsonha wrote: post #117
xuancanh wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meta did exactly that, kept him but reduced his scope. Did the broader research community benefit from his research? Absolutely. But did Meta achieve a good outcome? Probably not. 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…

Also he always sounds like "I know this will not work". Dude are you a researcher? You're supposed to experiment and follow the results. That's what separates you from oracles and freaking philosophers or whatever.

he probably predicted the asymptote everyone is approaching right now

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

#123

Post by rob_c »

amelius wrote: post #101
rw2 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Why? The Chinese are very capable. Most DL papers have at least one Chinese name on it. That doesn't mean they are Chinese but it's telling.

most papers are also written in the same language, what's your point?

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

#124

Post by Arkhaine_kupo »

consumer451 wrote: post #41
tedsanders wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm working toward AGI. I hope AGI can be used to automate work and make life easier for people.

Who’s gonna pay for that inference? It’s going to take money, what if your AGI has some tax policy ideas that are different from the inference owners? Why would they let that AGI out into the wild? Let’s say you create AGI. How long will it take for society to recover? How long will it take for people of a certain tax ideology to finally say oh OK, UBI maybe? The last part is my main question. How long do you think i…

I am not someone working on AGI but I think a lot of people work backwards from the expected outcome.

Expected outcome is usually something like a Post-Scarcity society, this is a society where basic needs are all covered.

If we could all live in a future with a free house and a robot that does our chores and food is never scarce we should works towards that, they believe.

The intermiddiete steps aren't thought out, in the same way that for example the communist manifesto does little to explain the transition from capitalism to communism. It simply says there will be the need for things like forcing the bourgiese to join the common workers and there will be a transition phase but no clear steps between either system.

Similarly many AGI proponents think in terms of "wouldnt it be cool if there was an AI that did all the bits of life we dont like doing", without systemic analysis that many people do those bits because they need money to eat for example.

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

#125

Post by TheAceOfHearts »

consumer451 wrote: post #24
killerstorm wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LeCun always said that LLMs do not lead to AGI.

Can anyone explain to me the non-$$ logic for one working towards AGI, aside from misanthropy? The only other thing I can imagine is not very charitable: intellectual greed. It can't just be that, can it? I genuinely don't understand. I would love to be educated.

I'm a true believer in AGI being able to become a force for immense good if deployed carefully by responsible parties.

Currently one of the key issues with a lot of fields is that they operate as independent / largely isolated silos. If you could build a true AGI capable of achieving top-level mastery across multiple disciplines it would likely be able to integrate all that knowledge and make a lot of significant discoveries that would improve people's lives. Just exploring existing problem spaces with the full intellectual toolkit that humanity has developed is probably enough to make significant progress.

Our understanding of biology is still painfully primitive. To give a concrete example, I dream that someday it'll be possible to develop medical interventions that allow humans to regrow missing limbs and fix almost any health issue.

Have you ever lived with depression or any other psychiatric problem? I think if we could create medical interventions and environments that are conductive towards healing psychiatric problems, that would also be a massive quality of life improvement for huge numbers of people. Do you know how our current psychiatric interventions work? You try some drug, flip a coin to see if it does anything and wait 4 weeks to get the result. Then you keep iterating and hope that eventually the doctor finds some magical combination to make life barely tolerable.

I think the best path forward for improving humanity's understanding of biology, and ultimately medical science, is to go all-in on AGI-style technology.

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

#126

Post by trhway »

natch wrote: post #97
sebmellen wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain this “world model” concept to me? How do you actually interface with a model like this?

He is one of these people who think that humans have a direct experience of reality not mediated by as Alan Kay put it three pounds of oatmeal. So he thinks a language model can not be a world model. Despite our own contact with reality being mediated through a myriad of filters and fun house mirror distortions. Our vision transposes left and right and delivers images to our nerves upside down, for gawd’s sake. He im…

That way he may get a very good lizard. Getting Einstein though takes layers of abstraction.

My thinking is that such world models should be integrated with LLM like the lower levels of perception are integrated with higher brain function.

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

#127

Post by prodigycorp »

_giorgio_ wrote: post #77

[flagged]

I am in the "Yann is no longer the right person for the job" camp and I yet "LeCun failed to deliver anything that delivered real value to stockholders" is a wild thing to say. How do you read the list you compiled and say otherwise?

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

#128

Post by rat9988 »

UrineSqueegee wrote: post #108
amelius wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? The Chinese are very capable. Most DL papers have at least one Chinese name on it. That doesn't mean they are Chinese but it's telling.

is an american model chinese because chinese people were in the team?

What are these chinese labs made of?

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

#129

Post by joegibbs »

Right choice IMO. LLMs aren’t going to reach AGI by themselves because language is a thing by itself, very good at encoding concepts into compact representations but doesn’t necessarily have any relation to reality. A human being gets years of binocular visuals of real things, sound input, other various sensations, much less than what we’re training these models with. We think of language in terms of sounds and pictures rather than abstract language.

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

#130

Post by miohtama »

jack_tripper wrote: post #100
vintermann wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>They knew what Yann LeCun was when they hired him. 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 a…

Some employees even need to physically present at the office
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