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Meta's new A.I. superstars are chafing against the rest of the company

nytimes.com

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Re: Meta's new A.I. superstars are chafing against the rest of the company

#101

Post by retsibsi »

this_user wrote: post #88
Eisenstein wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They seem smart, but they are not; they are really just good at appearing to be smart. Can you give an example of the difference between these two things?

Imagine an actor who is playing a character speaking a language that they actor does not speak. Due to a lack of time, the actor decides against actually learning the language and instead opts to just memorise and train how to speak their lines without actually understanding the content. Let's assume they are doing a pretty convincing job too. Now, the audience watching these scenes may think that the actor is actual…

> Imagine an actor who is playing a character speaking a language that they actor does not speak. Due to a lack of time, the actor decides against actually learning the language and instead opts to just memorise and train how to speak their lines without actually understanding the content.

Now imagine that, during the interval, you approach the actor backstage and initiate a conversation in that language. His responses are always grammatical, always relevant to what you said modulo ambiguity, largely coherent, and accurate more often than not. You'll quickly realise that 'actor who merely memorized lines in a language he doesn't speak' does not describe this person.

Re: Meta's new A.I. superstars are chafing against the rest of the company

#102

Post by irjustin »

this_user wrote: post #74
dazamarquez wrote: post #47

Is Wang even able to achieve superintelligence? Is anyone? I'm unable to make sense of Wang's compensation package. What actual, practical skills does he bring to the table? Is this all a stunt to drive Meta's stock value?

The way it sounds, Zuckerberg believes that they can, or at the very least has people around him telling him that they can. But Zuckerberg also though that the Metaverse would be thing. LeCun obviously thinks otherwise and believes that LLMs are a dead-end, and he might be right. The trouble with LLMs is that most people don't really understand how they work. They seem smart, but they are not; they are really just go…

> They seem smart, but they are not; they are really just good at appearing to be smart

There are too many different ways to measure intelligence.

Speed, matching, discovery, memory, etc.

We can combine those levers infinitely create/justify "smart". Are they dumb? Absolutely, but are they smart? Very much so. You can be both at the same time.

Maybe you meant genius? Because that standard is quite high and there's no way they're genius today.

Re: Meta's new A.I. superstars are chafing against the rest of the company

#103

Post by heavyset_go »

Eisenstein wrote: post #77
this_user wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way it sounds, Zuckerberg believes that they can, or at the very least has people around him telling him that they can. But Zuckerberg also though that the Metaverse would be thing. LeCun obviously thinks otherwise and believes that LLMs are a dead-end, and he might be right. The trouble with LLMs is that most people don't really understand how they work. They seem smart, but they are not; they are really just go…

> They seem smart, but they are not; they are really just good at appearing to be smart. Can you give an example of the difference between these two things?

Wisdom vs knowledge, where the word "knowledge" is doing a lot of work. LLMs don't "know" anything, they predict the next token that has the aesthetics of a response the prompter wants.

Re: Meta's new A.I. superstars are chafing against the rest of the company

#104

Post by dagmx »

KaiserPro wrote: post #34

As someone who's startup got bought out by facebook, many years ago, its not surprising to read. The politics surrounding zuck is wild. Cox left then came back, mainly because hes not actually that good, and has terrible judgement when it comes to features and how to shape effective teams (just throw people at it, features should be purely metric based, or a straight copy of competitors products. There is no cohesive…

It’s both sad and believable when I hear that Boz is the most sane of them all.

Boz is such a grifter in his online content. He naturally weasel words every little point and while I have no doubt he’s smart, I don’t think I could trust him to provide an honest opinion publicly.

My friends at meta tend to not hold him in the highest esteem but echo largely what you said about the politics and his standing amongst them.

Re: Meta's new A.I. superstars are chafing against the rest of the company

#105

Post by octaane »

I feel like many of the comments are focused on the trees and not on the forest. The new head of Facebook AI is 28 years old? That's not OK, that's too young. Too inexperienced and not worldwise enough by a long shot. No shit they're having problems. Can you imagine being a facebook lifer, or one of the LLM pros they've bribed/hired over to the company, to be bossed around by someone with very little life experience? No shit it isn't going well.

Re: Meta's new A.I. superstars are chafing against the rest of the company

#106

Post by rhines »

WhyOhWhyQ wrote: post #80
setgree wrote: post #49

I'm as ready to hate on Meta as anyone but this article is a bit of a nothingburger. So there are disagreements about resource allocation among staff. That's normal and healthy. The CEO's job is to resolve those disagreements and it sounds like Zuck is doing it. The suggestion to train Meta's products on Instagram and Facebook data was perfectly reasonable from the POV of the needs of Cox's teams. You'd want your ski…

Can somebody explain to me how giving a 28 year old kid 250 million (or was it 1 billion) to run your AI lab is a good idea? Or is it actually a dumb idea? I think it is a dumb idea, but maybe somebody can make it make sense.

Well Wang used to live with Altman. What value that actually provides, I don't know. But it seems to be why he's worth this much.

Re: Meta's new A.I. superstars are chafing against the rest of the company

#107

Post by tom_ »

Mistletoe wrote: post #76
this_user wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way it sounds, Zuckerberg believes that they can, or at the very least has people around him telling him that they can. But Zuckerberg also though that the Metaverse would be thing. LeCun obviously thinks otherwise and believes that LLMs are a dead-end, and he might be right. The trouble with LLMs is that most people don't really understand how they work. They seem smart, but they are not; they are really just go…

What are the differences between a person that is smart and an LLM that seems smart but isn't?

The LLM is not a person.

Re: Meta's new A.I. superstars are chafing against the rest of the company

#108

Post by mlmonkey »

this_user wrote: post #88
Eisenstein wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They seem smart, but they are not; they are really just good at appearing to be smart. Can you give an example of the difference between these two things?

Imagine an actor who is playing a character speaking a language that they actor does not speak. Due to a lack of time, the actor decides against actually learning the language and instead opts to just memorise and train how to speak their lines without actually understanding the content. Let's assume they are doing a pretty convincing job too. Now, the audience watching these scenes may think that the actor is actual…

You are describing Searle's "Chinese Room argument"[1] to some extent.

It's been discussed a lot recently, but anyone who has interacted with LLMs at a deeper level will tell you that there is something there; not sure if you'd call it "intelligence" or what. There is plenty of evidence to the contrary too. I guess this is a long-winded way of saying "we don't really know what's going on"...

[1] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/chinese-room/

Re: Meta's new A.I. superstars are chafing against the rest of the company

#109

Post by antod »

nl wrote: post #89
this_user wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way it sounds, Zuckerberg believes that they can, or at the very least has people around him telling him that they can. But Zuckerberg also though that the Metaverse would be thing. LeCun obviously thinks otherwise and believes that LLMs are a dead-end, and he might be right. The trouble with LLMs is that most people don't really understand how they work. They seem smart, but they are not; they are really just go…

Humans aren't smart, they are really just good at appearing to be smart. Prove me wrong.

You'll just claim we only "appeared" to prove you wrong ;)

Re: Meta's new A.I. superstars are chafing against the rest of the company

#110

Post by sokoloff »

milowata wrote: post #82
this_user wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way it sounds, Zuckerberg believes that they can, or at the very least has people around him telling him that they can. But Zuckerberg also though that the Metaverse would be thing. LeCun obviously thinks otherwise and believes that LLMs are a dead-end, and he might be right. The trouble with LLMs is that most people don't really understand how they work. They seem smart, but they are not; they are really just go…

Wang is a networking machine and has connected with everyone in the industry. Likely was brought in as a recruiting leader. Mark being Mark, though, doesn’t understand the value of vision and figured getting big names in the same room was better than actually having a plan.

Your last sentence suggests that he willingly failed to take the choice to create a vision and a plan.

If, for whatever reason, you don't have a vision and a plan, hiring big names to help kickstart that process seems like a way better next step than "do nothing".

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