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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'

#241

Post by rhubarbtree »

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.

Well, AGI could accelerate scientific and medical discovery, saving lives and impacting billions of people positively.

The potential downside is admittedly severe.

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

#242

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

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…

Meta had a two prong AI approach - product-focused group working on LLMs, and blue-sky research (FAIR) working on alternate approaches, such as LeCun's JEPA.

It seems they've given up on the research and are now doubling down on LLMs.

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

#243

Post by ozgrakkurt »

killerstorm wrote: post #170
tonii141 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a) Still true: vanilla LLMs can’t do math, they pattern-match unless you bolt on tools. b) Still true: next-token prediction isn’t planning. c) Still true: error accumulation is mitigated, not eliminated. Long-context quality still relies on retrieval, checks, and verifiers. Yann’s claims were about LLMs as LLMs. With tooling, you can work around limits, but the core point stands.

My man, math is pattern matching, not magic. So is logic. And computation. Please learn the basics before you discuss what LLMs can and can't do.

I'm no expert on math but "math is pattern matching" really sounds wrong.

Maybe programming is mostly pattern matching but modern math is built on theory and proofs right?

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

#244

Post by ACCount37 »

ripe wrote: post #218
ACCount37 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LLMs get results, yes. They are getting adopted, and they are making money. Frontier models are all profitable . Inference is sold with a damn good margin, and the amounts of inference AI companies sell keeps rising. This necessitates putting more and more money into infrastructure. AI R&D is extremely expensive too, and this necessitates even more spending. A mistake I see people make over and over again is keeping…

> Frontier models are all profitable. This is an extraordinary claim and needs extraordinary proof. LLMs are raising lots of investor money, but that's a completely different thing from being profitable.

You don't even need insider info - it lines up with external estimates.

We have estimates that range from 30% to 70% gross margin on API LLM inference prices at major labs, 50% middle road. 10% to 80% gross margin on user-facing subscription services, error bars inflated massively. We also have many reports that inference compute has come to outmatch training run compute for frontier models by a factor of x10 or more over the lifetime of a model.

The only source of uncertainty is: how much inference do the free tier users consume? Which is something that the AI companies themselves control: they are in charge of which models they make available to the free users, and what the exact usage caps for free users are.

Adding that up? Frontier models are profitable.

This goes against the popular opinion, which is where the disbelief is coming from.

Note that I'm talking LLMs rather than things like image or video generation models, which may have vastly different economics.

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

#245

Post by rhubarbtree »

yanhangyhy wrote: post #61
lmm wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wang was born into a family whose parents got Chinese government scholarships to study abroad but secretly stayed in the US, and then the guy turns super anti-China. All I'm hearing is he's a smart guy from a smart family?

he is very smart. but Mark is not. Ever since Wang joined Meta, way too many big-name AI scientists have bounced because of him. US AI companies have at least half their researchers being Chinese, and now they've stuck this ultimate anti-China hardliner in charge—I just don't get what the hell Meta's up to(And even a lot of times, it ends up affecting non-Chinese scientists too.). Being anti-China? Fine, whatever, bu…

How do you know Mark isn’t smart? He’s built a hugely successful business. I don’t like his business, I think it has been disastrous for humanity, but that doesn’t make him stupid.

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

#246

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

sigbottle wrote: post #202
blutoot wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are the types that want academic freedom in a cut-throat industry setup and conversely never fit into academia because their profiles and growth ambitions far exceed what an academic research lab can afford (barring some marquee names). It's an unfortunate paradox.

Maybe it's time for Bell Labs 2? I guess everyone is racing towards AGI in a few years or whatever so it's kind of impossible to cultivate that environment.

It seems DeepMind is the closest thing to a well funded blue-sky AI research group, even despite the merger with Google Brain and now more of a product focus.

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

#247

Post by ekjhgkejhgk »

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.

> slopware

Damn did you just invent that? That's really catchy.

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

#248

Post by re-thc »

littlestymaar wrote: post #239
re-thc wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 2 Trillion dollars in Capex to get code generators with hallucinations You assume that's the only use of it. And are people not using these code generators? Is this an issue with a lost generation that forgot what Capex is? We've moved from Capex to Opex and now the notion is lost, is it? You can hire an army of software developers but can't build hardware. Is it better when everyone buys DeepSeek or a non-US versi…

Deepseek somehow didn't need $2T to happen.

Because you know how much they spent.

And that $2T you're referring to includes infrastructure like energy, data centers, servers and many things. DeepSeek rents from others. Someone is paying.

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

#249

Post by rhubarbtree »

_giorgio_ wrote: post #77

[flagged]

I think there’s something to be said for keeping up in the LLM space even if you don’t think it’s the path to AGI.

Skills may transfer to other research areas, lessons may be learnt, closing the feedback loop with usage provides more data and opportunities for learning. It also creates a culture where bullshit isn’t possible, as the thing has to actually work. Academic research often ends up serving no one but the researchers, because there is little or no incentive to produce real knowledge.

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

#250

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

throwaw12 wrote: post #72
xuancanh wrote: post #65

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.

LeCun was always part of FAIR, doing research, not part of the LLM/product group, who reported to someone else.
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