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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'

#331

Post by rchaud »

NiloCK wrote: post #266
consumer451 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Trying to engage in good faith here but I don't really get this. You're pretending to have never encountered positive visions of technologically advanced futures. Cure all disease? Stop aging? End material scarcity? It's completely fair to expect that these are all twisted monkey's paw scenarios that turn out dystopian, but being unable to understand any positive motivations for the creation of AGI seems a bit far fe…

That the development of this technology is in the hands of a few people that don't use even a fraction of their staggering wealth to address these challenges now, tells me that they aren't interested in using AI to solve them later.

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

#332

Post by tinco »

anthonybsd wrote: post #308
tinco wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Facebook can't have their top researcher work on risky things when there's surefire paths to success still available. How did you determine that "surefire paths to success still available"? Most academics agree that LLMs (or LLMs alone) are not going to lead us to AGI. How are you so certain?

I don't believe we need more academic research to achieve AGI. The sort of applications that are solving the recent AGI challenges are just severely resource constrained AGI. The only difference between those systems and human intelligence are resources and incentives.

Not that I believe AGI is the measure of success, there's probably much more efficient ways to achieve company goals than simulating humans.

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

#334

Post by zwnow »

qwertox wrote: post #321
zwnow wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is responsibility if you can afford good lawyers?

So you mean that Mark Zuckerberg has always been a peer to YLC in terms of responsibility towards Meta's shareholders?

I mean any entity that can afford good lawyers seems to not care about responsibility in the slightest.

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

#335

Post by aryonoco »

Hendrikto wrote: post #197
miohtama wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OpenAI and Anthropic are making north of 4B/year revenue so some companies have figured out the money making part. ChatGPT has some 800M users according to some calculations. Whether it's enough money today, enough money tomorrow, is of course a question but there is a lot of money. Users would not use them in a scale if they do not solve their problems.

It’s easy to make 1 billion by spending 10 billion. That’s not “making money” though, it is lighting it on fire.

People used to say this about Amazon all the time. Remember how Amazon basically didn’t turn any real profits for 2 decades? The joke was that Amazon was a charitable organisation being funded by Wall Street for the benefit of human kind.

That didn’t last. People in the know knew that once you have a billion users and insane revenue and market power and have basically bought or driven out of business most of your competitors (Diapers.com, Jet.com, etc) you can eventually slow down your physical expansion, tighten the screws on your suppliers, increase efficiencies, and start printing money.

The VCs who are funding these companies are hoping that they have found the next Amazon. Many will probably go out of business, but some might join the ranks of trillion dollar companies.

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

#336

Post by andsoitis »

brandall10 wrote: post #301
DebtDeflation wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's been true for the last year or two, but it feels like we're at an inflection point. All of the announcements from OpenAI for the last couple of months have been product focused - Instant Checkout, AgentKit, etc. Anthropic seems 100% focused on Claude Code. We're not hearing as much about AGI/Superintelligence (thank goodness) as we were earlier this year, in fact the big labs aren't even talking much about the…

Meta hiring researchers en masse at $100m+ pay packages is fairly new, as of this summer. I don't know if that's indicative of the market as a whole though. Zuck just seems really gutted they fell behind with Llama 4.

> Meta hiring researchers en masse at $100m+ pay packages is fairly new, as of this summer.

En masse? Wasn't it just a couple of outliers?

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

#337

Post by staticman2 »

Obscurity4340 wrote: post #280
gtech1 wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds crazy. We don't even know/can't define what human intelligence is or how it works , but we're trying to replicate it with AGI ?

If an LLM can pass a bar exam, isn't that at least a decent proof of concept or working model?

I don't think the bar exam is scientifically designed to measure intelligence so that was an odd example. Citing the bar exam is like saying it passes the "Game of thrones trivia" exam so it must be intelligent.

As for IQ tests and the like, to the extent they are "scientific" they are designed based on empirical observations of humans. It is not designed to measure the intelligence of a statistical system containing a compressed version of the internet.

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

#338

Post by nxor »

StilesCrisis wrote: post #262
sharmajai wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Product companies with deprioritized R&D wings are the first ones to die.

None of Meta's revenue has anything to do with AI at all. (Other than GenAI slop in old people's feeds.) Meta is in the strange position of investing very heavily in multiple fields where they have no successful product: VR, hardware devices, and now AI. Ad revenue funds it all.

Underrated comment

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

#339

Post by afthonos »

skeeter2020 wrote: post #312
afthonos wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man, why did no one tell the people who invented bronze that they weren’t allowed to do it until they had a correct definition for metals and understood how they worked? I guess the person saying something can’t be done should stay out of the way of the people doing it.

>> I guess the person saying something can’t be done should stay out of the way of the people doing it. I'll happily step out of the way once someone simply tells me what it is you're trying to accomplish. Until you can actually define it, you can't do "it".

The big tech companies are trying to make machines that replace all human labor. They call it artificial intelligence. Feel free to argue about definitions.

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

#340

Post by meindnoch »

gtech1 wrote: post #268
sigbottle wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This sounds crazy. We don't even know/can't define what human intelligence is or how it works , but we're trying to replicate it with AGI ?

Hi there! :) Just wanted to gently flag that one of the terms (beginning with the letter "r") in your comment isn't really aligned with the kind of inclusive language we try to encourage across the community. Totally understand it was likely unintentional - happens to all of us! Going forward, it'd be great to keep things phrased in a way that ensures everyone feels welcome and respected. Thanks so much for taking the time to share your thoughts here!
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