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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'

#381

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…

If you are genuine in your questions, I will give them a shot.

AGI applied to the inputs (or supply chain) of what is needed for inference (power, DC space, chips, network equipment, etc) will dramatically reduced costs of inference. Most of the costs of stuff today are driven by the scarcity of "smart people's time". The raw resources of material needed are dirt cheap (cheaper than water). Transforming raw resources into useful high tech is a function of applied intelligence. Replace the human intelligence with machine intelligence, and costs will keep dropping (faster than the curve they are already on). Economic history has already shown this effect to be true; as we develop better tools to assist human productivity, the unit cost per piece of tech drops dramatically (moore's law is just one example, everything that tech touches experiences this effect).

If you look at almost any universal problem with the human condition, one important bottleneck to improving it is intelligence (or "smart people's time").

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

#382
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why do you say it is garbage ? I watched some of its videos on YT and it looks interesting. I can't judge if it's good or really good, but that didn't sound like garbage at all.

does any of it work?

I guess that's why he's raising capital

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

#383

Most of the folks on this topic are focused on Meta and Yann’s departure. But, I’m seeing something different. This is the weirdest technology market that I’ve seen. Researchers are getting rewarded with VC money to try what remains a science experiment. That used to be a bad word and now that gets rewarded with billions of dollars in valuation.

Is it like VCs throwing money at a young Wozniak while eschewing Jobs?

That either gives the AI tech more legitimacy in my mind … or a sign we've not arrived yet.

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

#384

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.

Google Deepmind is the closest lab to that idea because Google is the only entity that is big enough to get close to the scale of AT&T. I was skeptical that the Deepmind and Google Brain merge would be successful but it seems to have worked surprisingly well. They are killing it with LLMs and image editing models. They are also backing the fastest growing cloud business in the world and collecting Nobel prizes along the way.

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

#385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 com…

So every company that doesn't turn any profits is actually Amazon in disguise?

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

#386

Most of the folks on this topic are focused on Meta and Yann’s departure. But, I’m seeing something different. This is the weirdest technology market that I’ve seen. Researchers are getting rewarded with VC money to try what remains a science experiment. That used to be a bad word and now that gets rewarded with billions of dollars in valuation.

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…

If Claude Code is Anthropic’s main focus why are they not responding to some of the most commented issues on their GitHub? https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/3648 has people begging for feedback and saying they’re moving to OpenAI, has been open since July and there are similar issues with 100+ comments.

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

#388

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.

https://www.startuphub.ai/ai-news/ai-research/2025/sam-altma...

Like the new spin out Episteme from OpenAI?

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

#389

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.

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

#390

Working under LeCun but outside of Zuckerberg's sphere of influence sure sounds like a dream job.

Really? From where I'm standing LeCun is a pompous researcher who had early success in his career, and has been capitalizing on that ever since. Have you read any of his papers from the last 20 years? 90% of his citations are to his own previous papers. From there, he missed the boat on LLMs and is now pretending everyone else is wrong so that he can feel better about it.

He comes off like the quintessential grey haired ego maniac. Inflexible old minds coupled with decades of self assurance that they are correct.

I cannot remember the quote, but it's something to the effect of "Listen closely to grey haired men when they talk about what is possible, and never listen when they talk about what is impossible."

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