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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'

#571

Post by baobabKoodaa »

fooker wrote: post #505
HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hadn't heard that, but he was heavily involved in a cancelled project called Galactica that was an LLM for scientific knowledge.

Yeah that stuff generated embarrassingly wrong scientific 'facts' and citations. That kind of hallucination is somewhat acceptable for something marketed as a chatbot, less so for an assistant helping you with scientific knowledge and research.

I thought it was weird at the time how much hate Galactica got for its hallucinations compared to hallucinations of competing models. I get your point and it partially explains things. But it's not a fully satisfying explanation.

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

#572

Post by jokethrowaway »

potatoproduct wrote: post #525
commandar wrote: post #517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anthropic, frankly, needs to in ways the other big names don't. It gets lost on people in techcentric fields because Claude's at the forefront of things we care about, but Anthropic is basically unknown among the wider populace. Last I'd looked a few months ago, Anthropic's brand awareness was in the middle single digits; OpenAI/ChatGPT was somewhere around 80% for comparison. MS/Copilot and Gemini were somewhere bet…

Anthropic feels like a one trick pony as most users dont need or want anthropic products. However, I speak with a small subset of our most experienced engineers and they all love Claude Sonnet 4.5. Who knows if this lead will last.

Claude is ChatGPT done right. It's just better under any metric.

Of course OpenAI has tons of money and can branch off in all kind of directions (image, video, n8n clone, now RAG as a service).

In the end I think they will all be good enough and both Anthropic and OpenAI lead will evaporate.

Google will be left to win because they already have all the customers with the GSuite and OpenAI will be incorporated at massive loss in Microsoft, which is already selling to all the Azure customers.

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

#573

Post by Grimblewald »

HDThoreaun wrote: post #512
Grimblewald wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LLM hostility was warrented. The overhype/downright charlartan nature of ai hype and marketing threatens another AI winter. It happened to cybernetics, it'll happen to us too. The finance folks will be fine, they'll move to the next big thing to overhype, it is the researchers who suffer the fall-out. I am considered anti LLM (transformers anyway) for this reason, i like the the architecture, it is cool amd rather ca…

Meta is in last place among the big tech companies making an AI push because of lecun’s llm hostility. Refusing to properly invest in the biggest product breakthrough this century was not even a little bit warranted. He had more than enough resources available to do the research he wanted and create a fantastic open source llm.

Meta has made some fantastic llm's publically avliable many of which continue to outperform all but the qwen series in real world applications.

LLMs cannot do any of the major claims made for them, so competing at the current frontier is a massive resource waste.

Right now a locally running 8b model with large context window (10k tokens+) beat google/openAI models easily on any task you like.

why would anyone then pay for something that is possible to run on consumer hardware with higher token/second throughput and better performance? What exactly have the billions invested given google/oai in return? Nothing more than an existensial crisis I'd say.

Companies aren't trying to force AI costs into their subscription models in dishonest ways because they've got a winning product.

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

#574

Post by astrange »

HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #567
astrange wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He seems stuck in the GOFAI development philosophy where they just decide humans have something called a "world model" because they said so, and then decide that if they just develop some random thing and call it a "world model" it'll create intelligence because it has the same name as the thing they made up. And of course it doesn't work. Humans don't have world models. There's no such thing as a world model!

I don't think the focus is really on world models, rather than on animal intelligence based around predicting the real world, but to predict it you need to model it in some sense.

IMO the issue is that animals can't have a specific "world model" system, because if you create a model ahead of time you will mostly waste energy because most of the model is not used.

And animals' main concern is energy conservation, so they must be doing something else.

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

#575

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

Legend2440 wrote: post #506
dauertewigkeit wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct me if I'm wrong but LeCun is focused on learning from video, whereas Fei-Fei Li is doing robotic simulations. Also I think Fei-Fei Li's approach is still using transformers and not buying into JEPA.

JEPA is not an alternative to transformers, it is built out of transformers.

JEPA is trying to learn real world regularities by predicting internal perceptual representations (using a transformer).

It seems a good direction to go in, but tbh he doesn't seem to have taken it very far, and it is the transformer doing all the heavy lifting.

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

#576

Post by [deleted] »

rhubarbtree wrote: post #241
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.

Well, AGI could accelerate scientific and medical discovery, saving lives and impacting billions of people positively. The potential downside is admittedly severe.

[deleted]

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

#577

Post by aatd86 »

williamDafoe wrote: post #549
aatd86 wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Used to be a Google X. Not sure at what scale it was. But if any state/central bank was clever they would subsidize this. That's a better trickle down strategy. Until we get to agi and all new discoveries are autonomously led by AI that is :p

Google X is a complete failure. Maybe they had fei-fei on staff for a short while but most of her work was done elsewhere.

Didn't the current LLMs stem from this...? Or it might be Google Brain instead. For Google X, there is Waymo? I know a lot of stuff didn't pan out. This is expected. These were 'moonshots'.

But the principle is there. I think that when a company sits on a load of cash, that's what they should do. Either that or become a kind of alternative investments allocator. These are risky bets. But they should be incentivized to take those risks. From a fiscal policy standpoint for instance. Well it probably is the case already via lower taxation of capital gains and so on. But there should probably exist a more streamlined framework to make sure incentives are aligned.

And/or assigned government projects? Besides implementing their Cloud infrastructure that is...

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

#578

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

NitpickLawyer wrote: post #39
killerstorm wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LeCun always said that LLMs do not lead to AGI.

He also said other things about LLMs that turned out to be either wrong or easily bypassed with some glue. While I understand where he comes from, and that his stance is pure research-y theory driven, at the end of the day his positions were wrong. Previously, he very publicly and strongly said: a) LLMs can't do math. They trick us in poetry but that's subjective. They can't do objective math. b) they can't plan c) b…

> So the longer you go in your generation, the higher the error rate. so at long contexts the answers become utter garbage.

Not totally wrong. They can self-correct, but it seems context rot will eventually set in.

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

#579

Post by kytmizuno »

wmiel wrote: post #229

Surprising to see how many commenters are in favour and supportive towards policy of prioritising short term profits vs. Long-term research. I understand Meta's not academia nor charity, but come on, how much profit do they need to make so we can expect them to allocate part of their resources towards some long term goals beneficial for society,.not only for shareholders? Hasn't that narrow focus and chasing the prof…

LeCun was hired in 2013. It's been 12 years. How much longer does he need?

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

#580

Post by daveguy »

IncreasePosts wrote: post #542
daveguy wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LeCun's net worth is estimated between 5-10 million. Just for payroll of 10 AI researchers at 300k/yr would cost over $3 million per year. And his wealth probably isn't fully liquid. Given payroll + compute he would be bankrupt in a year. Of course he's not using just his own money. However, I expect he will be a major investor. Most founders prefer to maintain some control.

He's been leading a large, important organization at Meta for 13 years. The stock has 10x'd in that time. He's almost certainly worth way more than that. Those random google sites that talk about net worth have no real idea what they're guessing at and are more akin to clickbait

Ok, great. So he'll only lose 10% of his net worth per year if it fails. Better for some VC to lose 1% of their net worth per year.

The point is, VC money for an AI venture is not chump change even for someone with a $10-$100MM net worth. The point still stands, including his own expected investment.

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