Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

nasdaq.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

641–650 of 680 posts

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

#641

Post by Libidinalecon »

astrange wrote: post #434
hbarka wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LeCun truly believes the future is in world models. He’s not alone. Good for him to now be in the position he’s always wanted and hopefully prove out what he constantly talks about.

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 do agree humans don't have a world model. It is really more than that. We exist in the world. We don't need a world model because we exist in the world.

It is like saying a fish has a water model. It makes no sense when the fish existence is intertwined with water.

That is not to say that a computer that has a model of the world would not most likely be extremely useful vs something like the LLM that has none. The world model would be the best we could do to create a machine that simulates being in the world.

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

#642

Post by fooker »

astrange wrote: post #538
fooker wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that why Siri is worse today than it was thirteen years ago?

It's better in ways you don't think about. (It works offline, it works in other languages, the TTS is much better.)

None of it matters if it does not understand the audio input and maps it to the correct actions on your device.

The first one is a solved problem now, and the second one, while not solved, is where a little bit of research can really make a difference.

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

#643

Post by belter »

re-thc wrote: post #223
belter wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I guess everyone is racing towards AGI in a few years A pipe dream sustaining the biggest stock market bubble in history. Smart investors are jumping to the next bubble already...Quantum...

> A pipe dream sustaining the biggest stock market bubble in history This is why we're losing innovation. Look at electric cars, batteries, solar panels, rare earths and many more. Bubble or struggle for survival? Right, because if US has no AI the world will have no AI? That's the real bubble - being stuck in an ancient world view. Meta's stock has already tanked for "over" investing in AI. Bubble, where?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45902246

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

#644

Post by belter »

belter wrote: post #224
re-thc wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A pipe dream sustaining the biggest stock market bubble in history This is why we're losing innovation. Look at electric cars, batteries, solar panels, rare earths and many more. Bubble or struggle for survival? Right, because if US has no AI the world will have no AI? That's the real bubble - being stuck in an ancient world view. Meta's stock has already tanked for "over" investing in AI. Bubble, where?

2 Trillion dollars in Capex to get code generators with hallucinations, that run at a loss, and you ask where is the Bubble?

"Big Tech Needs $2 Trillion In AI Revenue By 2030 or They Wasted Their Capex" - https://www.wheresyoured.at/big-tech-2tr/

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

#645

Post by belter »

xnx wrote: post #486
mehulashah wrote: post #277

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.

> This is the weirdest technology market that I’ve seen. The phenomenon you're seeing is well described here: "The Perfect AI Startup" ( https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/newsletters/2025-09-29/the... ) “It was the most absurd pitch meeting,” one investor who met with Murati said. “She was like, ‘So we’re doing an AI company with the best AI people, but we can’t answer any questions.’” Despite that vagueness, Murati…

https://www.wheresyoured.at/big-tech-2tr/

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

#646

Post by Grimblewald »

HDThoreaun wrote: post #604
Grimblewald wrote: post #573

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pa…

I dont really agree with your perception of current LLMs, but the point is it doesnt even matter. This is a pr war. Lecun lost it for meta. Meta needs to be thought of as an AI leader to gain traction in their metaverse stuff. They can live with everyone thinking theyre evil but if everyone thinks theyre lame has beens they are fucked.

are they thought of as lame has-beens? OR even on a trajectory for that to be thought of them? I don't think that's true, at least not in my circles. Like you said, evil, sure, but not has been.

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

#647

Post by Salgat »

DebtDeflation wrote: post #285
mehulashah wrote: post #277

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…

The novelty of LLMs are wearing off, people are beginning to understand them for what they are and what they are capable of, and performance has been plateauing. I think that's why people are starting to worry that the AI bubble is a repeat of the dotcom bubble, which was a similar technological revolution.

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

#648

Post by sgt »

Vegenoid wrote: post #500
sgt wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So... that seems like possible path towards AGI. Doesn't it?

Only if you also provide it with a way for it to richly interact with the world (i.e. an embodiment). Otherwise, how do you train it? How does a world model verify the correctness of its model in novel situations?

Optimus will be ready to take that on.

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

#649

Post by dolmen »

renegade-otter wrote: post #529
Anon1096 wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stated without a shred of evidence and getting no pushback. Classic for a nonsense claim about big tech company HN doesn't like, lol.

https://www.wired.com/story/researchers-leave-meta-superinte...

https://archive.is/gnRqX

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

#650

Post by poslathian »

keeganpoppen wrote: post #621
whiplash451 wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meta has the financial oomph to run multiple Bell Labs within its organization. Why they decided not to do that is kind of a puzzle.

because the business hierarchy clearly couldnt support it. take that for what you will.

as I understand, Bell Labs mandate was to improve the network, which had tons of great threads to pull on: plastics for handsets, transistors for amplification, information theory for capacity on fixed copper.

Google and Meta are ads businesses with a lot less surface area for such a mandate to have similar impact and, frankly, exciting projects people want to do.

Meanwhile they still have tons of cash so, why not, throw money at solving Atari or other shiny programs.

Also, for cultural reasons, there’s been a huge shift to expensive monolithic “moonshot programs” whose expenses need on-demand progress to justify and are simply slower and way less innovative.

3 passionate designers hiding deep inside Apple can side hustle up the key gestures that make multi touch baked enough to see a path to an iPhone - long before iPhone was any sort endgame direction they were being managed to.

Innovation thrives on lots of small teams mostly failing in the search for something worth doubling down on.

Googles et al have a new approach - aim for the moon, budget and staff for the moon, then burn cash while no one ever really polished up the fundamental enabling pieces in hindsight they needed to succeed

Post reply on HN