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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'

#671

Post by balamatom »

bwfan123 wrote: post #428
balamatom wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have vague notions of there being an entire hidden philosophical/political battlefield (massacre?) behind the whole "are knowledge models/ontologies a realistic goal" debate. Starting with the sophomoric questions of the optimist who mistakes the possible for the viable: how definite of a thing is "the world", how knowable is it, what is even knowledge... and then back through the more pragmatic: by whom is it know…

Nice commentary and I enjoyed the poetic turn of phrase. I had to respond to it with my own thoughts if only to bookmark it for myself. > how many people are continually ready to mistake language for thought This is a fundamental illusion - where, rote memory and names and words get mistaken for understanding. This was wonderfully illustrated here [1]. Few really grok what understanding actually is. This is an unfort…

I disagree with most of what you said.

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

#672

Post by _giorgio_ »

StopDisinfo910 wrote: post #84
_giorgio_ wrote: post #77

[flagged]

> LeCun failed to deliver anything that delivered real value to stockholders Well, no, Meta is behind the main framework used by nearly anyone largely thanks to LeCun. LLaMA was also very significant in making open weight a thing and that largely contributed to avoiding Google and OpenAI consolidating as the sole providers. It's not a perfect tenure but implying he didn't deliver anything is far too harsh.

Do you really think that people understand the value of PyTorch?

They master PyTorch, yet they fail to deliver value to investors.

They're probably the only company which hasn't monetized its models. They suck so much that they don't even bother to serve them to you and to make you pay for them.

These companies for example are earning money in return for their investment:

MSFT (through openai)

AMZN (through anthropic)

X (through grok)

GOOGL (gemini etc)

they all have a paid model

META has no paid model, that is SAD.

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

#673

Post by radibear »

tim333 wrote: post #627
0_____0 wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fusion power has the chance to displace most power generation, and whoever is successful at the experiment wins the energy economy, period. However given the long timelines, high cost of research, and the unanswered technical questions around materials that can withstand neutron flux, the total 2024 investment into fusion is only around $10B, versus AI's 250+B. Why are these so different?

Fusion has a lot of difficulties even if they get a rector going - see https://thebulletin.org/2017/04/fusion-reactors-not-what-the... It's not clear if after that lot they would be cost competitive with other energy sources.

the nice thing is you dont need to be cost competitive with other energy sources if there is no energy. and also that every form of energy is already subsidized like crazy. so as long as fusion is demonstrated to be reliable and scalable, then it can be left to the politicians to figure out how to allocate resources.

but i agree with the article about some points. proliferation and tritium I wouldnt say is much of an issue.

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

#674

Post by caminante »

assemblyman wrote: post #535

A few people mentioned Meta burning through people like LeCun, Carmack and Luckey. We give a lot of credit to individuals in our society. At the same time, there's a frequent pattern of very successful people changing fields, organizations or general environments and suddenly looking very ordinary. In a way, this is a very strong argument to let people settle into a place they can be happiest in. A few examples: * Th…

Picking Schumacher, Einstein, others seems unfair as they were godlike, despite competition catching up and there are limited prime years for mathematicians/athletes.

Luckey's a smart guy who would easily be on his way to millions, but got "lucky" into billions. Look closer. He committed IP theft for the tech he/Carmack sold to Facebook. He only had to pay a $50M fine in return for +$500M buyout/earnout. He's extra "lucky" because the fines and sanctions could've been a lot worse.

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

#675

Post by sota_pop »

snapcaster wrote: post #600
p1dda wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they're not stochastic parrots, what are they in your opinion?

The problem is the framing. Reductionism always sounds smart and is rhetorically effective but usually just loses all nuance or meaning. I've never met a parrot (stochastic or otherwise) that could write python code or rewrite my emails so what is the point of you describing it like that besides wanting to sound smug and dismissive?

The point is that next-token prediction produces output by sampling from distributions assembled by text it has seen previously (hence stochastic). The “ding” or claim is that - like a parrot - LLMs can’t produce responses which are truly novel in concept or make logical out-of-sample leaps, only repeat from words they’ve been taught explicitly in the past.

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

#676

Post by arduinomancer »

greenavocado wrote: post #536
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.

You're right to feel like you're seeing something different. You are. But you're mistaking the symptom for the disease. That's because you're trying to make sense of it as a technology market. It's not. It's a resource extraction market, and the VCs are the ones running the logging operation. Their sole mission is to find a dependable way to strip a forest bare, and they've been using the same playbook for decades. T…

Exactly, the whole process is a business itself

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

#677

Post by snapcaster »

sota_pop wrote: post #675
snapcaster wrote: post #600

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is the framing. Reductionism always sounds smart and is rhetorically effective but usually just loses all nuance or meaning. I've never met a parrot (stochastic or otherwise) that could write python code or rewrite my emails so what is the point of you describing it like that besides wanting to sound smug and dismissive?

The point is that next-token prediction produces output by sampling from distributions assembled by text it has seen previously (hence stochastic). The “ding” or claim is that - like a parrot - LLMs can’t produce responses which are truly novel in concept or make logical out-of-sample leaps, only repeat from words they’ve been taught explicitly in the past.

So you think stochastic parrot is an accurate term and not an attempt to be dismissive? So if someone woke up from a coma and asked what ChatGPT is you would say "stochastic parrot" and think you've explained things?

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

#678

Post by sota_pop »

snapcaster wrote: post #677
sota_pop wrote: post #675

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that next-token prediction produces output by sampling from distributions assembled by text it has seen previously (hence stochastic). The “ding” or claim is that - like a parrot - LLMs can’t produce responses which are truly novel in concept or make logical out-of-sample leaps, only repeat from words they’ve been taught explicitly in the past.

So you think stochastic parrot is an accurate term and not an attempt to be dismissive? So if someone woke up from a coma and asked what ChatGPT is you would say "stochastic parrot" and think you've explained things?

While “stochastic parrot” is obviously an over-simplification, and the way the phrase was originally coined in context was likewise obviously intended to be dismissive, I think the analogy holds. I see them as a lossy storage system.

I think the expectation that simply continuing to scale the transformer architecture is not likely to exhibit the type of “intelligence” for which _researchers_ are looking.

For my personal taste, the most interesting development of NLP in this latest AI wave (and LLMs in general) is RAG. I also have always wondered why the tokenization process hasn’t been deemed more important historically. To me, it seems like THE MOST critical part of how Deep Learning works.

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

#679

Post by Obscurity4340 »

anotherd1p wrote: post #296
Obscurity4340 wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I love this application of AI the most but as many have stated elsewhere: mathematical precision in law won't work, or rather, won't be tolerated.

Do you have an example that you rely on for that kind of statement?

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

#680

Post by scoot »

cricalix wrote: post #528
scoot wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I developed it later in life. The tinnitus came earlier (and isn't as a result of excessive sound exposure as far as I know), but in my (unscientific) opinion they are different manifestations (symptoms) of the same underlying issue – a missing or faulty noise filter on sensory inputs to the brain. Thankfully I don't get comorbid headaches – in fact I seldom get headaches at all. And even on the odd occasion that I d…

scoot, you may find the current mini-series by the podcast Unexplainable to be interesting. It's on sound, and one episode is about tinnitus and research into it. https://www.vox.com/podcasts/467048/unexplainable-hearing-au...

Thanks!
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