Elon Musk Is Preventing With Meta’s Chief AI Scientist

Say what you’ll about X, nevertheless it’s nonetheless the most effective place to observe highly effective individuals slam one another on social media. Elon Musk walked into an unsuspecting Twitter beef this vacation weekend with none aside from Meta’s Chief AI Scientist Yann LeCun, who used the platform in opposition to the billionaire that owns it.

“[Musk] claims to need a ‘maximally rigorous pursuit of the reality’ however spews crazy-ass conspiracy theories on his personal social platform,” LeCun stated in a tweet Monday, responding to a job posting for a place with xAI. He mockingly listed different claims from Elon Musk, together with that AI will kill everybody and the billionaire’s perception that xAI’s work might be solved subsequent yr.

“I like his vehicles, his rockets, his photo voltaic panels, and his satellite tv for pc community,” LeCun stated in a followup tweet. “I very a lot dislike his vengeful politics, his conspiracy theories, and his hype.”

LeCun clarified to a different account that he’s a scientist and never a enterprise or product individual. Musk chimed in to say LeCun was “simply following orders,” to which LeCun stated, “You don’t appear to know how analysis works.” Musk responded by asking what ‘science’ LeCun had accomplished just lately, to which Meta’s Chief AI Scientist posted a link to his Google Scholar page with “over 80 technical papers printed since January 2022.” The proprietor of X followed up by saying that was “nothing” and that LeCun was “going delicate.”

All the trade, which LeCun later remarked as “holiday fun,” appeared barely extra hostile than both steered. This adopted a barrage of assaults from Musk in opposition to Meta’s services and products. WhatsApp is the newest sufferer of Musk’s tweet storm. He posted on Friday that the encrypted messaging app “exports your user data every night.” The top of WhatsApp responded on to Musk saying, “This is not correct” and that the corporate takes safety significantly.

Hugging Face CEO Clem Delangue stated he would decide LeCun over Musk “every single day of the week.” Delangue famous that LeCun has made important contributions to the AI group with out cashing out like some others have. Notably, Musk’s X simply introduced a $6 billion funding round from a slew of Silicon Valley enterprise capital corporations and buyers.

The trade additionally uncovered a riff between Musk and LeCun’s views on synthetic intelligence. Whereas Musk usually preaches to AI doomers, those that consider the expertise may very well be existential to humanity, LeCun gives a a lot much less fear-inducing view on AI threat. LeCun calls these “doomers” delusional, and stated in a tweet just lately that “it’s too early to fret about [AI]. And it’s approach too early to control it to forestall “existential dangers.”