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LeCun has "zero concerns" about AI wiping out humanity, recent "rogue" incidents

400 points · 756 comments · Anon84

  1. edot · · focus · HN ↗
    Absolutely based. Finally someone of stature in the industry calling this whole fear overblown. Bill Gates sounded like a nontechnical goofball in his Ezra Klein interview where he basically just screamed that the Terminator is real.

    There are lots of real worries (government use to suppress the people with minimal manpower or popular support, brainrot and fake news, unemployment due to the belief that LLMs can replace people, education collapse, etc.) we should instead be looking at. This whole rogue AI shtick is tiresome.

    1. reasonableklout · · focus · HN ↗
      LeCun has been consistently wrong about LLMs though, claiming that they were a dead end and that they'd never be able to do spatial reasoning, which was disproved a year later with GPT-4 [1]. He is also opposed by his fellow Turing laureates Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio, who both signed the CAIS statement on AI extinction risk [2].

      [1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;OpenAI&#x2F;comments&#x2F;1d5ns1z&#x2F;yann_lecun_confidently_predicted_that_llms_will&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;OpenAI&#x2F;comments&#x2F;1d5ns1z&#x2F;yann_lecun_...

      [2]: safe.ai&#x2F;statement-on-ai-risk

      1. oxag3n · · focus · HN ↗
        [1] is not a valid proof LeCun was wrong, LLMs still can&#x27;t do spacial reasoning when it can&#x27;t be derived from the training data. He didn&#x27;t argue that GPT 5000 won&#x27;t be able to describe something with words.
        1. simianwords · · focus · HN ↗
          we have benchmarks proving it can do spatial reasoning.
          1. qayxc · · focus · HN ↗
            ...poorly? <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;ENWVpqtOdRI?t=867" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;ENWVpqtOdRI?t=867
            1. simianwords · · focus · HN ↗
              I’m not sure what you are trying to say
              1. qayxc · · focus · HN ↗
                When put to the test in real-world environment, the capabilities don&#x27;t look as impressive as benchmarks and synthetic tests might indicate. So doubts about actual spatial reasoning capabilities remain.
                1. simianwords · · focus · HN ↗
                  I see. Gary Marcus said that AI won’t be able to make a coffee in any arbitrary home kitchen.

                  I think it’s a good test and I think LLMs will reach it in 3 years. Current benchmarks maybe slightly incorrect.

                  I’m happy to make a 4:1 bet in my favour that I’m correct about the kitchen bet.

                  1. sdeframond · · focus · HN ↗
                    I cant make coffee in an arbitary house kitchen. People tend to put stuff anywhere but where at look for them...
                    1. lelandfe · · focus · HN ↗
                      Your prompter need merely to say “keep going” each time you report that you haven’t found the grounds yet.
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