Yann LeCun, NYU professor and Meta Platforms AI guru, is perhaps the AI boom’s “best-credentialed skeptic.” Per an article in the WSJ:
OpenAI’s Sam Altman last month said we could have AGI within “a few thousand days.” Elon Musk has said it could happen by 2026.
LeCun says such talk is likely premature. When a departing OpenAI researcher in May talked up the need to learn how to control ultra-intelligent AI, LeCun pounced. “It seems to me that before ‘urgently figuring out how to control AI systems much smarter than us’ we need to have the beginning of a hint of a design for a system smarter than a house cat,” he replied on X.
He likes the cat metaphor. Felines, after all, have a mental model of the physical world, persistent memory, some reasoning ability and a capacity for planning, he says. None of these qualities are present in today’s “frontier” AIs, including those made by Meta itself.
At a recent AI panel, I overheard an entertaining perspective: “I’m less concerned with FOMO and more concerned with “OH NO.” The attendee went on to say that it’s great to fail early and often so long as it’s not the company I am invested in we’re talking about.
History repeatedly reveals the bezzle* that follows the boom (from car companies in the Henry Ford era to internet stocks following the dot com bust). Will AI be different?
*The temporary gap between the perceived value of a portfolio of assets and its long-term economic value.