The top row or line
Elon Musk spent part of his Memorial Day holiday at X with Meta's AI chief Yann LeCun, fueling a growing rift between the billionaire and famous scientist as he recruits talent for his AI startup, xAI. trying to do
Tesla CEO Elon Musk sparred with AI researcher Yann Likon.
Key facts
LeCun said on X that people should join Musk's AI startup, xAI, if they can “stand a boss” who “puts out crazy-ass conspiracy theories” and claims that what you're talking about Working he “will be resolved next. year (no pressure)” and “will kill everyone and must stop or stop (yes, 6 months off!).
The scientist's criticism of Musk was in response to the billionaire urging people to come and work at xAI “if you believe in our mission to understand the universe,” something he said was “not about popularity or political Regardless, truth needs to be pursued as rigorously as possible.”
When asked what he had against Musk, LeCun said “I like his cars, his rockets, his solar panels, and his satellite network,” but “his vindictiveness.” Politics, its conspiracy theories, and its hype” are highly disliked.
When LeCun said he chose to work at Meta over starting his own company because “I'm a scientist, not a business or product person,” Musk asked “What science have you done in the last 5 years?” What's more, over 80 technical papers published since 2022 dismissing LeCun as “nothing”.
“You're getting soft. Try harder,” Musk added, shrugging that LeCun was “just following orders,” adding, “Now you're acting like you're my boss.”
LeCun said “you don't understand how research works” and later added that “every single driving assistance system today” relies on research – convolutional neural networks – he introduced, including Musk's EV firm Tesla. , though the billionaire said he “don't use CNN much these days.
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News peg
LeCun is a prominent and influential computer scientist and widely considered one of the three “Godfathers of AI” for his seminal role in the field. In addition to leading Meta's AI efforts, where he says he's pursuing a new generation of AI systems based on a “global modeling” approach, LeCun is also a professor at New York University. He has publicly feuded with Musk before, urging the billionaire to distance himself from then-President Donald Trump in 2017 and his comments on the future trajectory of AI in March. Including rejecting the vision, when he said that we are still far from human-level intelligence. The latest tussle comes as Musk works to attract AI talent for xAI to compete with Meta, OpenAI, Google and other leaders in the field after a Series B funding round. resulting in $6 billion in revenue.
Important quote
LeCun seems to have found the whole online spat with Musk interesting. When an X user described the spat as a bad look for the two tech leaders and said they'd surely have better things to do with their time, LeCun said he was “on vacation? During which I was stuck on an 8-hour transatlantic flight with free Wi-Fi? Pretty entertaining, I'd say.
Tangent
“You guys need to solve this with cage fighting,” joked Google software engineer Francois Cholet, of Musk's infamous “cage match” for fellow tech billionaire and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. ” Reference to the challenge. LeCun rejected the idea but said “I'll settle for a sailing race.” LeCun has previously posted photos of himself and friends sailing on X, and his website states that he owns two sport catamarans, as well as sailing and racing with friends.
Further reading