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Yann LeCun has lots of faults, certainly with how he treats AI safety in general, but a lot of the criticism he got was saying "He's not qualified to be in the

Yann LeCun has lots of faults, certainly with how he treats AI safety in general, but a lot of the criticism he got was saying "He's not qualified to be in the position he is in" which is actually absurd if you know anything about him. Even if you knew nothing other than the fact that he won a Turing Award then he would be qualified for basically any computing/AI/ML job on the planet. \ Also the title of this post is deliberately inflammatory. Should be more like "Head of team that spent months building complex ML system annoyed when people spend undue amounts of time criticizing it."

logicchains 4y ago
>"Head of team that spent months building complex ML system annoyed when people spend undue amounts of time criticizing it." What's undue about it? If a team spent months producing a webapp that failed to live up to its claims and was full of security vulnerabilities and inaccuracies, nobody'd expect anyone to moderate their criticism of it. Having a Turing award doesn't mean somebody can't deliver a shit product, and I don't see why it should make them more above criticism than anyone else who delivered something similar.
mattkrause 4y ago
I don't think anyone is really "qualified" to have the level of influence, power, and adoration that the very top names in many fields get. Research "success" certainly takes some talent and LeCun is certainly smart. However, exhibiting that talent also needs luck, timing, and connections, all of which are subject to crazy positive feedback loops: getting an award helps you get subsequent awards, better students, etc. In a world where GPGPUs came a little sooner or later, I think we'd have totally different "superstars".