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ChatGPT is not the breakthrough it's been made out to be. Yann LeCun has explicated this quite well.

binarymax 4y ago
Of course he would say this, as he’s a direct competitor that failed to get the popularity with Galactica. The public has voted, and agreed it’s a breakthrough. Indeed nothing else like it has existed before - so how is it not?
preommr 4y ago
This is such a salty take by LeCun. It's an important reminder that someone can be incredibly smart and still have bad opinions. This would be like saying software isn't novel - everything is just an extension of that first NAND/NOR gate or that it's not useful because the computer doesn't actually understand the knowledge it's storing and is therefore no better than a clay tablet.
epistemer 4y ago
If anything this is why someone like LeCun isn't good at shipping a product people want. It seems like we lack a word in English for knowing too much about a subject that you can't see the forest for the trees. To say chatGPT is not revolutionary is as good an example of not seeing the forest for the trees that I can think of.
- mistercow 4y ago
  Also in fairness to LeCun, that sentence started with “in terms of underlying techniques”, and his words reported in the media are guaranteed to be a subset of what he said. A journalist talked to him, found an angle, and quoted to support that angle. What comes across is someone who downplays both the effort involved with and the importance of the “boring” stuff, the tweaks and product design that tie everything together, but we actually don’t know that he thinks like that. We just know that he said some things that can be excerpted to sound that way.
- ihatepython 4y ago
  I don't know, personally I don't find anything revolutionary about ChatGPT either. At best, it's a cute toy that appeals to the masses. I think it's like looking at a cloud, people see what they want to see

Of course he would say this, as he’s a direct competitor that failed to get the popularity with Galactica. The public has voted, and agreed it’s a breakthrough. Indeed nothing else like it has existed before - so how is it not?

preommr 4y ago

This is such a salty take by LeCun. It's an important reminder that someone can be incredibly smart and still have bad opinions. This would be like saying software isn't novel - everything is just an extension of that first NAND/NOR gate or that it's not useful because the computer doesn't actually understand the knowledge it's storing and is therefore no better than a clay tablet.

epistemer 4y ago

If anything this is why someone like LeCun isn't good at shipping a product people want. It seems like we lack a word in English for knowing too much about a subject that you can't see the forest for the trees. To say chatGPT is not revolutionary is as good an example of not seeing the forest for the trees that I can think of.

mistercow 4y ago
Also in fairness to LeCun, that sentence started with “in terms of underlying techniques”, and his words reported in the media are guaranteed to be a subset of what he said. A journalist talked to him, found an angle, and quoted to support that angle. What comes across is someone who downplays both the effort involved with and the importance of the “boring” stuff, the tweaks and product design that tie everything together, but we actually don’t know that he thinks like that. We just know that he said some things that can be excerpted to sound that way.
ihatepython 4y ago
I don't know, personally I don't find anything revolutionary about ChatGPT either. At best, it's a cute toy that appeals to the masses. I think it's like looking at a cloud, people see what they want to see