alt Hacker NewsLeCun wasn't producing results. He was obstinate and insistent on his own theories and ideas which weren't, and possibly aren't, going anywhere. He refused to engage with LLMs and compete in the market that exists, and spent all his effort and energy on unproven ideas and research, which split the company's mission and competitiveness. They lost their place as one of the top 4 AI companies, and are now a full generation behind, in part due to the split efforts and lack of enthusiastic participation by all the Meta AI team. If you look at the chaos and churn at the highest levels across the industry, there's not a lot of room for mission creep by leadership, and LeCun thoroughly demonstrated he wasn't suited for the mission desired by Meta.
I think he's lucky he got out with his reputation relatively intact.
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In an industry of big bets, especially considering the company has poured resources and renamed itself to secure a place in the VR world... staking your reputation on everyone's LLMs having peaked and shifting focus to finding a new path to AI is a pretty interesting bet, no?
Since a hot take is as good as the next one: LLMs are by the day more and more clearly understood as a "local maximum" with flawed capabilities, limited efficiency, a $trillion + a large chunk of the USA's GDP wasted, nobody even turning a profit from that nor able to build something that can't be reproduced for free within 6 months.
When the right move (strategically, economically) is to not compete, the head of the AI division acknowledging the above and deciding to focus on the next breakthrough seems absolutely reasonable.
This sounds similar to the arc of Carpathy, who also managed to preserve his reputation despite sending Tesla down a FSD deadend and missing the initial LLM boat.
To be fair, this was his job description: Fundamental AI Research (FAIR) lab. Not AI products division. You can't expect marketable products from a fundamental AI research lab.