[mindcrime]

So to the extent that Yann is copying Gary's opinions, it's because they both converge at a point far behind the leaders in the field.

Behind? Why do you say so? If anything, they may both (now) be a bit ahead of the curve. AFAICT, while the idea of neuro-symbolic integration is pretty old (Ron Sun, among others, was talking about it ages ago), the idea is still far from widely pursued by the mainstream thread of AI research.

In either case, it's interesting to finally start to see more weight accumulating behind this particular arrow. But I've long been on record as advocating that neuro-symbolic integration is a critical area of research for AI, so I'm a bit biased.

[mirekrusin]

Also having "an idea" expressed as one or two sentences is something different than implementing, trying out and writing paper about "an idea".