[jonstokes]

I don't know LeCun personally, but there's a lot of backstory here that this polemical clickbait is leaving out.

- LeCun has a history of getting mobbed by "AI ethics" types on Twitter, and in the past he was very deferential to these folks, and even left Twitter for a while. I wrote about some of that here: https://www.jonstokes.com/p/googles-colosseum

- The MIT Tech Review, which is the author's main source here apart from Twitter, is techlash rag, and they went through a long phase where they only published anti-AI stuff from the "AI ethics" people. Most of those writers I used to follow there on this topic have since moved on to other pubs, and the EIC responsible for this mess has moved on to run WIRED. But it seems they're still publishing the same kind of stuff even with new staff and management. They have exactly one and only one editorial line on AI in general and LeCun in specific, and that is "lol AI so racist and overhyped!" It's boring and predictable.

- LeCun has a longstanding beef with Marcus, and the two treat each other pretty poorly in public. Marcus seems to have a personal axe to grind with LeCun. Given that Marcus has been leading the mob on this, it's not shocking that LeCun got crappy with him.

- Emily Bender, Grady Booch, and the other folks cited in the MIT Tech Review piece all, to a person, have exactly one line on AI, everywhere at all times and in all circumstances, and it's the same one I mentioned above. You could code a bot with a lookup table to write their tweets about literally anything AI-related.

- Yeah, LeCun is a prickly nerd who gets his back up when certain people with a history of attacking him come after him yet again. He should probably should stay chill.

- "AI so overhyped" is a pose, not an argument, an investment thesis, or a career plan. But hey, you do you.

Anyway, I hate to be defending anything Meta-related, but this article is slanted trash, its sources haters who have only one, incredibly repetitive thing to say about AI, and the author is a hater.

[hn_throwaway_99]

Thanks for posting this, it gives good added context that helped me change my original opinion.

I was quite familiar with Lecun's dust up with Timnit Gebru on Twitter, and I had a lot of sympathy for him in that situation.

I think it's quite sad that so much bad-faith argument has infiltrated academia to the extent that it has. Some may say it's always been that way, but it feels worse to me now. One of my "heroes" of unbiased rationality, Zeynep Tufekci, wrote a really good Twitter thread recently about how some of these flat out liars in academia manage to continue their lies unscathed with little pushback: https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/1592210111359250432

[Jasper_]

Yes, "AI has too much control over our lives, and it's biased" is a repetitive claim made over and over, but it's also, you know, a biased AI ruining lives right now, and we should repeat it until things stop.

Every week there's a random here post about "some AI detection system closed my Gmail account / took down my Android app / froze my Square funds", and Hacker News is seen as the semi-official tech support line for companies who have turned to biased AI to cut costs.

A lot of what AI ethicists are saying is that "if we hook these AI systems up to safety-critical systems, anyone who doesn't fit the model is going to be labeled an outsider", and I don't know why we shouldn't repeat it as many times as it takes to get people to listen... accounts are still being banned, lives are still being ruined.

To counter this with "think about what progress AI has been making!" is missing the point. "Sure, it Markov-chain'd some random facts about space bears and cited random people with papers it made up who are now caught in the cross-fire of machine hallucination, but think about the progress! It could format its fiction to look like a TeX paper and add some random squiggles that look like math expressions!" is not the slam-dunk defense you think it is.

[hn_throwaway_99]

> Every week there's a random here post about "some AI detection system closed my Gmail account / took down my Android app / froze my Square funds", and Hacker News is seen as the semi-official tech support line for companies who have turned to biased AI to cut costs.

I would agree with this if I ever saw these self-appointed AI-ethicists focus on these kinds of harms. But, at least in my experience, is usually focused on the exact same set of concerns that 90% of the time has "intersectionality" somewhere in the criticism.

Yes, I'm being a bit unfair and snarky, but I'd be more willing to pay more attention to some of these criticisms if I felt it included more of the harms you bring up than just what I feel has become a constant bone to pick. I agree with the GP when he wrote "You could code a bot with a lookup table to write their tweets about literally anything AI-related."

[mrguyorama]

>But, at least in my experience, is usually focused on the exact same set of concerns that 90% of the time has "intersectionality" somewhere in the criticism.

You have the choice to avoid google accounts and limit the destruction a google AI system can do to you.

You don't have a choice to not be born black, and not be put in jail for longer just because you are black.

Why don't you care that millions of people will be hurt by these things, and care more that an app developer gets locked out of the app store? Apple hasn't put anyone in jail.

[Jasper_]

Yes, I used a nerdy example because I figured it would appeal more closely to the computer dork crowd of Hacker News, hoping that, by metaphor and extrapolation, you could imagine all sorts of ways that AI biased against sex or race would be immensely damaging to the fabric of society, and bias gets built into our society. This is already happening, as biased AI is used to estimate how much jail time someone will get [0]. Or pushing rents higher [1]. Or treating people for healthcare [2].

These AI ethicists are complaining about all of this, but of course they yell more loudly about sexism and racism, because, you know, those are fairly serious things that should be addressed first???

I don't think they need to be original, I think they need to bang their drum loudly. "Oh, that women's suffrage movement won't shut up about how they don't have a voice in policy that governs their life, can't they talk about something else for once" isn't an indictment of the people complaining, it's an indictment of the people not listening.

[0] https://www.propublica.org/article/machine-bias-risk-assessm...

[1] https://www.propublica.org/article/yieldstar-rent-increase-r...

[2] https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aax2342

[williamsmj]

> this article is slanted trash, its sources haters who have only one, incredibly repetitive thing to say about AI, and the author is a hater.

It doesn't "source haters". It quotes MIT Tech Review and Gary Marcus precisely in order to provide context for the subject of the “article” (blog post): LeCun's bizarre "this is why we can't have nice things" statement. This petulant remark seeks to shut down negative feedback as a class, regardless of its merits. That's what the blog post is about. The quotes are there so that the quote from LeCun makes sense, not because they're legitimate criticism.

> Emily Bender, Grady Booch...

These people are not mentioned in the linked post, which tells me you're pattern matching on "techlash" and posting a bunch of only vaguely related context (and a medium self-link).

> He should probably should stay chill.

Exactly?! That's the point of the blog post. It's in the title of the article. It seems obviously true, and I'm not sure how any of what you say adds up to a robust conclusion that "the article is slanted trash" and "the author (Andrew Gelman?!?!) is a hater" other than you don't like some of the quotes.

> and in the past he was very deferential to these folks, and even left Twitter for a while

How many times has he quit Twitter now? Three IIRC. Seems like he needs some coaching on the following through with promises.

[seydor]

The article they quote from,

https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/11/18/1063487/meta-lar...

Twitter-quotes both of them and others

[williamsmj]

Yes I know. They are irrelevant to the point of Gelman’s blog post, which is why he doesn’t mention them. I assume they’re being brought up here out of some kind of guilt by association thing, or to make the self-link seem more on topic.

[seydor]

50% of TFA is quotations fromt he TR article

[williamsmj]

Yes. To provide the context necessary to understand the "this is why we can't have nice things" quote, you have to say what "this" is. That's how pronouns work.

[bbor]

Thanks for taking the time to your thoughts in such clear and lengthy terms. This article seems more about drama than scientific merit.

> Second, what’s the endgame here? What’s LeCun’s ideal?

This section I think is particularly exemplary - regardless of your take here, I think it’s pretty ridiculous and uncharitable to interpret “criticism of science is immoral” from LeCun’s quoted statements.

[yunohn]

> "AI so overhyped" is a pose, not an argument, an investment thesis, or a career plan. But hey, you do you.

> Anyway, I hate to be defending anything Meta-related, but this article is slanted trash, its sources haters who have only one, incredibly repetitive thing to say about AI, and the author is a hater.

I was hoping someone else would also find the actual context and background for what is clearly a poorly written hate piece.

I have very little interest in Meta, but the amount of FAANG hate that the media knowingly perpetuates and the amount of criticism that anything launched receives, would absolutely wear someone down. Lecun is no saint, but the article is very unfairly written.

[yellow_lead]

Pro-AI articles are all the same as well. "AI will be so useful!" It's boring and predictable.

[jonstokes]

Wrong. "Here is a totally mind-blowing new thing AI will let you do this week that humanity could not do last week" is an endless source of novelty and eyeballs. Source: Am a publisher in this space and have seen the engagement numbers. You are the guy in the meme standing in the corner of the party, with the words "They don't know AI is just math" printed over his head.

[jonathanyc]

Could you make your post more substantive by e.g. sharing rough engagement numbers? Otherwise as an outsider this just reads as pretty mean-spirited.

Sad because I am an Ars Technica fan, but can empathize with GP's point about AI coverage being repetitive and often over-hyping results.

[mrguyorama]

Yeah and if I told everyone I could turn lead into gold I bet that would get a lot of clicks too.

[dekhn]

that was already done in 1941

[drcode]

I wish AI was overhyped, sadly it is not. If it was overhyped, we would have more time to solve the alignment problem.

[dibt]

"AI ethics"

Are these a new type of luddite? Why aren't there "computer ethicists" complaining about real issues with the use of technology in general? I'm being tracked at all times without my consent. These "AI ethicists" are happy to use platforms like Twitter that track you, and even reward you for giving them more info (e.g. phone number).

[bwanab]

If I were a lot smarter and had a lot more time, I'd love to paraphrase the article using, instead of AI, a legacy technology that at the time struck many as useless, but after development and acceptance became indispensable. Maybe the internet itself?