[HN Gopher] Yann LeCun isn't buying the AI doomer narrative
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       Yann LeCun isn't buying the AI doomer narrative
        
       Author : mfiguiere
       Score  : 15 points
       Date   : 2023-09-05 19:58 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.fastcompany.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.fastcompany.com)
        
       | natch wrote:
       | I think Yann LeCun is living in a fantasy world.
       | 
       | He seems unaware that we already saw a massive failure on his
       | watch where a US election (2016) was tipped by algorithmic
       | intervention far beyond anything that had come before, using his
       | company's personalization platform.
       | 
       | Yes elections are influenced all the time in different ways, but
       | this was next level.
       | 
       | And it's already eclipsed by the next stuff, which is not
       | stopping, and he doesn't even acknowledge it at all in anything
       | I've seen.
       | 
       | Then there is the delusion that there is a cohesive "we" who are
       | deciding what happens with AI, which he subscribes to. There is
       | no such thing. Humanity is not at all unified, including on
       | whether human extinction is desirable. He assumes we are.
       | Dangerous assumption.
        
         | noslenwerdna wrote:
         | Facebook alone didn't tip the 2016 election. What about the New
         | York Times critical treatment of Hillary? What about James
         | Comey? This post is misinformation.
        
           | natch wrote:
           | Of course it didn't happen in a vacuum. And Hillary was a
           | horrible candidate imho.
        
         | version_five wrote:
         | Yann LeCun is living in a fantasy world
         | 
         | It's hilarious he'd be accused of this for not believing
         | computers will somehow come alive and get us.
        
           | natch wrote:
           | That's not the only failure mode though so it's possible
           | you're missing something.
           | 
           | Also I said "I think" which means I'm describing my own
           | opinion, not stating with certainty that I know something to
           | be the case about him.
        
           | reducesuffering wrote:
           | > believing computers will somehow come alive
           | 
           | Of course practically everytime the anti-doomer argument
           | comes out, it fails to even understand the basic premise.
           | Instead preferring to laugh at hyperbole, the core of a
           | serious argument, everyone knows...
        
         | heavenlyblue wrote:
         | I think people overestimate the likeability of Hillary
         | massively
        
           | reducesuffering wrote:
           | Do they? She won the popular vote by almost 3 million in the
           | 2016 Presidential election.
        
         | Calvin02 wrote:
         | > tipped by algorithmic intervention far beyond anything that
         | had come before
         | 
         | Hasn't the data shown that people don't really change their
         | minds based on what they read on social media?
         | 
         | I think you are underestimating all the other factors that
         | probably had stat-sig influence on the elections.
         | 
         | Low voter turnout from some segments, broad voter
         | disenfranchisement with both parties, media relentlessly
         | pushing Trump to front and center because it drove ratings,
         | Bernie Sanders's voters sitting out as protest, etc. etc.
        
         | peyton wrote:
         | I dunno, the most parsimonious explanation for Clinton's loss
         | is low black voter turnout, which is more a simple failure of
         | her campaign than a nefarious new technology propelling us to
         | extinction.
        
           | rumblerock wrote:
           | GP didn't state that it was the sole reason for tipping the
           | election.
           | 
           | Clinton dropping the ball, Comey etc. are events I can live
           | with even if I didn't like the result. But a foreign
           | adversary exploiting network effects to manipulate online
           | discourse and propagate misinformation on a large scale - the
           | influence that had will always be an unsettling "what if" in
           | my mind.
        
             | peyton wrote:
             | I guess, maybe I misinterpreted what "tipped by algorithmic
             | interference" means. Regardless, I just don't think the
             | world's going to end if somebody's uncle in Florida reads
             | dozens of false headlines. A small number of people consume
             | a lot of misinformation. I agree with Yann on LLMs, and I
             | don't think his work on Facebook invalidates that.
        
           | nojito wrote:
           | It's much complicated than that.
           | 
           | https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-real-story-of-2016/
        
       | artninja1988 wrote:
       | Yann bless
        
       | Cypher wrote:
       | Sell Yann on the climate doom, see if they/them buys that.
        
       | stonogo wrote:
       | I was hoping for more substance than "guy who got rich off thing
       | thinks thing is great" but there really isn't much else here.
        
         | reducesuffering wrote:
         | Yann is the sole anti-doomer from the Bengio and Hinton trio.
         | Also, the only one whose "salary depends upon his not
         | understanding it," hmm...
        
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       (page generated 2023-09-05 23:02 UTC)