Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Meta’s chief AI scientist Yann LeCun have exchanged words on Twitter (X) several times since last week.
In fact, the two have been arguing since last year, and this war of words originated from LeCun's bitter satire and criticism under Musk's tweet about recruiting talents for his artificial intelligence company xAI.
As the winner of the Turing Award in 2018, one of the three giants of deep learning in the world, and known as the "Father of Convolutional Neural Networks", French computer scientist LeCun responded to Musk's tweet on May 27, saying:
Join xAI if you can tolerate a boss like this:
— Claim that your research project needs to be tackled within the next year (no pressure).
— Claim that your research project will kill everyone and must be stopped or suspended (yeah, take 6 months off!).
— Claiming to “make the most stringent demands on efforts to pursue the truth,” he spreads absurd conspiracy theories on his own social platform.
Meta AI scientists blast Musk for hyping and conspiracy theories
The two then fell into a constant war of words. LeCun explained to netizens the reason for his dissatisfaction with Musk: "I like his cars, rockets, solar panels and satellite networks. But I really don't like his vindictive politics and conspiracies. Discussion and hype.”
Some netizens asked Yang Likun why, as a machine learning expert with 15 years of experience, he stayed at Meta AI instead of starting a business. Yang Likun said: "I am a scientist, not a businessman or a product maker." Musk said In a tweet, he insinuated that LeCun lacked the wisdom to run his own company, saying, "Yann is just following orders."
Musk also questioned LeCun's achievements in the field of science in recent years, asking "What science have you done in the past five years?" LeCun replied: "Since January 2022, you have published more than 80 technical papers. What about you?" In response, Musk said : "It's not a big deal, you are getting weaker, you have to work harder."
Extended reading: Musk publicly humiliated the former founder of Facebook! 180 million followers
Musk criticized for undermining democracy
The war of words between the two sides has not stopped yet. LeCun published a long article yesterday (2nd), explaining in depth his dissatisfaction with Musk’s hype and conspiracy theories, criticizing Musk’s treatment of scientists, and criticizing Musk’s business promotion. Trump will undermine the democratic process and pose a danger to civil society.
I mean, it's great to express an ambitious vision for the future. But blatantly telling the public wrong predictions ("general artificial intelligence next year", "1 million robotaxis by 2020", "AGI will kill us all, let's pause"...) is very counterproductive ( Also illegal under certain circumstances).
More importantly, I believe that his public positions on many political issues, journalism, media and journalism, and academia are not only wrong, but dangerous to democracy, civilization, and human welfare
He seems to have no qualms about spreading wild conspiracy theories if it suits his interests (e.g., promoting “PizzaGate,” or illegal immigration corrupting U.S. elections). This has become particularly concerning since he bought himself a platform to spread his dangerous political views, conspiracy theories and hype.
As of this writing, Musk has yet to respond positively to LeCun's comments about him on Sunday.
