AI critic Gary Marcus: Meta's LeCun is finally coming around to the things I said years ago

Shutterstock

NYU Professor Emeritus Gary Marcus, a frequent critic of the hype that surrounds artificial intelligence, recently sat down with ZDNET to offer a rebuttal to remarks by Yann LeCun, Meta's chief AI scientist, in a ZDNET interview with LeCun in September. 

LeCun had cast doubt on Marcus' argument in favor of symbol manipulation as a path to more sophisticated AI. LeCun also remarked that Marcus had no peer-reviewed papers in AI journals.

What follows is a transcript of the interview edited for length.

If you'd like to dip into Marcus's current writing on AI, check out his Substack. 

ZDNET: This conversation is in response to the recent ZDNET interview with Yann LeCun of Meta in which you were mentioned. And so, first of all, what is important to mention about that interview with LeCun?

Gary Marcus:LeCun's been critiquing me a lot lately, in the ZDNET interview, in an article in Noema, and on Twitter and Facebook, but I still don't know how much LeCun has actually read of what I've said. And I think part of the tension here is that he has sometimes criticized my work without reading it, just on the basis of things like titles. I wrote this 2018 piece, "Deep Learning: A Critical Appraisal," and he smacked it down, publicly, the first chance he got on Twitter. He said it was "mostly wrong." And I tried to push him on what about it was wrong. He never said. 

Artificial Intelligence

• AI in 2023: A year of breakthroughs that left no human thing unchanged
• These are the jobs most likely to be taken over by AI
• AI at the edge: 5G and the Internet of Things see fast times ahead
• Almost half of tech executives say their organizations aren't ready for AI or other advanced initiatives

I believe that he thinks that that article says that we should throw away deep learning. And I've corrected him on that numerous times. He again made that error [in the ZDNET interview]. If you actually read the paper, what it says is that I think deep learning is just one tool among many, and that we need other things as well. 

So anyway, he attacked this paper previously, and he's a big senior guy. At that time [2018], he was running Facebook AI. Now he's the chief AI scientist at Facebook and a vice president there. He is a Turing Award winner. So, his words carry weight. And when he attacks somebody, people follow suit. 

Of course, we don't all have to read each other's articles, but we shouldn't be saying they're mostly wrong unless we've read them. That's not really fair. And to me it felt like a little bit of an abuse of power. And then I was really astounded by the interview that you ran with him because it sounded like he was arguing for all the things I had put out there in that paper that he ridiculed: We're not going to get all the way there, at least with current deep learning techniques. There were many other, kind of, fine points of overlap such that it basically seemed like he was saying that all the things that I had said, which he had said were wrong, were the truth. 

7 advanced ChatGPT prompt-writing tips you need to know Motorola wants you to wear its new bendable phone like a watch - but don't get too excited What are passkeys? Experience the life-changing magic of going passwordless The best robot lawn mowers you can buy 7 advanced ChatGPT prompt-writing tips you need to know

Motorola wants you to wear its new bendable phone like a watch - but don't get too excited

What are passkeys? Experience the life-changing magic of going passwordless

The best robot lawn mowers you can buy

Editorial standards Show Comments