This AI Pioneer Thinks AI Is Dumber Than a Cat

<!DOCTYPE html> <html lang="en"> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" /> <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1" /> <title>This AI Pioneer Thinks AI Is Dumber Than a Cat | Big Medium</title> <meta name="description" content="AI pioneer Yann LeCun reminds us that just because LLMs are good at language doesn’t mean that they’re smart." /> <meta name="author" content="Josh Clark" /> <meta name="copyright" content="Copyright Big Medium, 2024" /> <link rel="canonical" href="https://bigmedium.com/ideas/links/ai-pioneer-thinks-ai-is-dumber-than-a-cat.html" /> <meta name="robots" content="index,follow" /> <link rel="icon" href="https://bigmedium.com/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon" /> <link rel="shortcut icon" href="https://bigmedium.com/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon" /> <link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" href="https://bigmedium.com/bm.feed.xml" title="Big Medium - Full Feed" /> <link rel="stylesheet" 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Journal <a href="https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/yann-lecun-ai-meta-aa59e2f5?st=yRTcSQ&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink">profiles Yann LeCun</a>, AI pioneer and senior researcher at Meta. As you’d expect, LeCun is a big believer in machine intelligence—but has no illusions about the limitations of the current crop of generative AI models. Their talent for language distracts us from their shortcomings:</p> <blockquote> <p>Today’s models are really just predicting the next word in a text, he says. But they’re so good at this that they fool us. And because of their enormous memory capacity, they can seem to be reasoning, when in fact they’re merely regurgitating information they’ve already been trained on.</p> <p>“We are used to the idea that people or entities that can express themselves, or manipulate language, are smart—but that’s not true,” says LeCun. “You can manipulate language and not be smart, and that’s basically what LLMs are demonstrating.”</p> </blockquote> <p>As I’m fond of saying, these are <a href="https://bigmedium.com/speaking/sentient-design-josh-clark-talk.html#:~:text=When%20you%20ask%20generative%20AI%20for%20an%20answer%2C%20it’s%20not%20giving%20you%20the%20answer%3B%20it%20knows%20only%20how%20to%20give%20you%20something%20that%20looks%20like%20an%20answer">not answer machines, they’re dream machines</a>: “When you ask generative AI for an answer, it’s not giving you the answer; it knows only how to give you something that <em>looks</em> like an answer.”</p> <p>LLMs are fact-challenged and reasoning-incapable. But they are fantastic at language and communication. Instead of relying on them to give answers, the best bet is to rely on them to drive interfaces and interactions. Treat machine-generated results as signals, not facts. Communicate with them as interpreters, not truth-tellers.</p> <div class="bmc_external_link"> <a href="https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/yann-lecun-ai-meta-aa59e2f5?st=yRTcSQ&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink" class="btn btn--next"> This AI Pioneer Thinks AI Is Dumber Than a Cat | WSJ </a> </div> </div>   </section> <section class="moreinfo">  <h3>Read more about...</h3> <ul class="bmw_tags"> <li><a href="https://bigmedium.com/bm.tags/sentient-design/">sentient design</a></li> <li><a href="https://bigmedium.com/bm.tags/ai/" rel="tag">ai</a></li> <li><a href="https://bigmedium.com/bm.tags/algorithms/" rel="tag">algorithms</a></li> <li><a href="https://bigmedium.com/bm.tags/chat/" rel="tag">chat</a></li> </ul>  </section> </div> </article> </main> <section class="touts"> <div class="lc u--zero-pad"> <div class="standard-margin touts-3up"> <h2><a href="/ideas/" class="kicker kicker--invert">Ideas</a></h2>  <div class="tout-links tout-links--latest tout-links--sec-ideas"> <div class="bmw_link bma_page1685"> <div class="bma_mediatop"> <a href="https://bigmedium.com/ideas/workshop-sentient-design-ai-experiences.html" class="bma_thumb"><img src="https://bigmedium.com/bm.pix/sentent-design-workshop.4x3-250.png" class="bma_thumb" alt="Four devices lighting up with Sentient Design and machine intelligence" srcset="https://bigmedium.com/bm.pix/sentent-design-workshop.4x3-2000.png 1200w, https://bigmedium.com/bm.pix/sentent-design-workshop.4x3-1000.png 1000w, https://bigmedium.com/bm.pix/sentent-design-workshop.4x3-500.png 500w, https://bigmedium.com/bm.pix/sentent-design-workshop.4x3-250.png 250w" sizes="(min-width: 1050px) 449px, 50vw" /></a> </div> <div class="bma_body"> <div class="bma_body-wrap"> <a href="https://bigmedium.com/bm.tags/events-workshops/" class="kicker kicker--tout kicker--invert">events & workshops</a> <h3 class="bma_head"><a href="https://bigmedium.com/ideas/workshop-sentient-design-ai-experiences.html" title="Workshop: Craft AI-Powered Experiences with Sentient Design" rel="bookmark">Workshop: Craft AI-Powered Experiences with Sentient Design</a></h3> <div class="bma_desc">Reserve a private workshop to teach your product and design teams to imagine, design, and deliver AI-powered features and products.</div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="bmw_link bma_page1698"> <div class="bma_mediatop"> <a href="https://bigmedium.com/ideas/design-system-governance-bugs-design-discrepancies.html" class="bma_thumb"><img src="https://bigmedium.com/bm.pix/governance.4x3-250.png" class="bma_thumb" alt="Point" srcset="https://bigmedium.com/bm.pix/governance.4x3-2000.png 1066w, https://bigmedium.com/bm.pix/governance.4x3-1000.png 1000w, https://bigmedium.com/bm.pix/governance.4x3-500.png 500w, https://bigmedium.com/bm.pix/governance.4x3-250.png 250w" sizes="(min-width: 1050px) 449px, 50vw" /></a> </div> <div class="bma_body"> <div class="bma_body-wrap"> <a href="https://bigmedium.com/bm.tags/design-system/" class="kicker kicker--tout kicker--invert">design system</a> <h3 class="bma_head"><a href="https://bigmedium.com/ideas/design-system-governance-bugs-design-discrepancies.html" title="“The Design System Isn't Working for Me!”" rel="bookmark">“The Design System Isn't Working for Me!”</a></h3> <div class="bma_desc">What’s going on when a design system’s can’t get it to do what they need? 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