Vice president and head of Meta's AI business, Jan LeCun, criticized billionaire Elon Musk, calling him a "danger to society" and a propagator of "insane conspiracy theories."
The public conflict began on May 27, when a representative of the corporation ridiculed a businessman's post about recruiting employees to the artificial intelligence startup xAI.
Join xAI if you can stand a boss who:
- claims that what you are working on will be solved next year (no pressure).
- claims that what you are working on will kill everyone and must be stopped or paused (yay, vacation for 6 months!).
- claims to want a \"maximally rigorous pursuit…
"Join xAI if you can stand a boss who [...] claims to want the 'most rigorous search for truth' but spews crazy conspiracy theories on his own social platform," he wrote.
After that, Musk questioned LeCun's competence, asking what "science he has been doing for the last five years."
What “science” have you done in the past 5 years?
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 27, 2024In response, the vice president of Meta stated that he had published "more than 80 technical articles" since 2020, but the billionaire was not convinced. In another post, Musk hinted that his opponent lacks the acumen to run a company, so he "just follows orders."
On June 2, LeCun published a long post that was titled: "My opinion about Elon Musk."
My opinion of @elonmusk
I like his cars (I own a 2015 S, and 2023 S), his rockets, his solar energy systems, and his satellite communication system.
I also like his positions on open source and patents.
But I very much disagree with him on a number of issues.
I disagree with…
The developer started by owning two Tesla cars and respecting other technologies of the companies of the richest man in the world:
"I also like his stance on open source and patents. But I completely disagree with him on a number of issues. I don't agree with the way he treats his research staff."
According to LeCun, Musk also created an extra "hype" with promises of the appearance of real AI by 2025. He then accused the businessman of undermining democracy.
"Say what you want about the "traditional media", but you will not be able to have reliable information without professional journalists working for a free and diverse press. Democracy cannot exist without it, so only the authoritarian enemies of democracy scold the media," the Meta top manager believes.
LeCun is confident that Musk "does not hesitate to spread insane conspiracy theories as long as they serve his interests." For example, the businessman supported PizzaGate and claimed that "illegal immigrants are undermining the US elections."
There has been no response to the long critical post yet.
In November 2023, the head of OpenAI, Sam Altman, and Musk argued about the sense of humor of chatbots. The first expressed skepticism about the humorous abilities of the Grok neural network from xAI. The billionaire did not leave the attack unanswered.
Recall that in May 2024, Musk called artificial intelligence his main fear. He stated that the development of technology could deprive humanity of the need to work.