Yann LeCun, Meta’s chief AI scientist, has gained a name for debunking the AI “smarter than humans” scare. The scare is driven by, among others, this year’s Nobelist Geoffrey Hinton. Oh, and Elon Musk as well.

Wall Street Journal technology columnist Christopher Mims talked to LeCun about that earlier this month:

LeCun thinks that today’s AI models, while useful, are far from rivaling the intelligence of our pets, let alone us. When I ask whether we should be afraid that AIs will soon grow so powerful that they pose a hazard to us, he quips: “You’re going to have to pardon my French, but that’s complete B.S.” …

LeCun thinks AI is a powerful tool. Throughout our interview, he cites many examples of how AI has become enormously important at Meta, and has driven its scale and revenue to the point that it’s now valued at around $1.5 trillion. AI is integral to everything from real-time translation to content moderation at Meta, which in addition to its Fundamental AI Research team, known as FAIR, has a product-focused AI group called GenAI that is pursuing ever-better versions of its large language models.

“This AI Pioneer Thinks AI Is Dumber Than a Cat,” Wall Street Journal, October 11, 2024

But …

At the same time, he is convinced that today’s AIs aren’t, in any meaningful sense, intelligent—and that many others in the field, especially at AI startups, are ready to extrapolate its recent development in ways that he finds ridiculous.

If LeCun’s views are right, it spells trouble for some of today’s hottest startups, not to mention the tech giants pouring tens of billions of dollars into AI. Many of them are banking on the idea that today’s large language model-based AIs, like those from OpenAI, are on the near-term path to creating so-called “artificial general intelligence,” or AGI, that broadly exceeds human-level intelligence.

OpenAI’s Sam Altman last month said we could have AGI within “a few thousand days.” Elon Musk has said it could happen by 2026.

”Dumber Than a Cat,”

LeCun says no. He doesn’t say that super-intelligent AI is impossible but he does say that the researchers are on the wrong track: We can’t make machines smarter by cramming them with more chips and data.

About the cat? Mims tells us,

He likes the cat metaphor. Felines, after all, have a mental model of the physical world, persistent memory, some reasoning ability and a capacity for planning, he says. None of these qualities are present in today’s “frontier” AIs, including those made by Meta itself.

Of course, cat intelligence is typically underrated:

But wait, what? Cats can solve harder problems than dogs? Read on:

“Studies conducted on both cats and dogs give us further insight into which are smarter. According to one done in 2009, cats are not be as good at counting or identifying quantities of things as dogs or fish are. Yet in another study, it was discovered that cats are able to follow puzzles, but unlike dogs who will seek help from their owners, cats will simply keep trying until they get it. So, where dogs are definitely the more social of the two and are more likely to want to please their owners, cats are much more independent and prefer to do things for themselves. – ‘How Smart are Cats?’ at Purina UK”

But then, as we saw when we looked at dog intelligence, humans have never bred or encouraged dogs to solve their own problems but rather to wait for human direction. A better comparison of feline vs. canine intelligence might be between cats and wolves. Both species have usually had to solve their own problems…

“In what ways are cats intelligent?” Mind Matters News

More of LeCun’s thoughts on AI vs. cats here:

You may also wish to read: Nobel Prize winner warns AI may outsmart humans. But wait… It’s hard to rule out the possibility that the Nobel Committee figures that if Hinton is right, they will have been prophetic.