The Ledger

Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.

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why aren't all 25 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable

Insight
LeCun: Inventing new things requires skills language models cannot achieve
“Inventing new things, you know, requires a type of skill and abilities that you're not gonna get from NLMs.”
Yann LeCun May 30, 2025 ▶ 1:17 Yann LeCun: We Won't Reach AGI By Scaling Up LLMS
Insight
LeCun: Large language models are incapable of inventing new things
“We also know that they can hallucinate facts that aren't true but they're really, in their purest form, they are incapable of inventing new things.”
Yann LeCun Mar 19, 2025 ▶ 1:45 Why Can't AI Make Its Own Discoveries? — With Yann LeCun
Insight
LeCun: Startups absolutely cannot do fundamental research due to funding
“You can't, absolutely cannot do research in a startup. You just can't because you just don't have the funds, right?”
Yann LeCun Jan 25, 2023 ▶ 4:58 Is ChatGPT A Step Toward Human-Level AI? — With Yann LeCun, Meta Chief AI Scientist
Insight
LeCun: Current LLMs have no real knowledge of physical reality
“Because the understanding that those, the current systems have of you know, the underlying reality that language expresses is extremely shallow. So those systems have only been trained with text a huge amount of text. So they can regurgitate texts that they've…”
Yann LeCun Jan 25, 2023 ▶ 7:53 Is ChatGPT A Step Toward Human-Level AI? — With Yann LeCun, Meta Chief AI Scientist
Insight
LeCun: AI models should legally be allowed to emulate artistic styles
“Human artists are Absolutely authorized to get inspired and straight down copy someone else's style. that happens absolutely all the time in in art. And so would it make sense to apply a different rule for, let's call them artificial artists, right? That, tha…”
Yann LeCun Jan 25, 2023 ▶ 56:59 Is ChatGPT A Step Toward Human-Level AI? — With Yann LeCun, Meta Chief AI Scientist
Insight
LeCun: Autonomous driving proves achieving the last percent of reliability is hardest
“It's basically you know, why we had super impressive, you know, autonomous driving demos 10 years ago But we still don't have level five self-driving cars, right? It's the last mile that's really difficult so to speak for cars. You know, it's, you know, the la…”
Yann LeCun May 30, 2025 ▶ 5:39 Yann LeCun: We Won't Reach AGI By Scaling Up LLMS
Insight
LeCun: AGI will not be a single event or come from one company
“There's not going to be like a day Before which there is no AGI and after which we have AGI. This is not going to be an event. It's going to be continuous conceptual ideas that as time goes by are going to be made bigger and to scale and going to work better, …”
Yann LeCun Mar 19, 2025 ▶ 32:39 Why Can't AI Make Its Own Discoveries? — With Yann LeCun
Insight
LeCun: Only large, profitable corporations can economically sustain industry AI research
“The economic model The only one I know outside of universities and philanthropy is industry research lab inside of a large company that has, that is profitable and is sufficiently well-established in this market that it can think for the long term and invest i…”
Yann LeCun Jan 25, 2023 ▶ 4:22 Is ChatGPT A Step Toward Human-Level AI? — With Yann LeCun, Meta Chief AI Scientist
Insight
LeCun: Most human knowledge is non-linguistic, not captured in text
“How much of human knowledge is present and described in text? And my answer to this is a tiny portion. Like most of human knowledge is not actually language related. It's completely non-linguistic.”
Yann LeCun Jan 25, 2023 ▶ 10:06 Is ChatGPT A Step Toward Human-Level AI? — With Yann LeCun, Meta Chief AI Scientist
Insight
LeCun: LLMs lack internal world models for physical prediction
“LLMs do not have that. They don't have any internal model of the world that allows them to predict.”
Yann LeCun Jan 25, 2023 ▶ 15:43 Is ChatGPT A Step Toward Human-Level AI? — With Yann LeCun, Meta Chief AI Scientist
Insight
LeCun: Prediction and planning from forecasted consequences define intelligence
“What characterizes intelligence is the ability to predict, first of all, and then the ability to use those prediction Those predictions as a tool to plan by predicting the consequences of actions you might take. Prediction is the essence of intelligence.”
Yann LeCun Jan 25, 2023 ▶ 38:52 Is ChatGPT A Step Toward Human-Level AI? — With Yann LeCun, Meta Chief AI Scientist
Insight
LeCun: Supervised and reinforcement learning do not reflect biological learning
“The type of learning that we are currently able to reproduce in machine, which is supervised learning and reinforcement learning do not seem to Reflect what we observe in humans and animals. There is another type of learning, another paradigm of learning that …”
Yann LeCun Dec 10, 2021 ▶ 5:04 Daniel Kahneman and Yann LeCun: How To Get AI To Think Like Humans (Full Episode)
Insight
LeCun: Current machine learning replicates System 1 thinking without reasoning
“Currently what we can do in machine learning is more like the system when the stuff that, you know, here is an input, here is an output that does not re require reasoning if you want.”
Yann LeCun Dec 10, 2021 ▶ 6:01 Daniel Kahneman and Yann LeCun: How To Get AI To Think Like Humans (Full Episode)
Insight
LeCun: Face Detection in Cortex Is Rapidly Learned, Not Innately Hardwired
“Face detection can be learned in minutes. If you're a baby, your vergence is bad. Your focus is, is basically fixed at a relatively short range. So the only thing you see during the first weeks of your life are faces and nipples, essentially. So, you know, and…”
Yann LeCun Dec 10, 2021 ▶ 18:41 Daniel Kahneman and Yann LeCun: How To Get AI To Think Like Humans (Full Episode)
Insight
LeCun: Human and animal reasoning is mental simulation, not logic
“A lot of reasoning in certainly in animals and in humans is not logical reasoning. It's basically simulation. Or analogical reasoning, which kind of similar.”
Yann LeCun Dec 10, 2021 ▶ 38:30 Daniel Kahneman and Yann LeCun: How To Get AI To Think Like Humans (Full Episode)
Insight
LeCun: Most Human Knowledge Is Not Represented in Any Text
“Like most of human knowledge is not represented in any text in existence.”
Yann LeCun Dec 10, 2021 ▶ 53:06 Daniel Kahneman and Yann LeCun: How To Get AI To Think Like Humans (Full Episode)
Insight
LeCun: Self-Supervised Learning Forms the Bulk of Natural and Machine Intelligence
“Most of what we learn as humans and animals and in, in the future that machine will learn is learned in this kind of self-supervised manner, basically by watching the world go by and by, you know, taking an action once in a while, but in a, you know, non-task …”
Yann LeCun Dec 10, 2021 ▶ 1:03:10 Daniel Kahneman and Yann LeCun: How To Get AI To Think Like Humans (Full Episode)
Insight
LeCun: Humans and animals reason through mental models, not token space
“A big issue there is, is that when humans or animals reason, We don't do it in token space. In other words, when we reason, we don't have to, you know, generate a text that expresses our solution and then generate another one, and then generate another one, an…”
Yann LeCun Mar 19, 2025 ▶ 8:44 Why Can't AI Make Its Own Discoveries? — With Yann LeCun
Insight
LeCun: 'AGI' is a misnomer because human intelligence is specialized
“I don't like the term AGI, artificial general intelligence, because I think human intelligence is very specialized. So if you want to designate the type of intelligence that we observe in, in humans by general, that's a complete misnomer.”
Yann LeCun Jan 25, 2023 ▶ 1:29 Is ChatGPT A Step Toward Human-Level AI? — With Yann LeCun, Meta Chief AI Scientist
Insight
LeCun: Incumbents avoid releasing hallucinating AI due to reputational risk
“Whereas if you are Meta or Google, you could think about like, you know, putting out a system of this type that, you know, is going to spew nonsense. And, you know, because you are a large company, you have a lot to lose by, you know, people kind of making fun…”
Yann LeCun Jan 25, 2023 ▶ 19:37 Is ChatGPT A Step Toward Human-Level AI? — With Yann LeCun, Meta Chief AI Scientist
Insight
LeCun: AI deployment falters on the last reliability mile, like self-driving cars
“Beyond the impressive demos, actually deploying systems that are reliable is where things tend to falter in, in the use of computers and technologies and particularly AI. This is not you. It's basically you know, why we had super impressive, you know, autonomo…”
Yann LeCun Mar 19, 2025 ▶ 23:38 Why Can't AI Make Its Own Discoveries? — With Yann LeCun
Insight
LeCun: Engineers cannot directly build intelligence, machines must learn it
“There is no intelligence without learning. And in the engineering world, it's almost true as well. And it's probably because I'm either lazy or not smart enough to, that I think that as human engineers, we cannot actually directly conceive and construct an int…”
Yann LeCun Dec 10, 2021 ▶ 4:09 Daniel Kahneman and Yann LeCun: How To Get AI To Think Like Humans (Full Episode)
Insight
LeCun: Current AI systems are brittle due to task specialization
“Well I mean, I agree with Danny that current current AI systems are, you know, very specialized, and that makes them very brittle because they're trained for one task or maybe a collection of tasks.”
Yann LeCun Dec 10, 2021 ▶ 11:09 Daniel Kahneman and Yann LeCun: How To Get AI To Think Like Humans (Full Episode)
Insight
LeCun: Deep neural nets are hierarchical Bayesian systems when viewed properly
“Multi-layer, you know, deep neural nets are hierarchical Bayesian systems. If you kind of view them the right way, and there are certain forms of them that are actually explicitly Bayesian.”
Yann LeCun Dec 10, 2021 ▶ 33:06 Daniel Kahneman and Yann LeCun: How To Get AI To Think Like Humans (Full Episode)
Insight
LeCun: Hand-engineering systems from scratch caused decline of classical AI
“All those things would be built entirely by hand. Okay. Completely engineered. And that was essentially that, that necessity was one of the reason of the kind of decrease in interest in sort of good old fashioned AI.”
Yann LeCun Dec 10, 2021 ▶ 36:52 Daniel Kahneman and Yann LeCun: How To Get AI To Think Like Humans (Full Episode)
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