Topline
Elon Musk spent part of his Memorial Day holiday trading barbs with Meta’s AI chief Yann LeCun on X, widening a growing rift between the billionaire and the acclaimed scientist as he strives to recruit talent for his AI startup, xAI.
Key Facts
LeCun said on X that people should join Musk’s AI startup, xAI, if they can “stand a boss” who “spews crazy-ass conspiracy theories” and makes hyped-up claims that what you’ll be working on “will be solved next year (no pressure)” and “will kill everyone and must be stopped or paused (yay, vacation for 6 months!).”
The scientist’s criticism of Musk was in response to the billionaire urging people to come and work at xAI “if you believe in our mission of understanding the universe,” something he said “requires maximally rigorous pursuit of the truth, without regard to popularity or political correctness.”
When asked what he has against Musk, LeCun said “I like his cars, his rockets, his solar panels, and his satellite network,” but very much dislikes “his vengeful politics, his conspiracy theories, and his hype.”
When LeCun said he chose to work at Meta rather than start his own company because “I’m a scientist, not a business or product person,” Musk asked “what “science” have you done in the past 5 years,” dismissing LeCun’s more than 80 published technical papers since 2022 as “nothing.”
“You’re going soft. Try harder,” Musk jabbed, adding that LeCun is “just following orders,” sparking a rejoinder of “now you’re acting as if you were my boss.”
LeCun said “you don’t seem to understand how research works” and later added that “every single driving assistance system today” relies on research — convolutional neural networks — he introduced, including Musk’s EV firm Tesla, though the billionaire said they “don’t use CNNs much these days.”
Get Forbes Breaking News Text Alerts: We’re launching text message alerts so you’ll always know the biggest stories shaping the day’s headlines. Text “Alerts” to (201) 335-0739 or sign up here.
News Peg
LeCun is a prominent and influential computer scientist and widely considered to be one of the three “AI godfathers” for his foundational role in the field. In addition to leading Meta’s AI efforts, where he says they are pursuing a new generation of AI systems based on a “world modeling” approach, LeCun is also a professor at New York University. He has publicly feuded with Musk before, including urging the billionaire to distance himself from then-President Donald Trump in 2017 and rejecting his vision for the future trajectory of AI in March, when he said we are still “really far from human-level intelligence.” The latest spat comes as Musk works to lure AI talent to xAI in an effort to compete with the likes of Meta, OpenAI, Google and other leaders in the field following a Series B funding round bringing in $6 billion.
Crucial Quote
LeCun appears to have found the whole online feud with Musk amusing. When one X user described the spat as a poor look for the two tech leaders and said they would surely have something better to do with their time, LeCun said he was “On a holiday? During which I was stuck on an 8 hour transatlantic flight with free wifi? Pretty entertaining, I’d say.”
Tangent
“You guys need to settle this with a cage fight,” joked Google software engineer François Chollet, a reference to Musk’s infamous “cage match” challenge to fellow tech billionaire and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. LeCun dismissed the idea but said “I’d settle for a sailing race.” LeCun has previously posted pictures of himself and colleagues sailing on X and his website states he owns two sport catamarans, as well as sailing and racing larger boats with friends.
