Posted: 7/14/2018 Updated: 4/14/2019, 7/15/2018
Update Of 4/14/2019
As of today, Yann LeCun decided to cut me off from commenting on his public posts on his Facebook page. Very fitting for an intolerant leftist full of hubris. He is also one of those hard and naive leftists who can not handle the truth or criticism!
Before I forget, Yann LeCun was just named as one of three AI researchers to win the prestigious Alan Turing Award.
It is his loss not mine! :-)
A Vice President & Chief Scientist At Facebook
Yann LeCun is the VP & Chief AI Scientist at Facebook according to his LinkedIn profile. Yann LeCun is actually one of the superstars of AI & machine learning.
I have recently liked his Facebook page, therefore about two posts by Yann LeCun appeared on my Facebook page in the past few days. Both of them were openly and kind of directly against President Trump. Not only that, he essentially and unreflectively (I hope) regurgitated typical leftist/progressive and absurd talking points like Trump has a mental issue (e.g. wordplay on paranoid and pronoid) or Peter Strzok’s “fiery” response during the Congressional Hearing about him (LeCun later also commented favorably about Strzok’s possibly fake outrage that Trump insulted a Veteran).
Yann LeCun Responded On His Facebook Posting
I had challenged Yann LeCun on both of his recent Facebook postings listed above. Today (7/15/2018) he responded to one of his two Facebook postings:
“You don't need to be "extreme left leaning" to see that Trump is a lying, incompetent racist who has no sense of basic human decency and no respect for democratic institutions. Anyone, conservative or progressive, who is in favor of democracy and human decency can see that. Are you? Can you?” (emphasis added)
My response to his response in return: “Mon dieu, you entertain a narrow, highly distorted and biased view of the current president. I suspect, it has to do with your upbringing in France (myself I am from Germany). I further suspect, you have a very poor and incomplete understanding of U.S. history and the Declaration of Independence as well as the U.S. Constitution/State constitutions. Recherchez vous si'l vous plait. Merci!”
Zuckerberg About An Extremely Left Leaning Place
About April 10, 2018, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, gave a testimony in the U.S. Congress where among other things, he had the courage to admit “I understand where that concern is coming from because Facebook and the tech industry are located in Silicon Valley, which is an extremely left-leaning place” (source; emphasis added). I guess, he knew what he was talking about.
I personally do not like these awful show trials of business leaders in the U.S. Congress at all. It is often not much more than grandstanding and chest beating of our elected politicians to drag a business leader before them and lash out at them. In the case of Mark Zuckerberg this was certainly the case!
The Bubble Of Silicon Valley
They think they are so smart, open minded, and sophisticated, working on cutting/bleeding edge technology to the benefit of all mankind. They are so proud of the wisdom of crowd sourcing etc.
Turns out, that they rather live in a serious bubble and they are mightily trapped/stuck in really narrow minded groupthink!
No Harm Intended
I don’t mean any harm to or to judge Yann LeCun’s political views. Everyone is entitled to their opinions! His professional work in AI is excellent/outstanding and greatly admired by many, including myself.
