Comment by dcolkitt
6 years ago
> He works for Facebook. He's paid with Facebook money. So why draw this imaginary line between research and production? He is paid to do research that will go into production.
This is a silly standard to uphold. The sizable bulk of American academic researchers are at least partially funded by grants made from the US federal budget.
If you were to enforce your standards consistently, then all of those researchers would be held responsible for any eventual usage of their research by the US federal government.
I really doubt you apply the same standard. So, the criticism mostly seems to be an isolated demand for rigor. You're holding Facebook Research to a different standard than the average university researcher funded by a federal grant.
This seems almost purposefully disingenuous to me.
Yann LeCun isn't receiving a partial research grant from Facebook. He's literally an employee of Facebook. His job title is "VP & Chief AI Scientist" (at least according to LinkedIn).
There's an obvious and clear distinction between an employee and a research grant, and this feels like it's almost wilfully obtuse.
Did you read what I wrote?
I don't think his argument is true. (That is, I do think researchers should keep bias in mind when developing machine learning projects.) (Regardless of their funding sources.)
Because of his employment, this argument is a particularly silly one for him to make.