Jon Stokes

I don't know LeCun personally, but there's a lot of backstory here that this polemical clickbait is leaving out.

- LeCun has a history of getting mobbed by "AI ethics" types on Twitter, and in the past he was very deferential to these folks, and even left Twitter for a while. I wrote about some of that here: https://www.jonstokes.com/p/googles-colosseum

- The MIT Tech Review, which is the author's main source here apart from Twitter, is techlash rag, and they went through a long phase where they only published anti-AI stuff from the "AI ethics" people. Most of those writers I used to follow there on this topic have since moved on to other pubs, and the EIC responsible for this mess has moved on to run WIRED. But it seems they're still publishing the same kind of stuff even with new staff and management. They have exactly one and only one editorial line on AI in general and LeCun in specific, and that is "lol AI so racist and overhyped!" It's boring and predictable.

- LeCun has a longstanding beef with Marcus, and the two treat each other pretty poorly in public. Marcus seems to have a personal axe to grind with LeCun. Given that Marcus has been leading the mob on this, it's not shocking that LeCun got crappy with him.

- Emily Bender, Grady Booch, and the other folks cited in the MIT Tech Review piece all, to a person, have exactly one line on AI, everywhere at all times and in all circumstances, and it's the same one I mentioned above. You could code a bot with a lookup…

All of that being said, I wrongly predicted that Russia wouldn't invade, because I rightly predicted the invasion would be a disaster for Russia.

A CCP invasion of Taiwan would be even more disastrous for the PRC. They would need to conduct an amphibious assault, gain air superiority against "the quad" (no easy task), and would be unlikely to gain control of TSMC.[0]

I think my reason for miscalculating the Russian invasion had to do with reasons unrelated to the actual military campaign: Putin felt that Russia's culture was existentially threatened by the West, its ability to invade was monotonically decreasing, and believed that a largely ineffectual, predictable US administration that appears to follow the mantra "speak loudly and carry a paper straw" wouldn't resort to extreme measures to stop Russia. In other words, invasion made total sense from a certain political-cultural calculus.

I'm much more worried about the CCP, who have become increasingly ultra-nationalist, including concentration camps and racial-superiority indoctrination in schools (including something like a "stabbed in the back" narrative). The political crackdowns have become quite severe, and the Chinese financial is in bad shape, so an attempted invasion of Taiwan may increasingly be the thing the Party sees as bolstering their position domestically.

The invasion would still be a disaster, and I have a feeling that the US & Taiwan already have plans to relocate the personnel from Taiwan's TSMC…

Just dropping some interesting posts I found when researching this general area earlier today:

https://unherd.com/2021/07/will-china-invade-taiwan/

Will China invade Taiwan? A panel of superforecasters considers the likelihood of an imminent global conflict

https://www.jonstokes.com/p/why-a-chinese-invasion-of-taiwan (Jon Stokes, the Ars Technica founder)

Why a Chinese invasion of Taiwan would be a catastrophe for China and the world. If they do it, it won't be for the microchips