Connectionists: An open letter to Geoffrey Hinton: A call for civilized, moderated debate

[Levine, Daniel S]

Raising a point in a discussion always includes getting attention.  So there is nothing necessarily wrong with that.

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________________________________
From: Connectionists <connectionists-bounces at mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu> on behalf of Gary Marcus <gary.marcus at nyu.edu>
Sent: Saturday, February 10, 2024 10:15:28 AM
To: Geoffrey Hinton <geoffrey.hinton at gmail.com>
Cc: connectionists at mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu <connectionists at mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu>
Subject: Re: Connectionists: An open letter to Geoffrey Hinton: A call for civilized, moderated debate


[External]

More seriously, it is sad that we can’t have an intelligent, moderated discussion.
Gary

On Feb 10, 2024, at 07:42, Gary Marcus <gary.marcus at nyu.edu> wrote:


Oh lookie, another potshot at the end of an apology for taking potshots.

That’s too perfect!

Gary


On Feb 10, 2024, at 07:33, Geoffrey Hinton <geoffrey.hinton at gmail.com> wrote:


I am sorry that i took a potshot at you. I will do my best not to do it again. Your aim in life seems to be to get attention and I regret facilitating this.

Geoff


On Sat, Feb 10, 2024 at 8:14 AM Gary Marcus <gary.marcus at nyu.edu<mailto:gary.marcus at nyu.edu>> wrote:
Dear Geoff,

Please stop taking potshots. Face me.

You say I am irrelevant, yet you attack (and misrepresent) me regularly in your talks, including both this morning at The Vector Institute, and your “just weights” riff in the Fall. On your web page, you have more mentions of me than Yann LeCun. (What greater measure of relevance could there be?)

To make it easy for you, I will come to Toronto, on your home turf. (Perhaps Vector Institute and Web Summit could co-host).

We will get a neutral moderator, and a huge audience. And we can fight together for the things we are actually both concerned about, around AI safety, and make a huge statement by doing so.

The world will learn from the debate—and also from our overlap.  It will be win-win for the world.

— Gary


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