Yann LeCun—LeCun publicly opposed California's SB 1047 AI safety bill, calling it based on 'illusion of existential risk'
In mid-2024, Yann LeCun vocally opposed California's SB 1047 AI safety bill. He argued that making technology developers liable for bad uses would 'simply stop technology development' and would 'certainly stop the distribution of open source AI platforms, which will kill the entire AI ecosystem.' He called the bill based on an 'illusion of existential risk pushed by a handful of delusional think-tanks' and warned that without open-source AI, 'AI start-ups will just die.'
Scoring Impact
| Topic | Direction | Relevance | Contribution |
|---|---|---|---|
| AI Oversight | -against | primary | -1.00 |
| Open Source | +toward | secondary | +0.50 |
| Overall incident score = | -0.221 | ||
Score = avg(topic contributions) × significance (high ×1.5) × confidence (0.59)
Evidence (1 signal)
LeCun slammed California's SB 1047 as based on 'illusion of existential risk' and warned it would kill open-source AI
LeCun argued that SB 1047 would 'simply stop technology development' and 'certainly stop the distribution of open source AI platforms, which will kill the entire AI ecosystem.' He called it based on 'illusion of existential risk pushed by a handful of delusional think-tanks' and warned that without open-source AI, 'AI start-ups will just die.'