I'd guess that wink is hinting that Yann LeCun might've had something to do with this research. Whether that's true or not, I have no idea.

(Yann LeCun is a Turing award winner for his work in deep learning)

Yann LeCun did not, otherwise he’d be a coauthor. As it is, this was a collaboration between NYU and Facebook AI Research, with multiple authors working at both institutions.

My understanding is that academic authorship credit is political: authors don’t always contribute, and contributors don’t always get credit. Is this not the case?

Not really. Usually the politics goes the other way - people getting an author slot because they are the head of the department or something.

I believe I covered that—authors who don’t contribute.

Also, I know too many angry grad students to believe that contributors always get credit.