I haven't followed the original debate, so not sure if this was a part of the argument against LeCun, but it could be:
The issue is LeCun makes an argument about fundamental research, but is not exactly a fundamental researcher, and does not necessarily represent fundamental research.
As an analogy, if you are a researcher of general chemistry, persumably there is no issue. However, if your research is specifically about chemistry for improving bullets, and you produce working prototypes, then some might say you should be subject to some regulation as a part of the arms industry. I'm not saying this is the right thing, just that such a point could be made. LeCun is arguably much more the second kind of researcher than the first. The research he represents is "better ways to recognize faces", not "statistical properties of natural images".
To take another example, there is an enormous amount of regulation in, say, medical research. And in this case there are good reasons for that. Gebru could be possibly arguing for something similar in say face recognition.
The issue is LeCun makes an argument about fundamental research, but is not exactly a fundamental researcher, and does not necessarily represent fundamental research.
As an analogy, if you are a researcher of general chemistry, persumably there is no issue. However, if your research is specifically about chemistry for improving bullets, and you produce working prototypes, then some might say you should be subject to some regulation as a part of the arms industry. I'm not saying this is the right thing, just that such a point could be made. LeCun is arguably much more the second kind of researcher than the first. The research he represents is "better ways to recognize faces", not "statistical properties of natural images".
To take another example, there is an enormous amount of regulation in, say, medical research. And in this case there are good reasons for that. Gebru could be possibly arguing for something similar in say face recognition.