Tom Chivers expresses his frustration with Yann LeCun:

I also find his comments here frustrating, but I want to offer another possible explanation.

Even though basically no one in the AI Safety community makes this argument, unfortunately, many people in the general population think about AI this way.

Yann probably thinks that it is a higher priority for him to address this belief held by a much larger range of people than it is for him to address the AI Safety crowd's arguments.

He may think that he's in a situation where if he focused on addressing the best arguments, he would lose the political battle due to naive people believing the "strawman" arguments.

In light of this, I don't think it's completely accurate to say he's addressing a strawman. I find it frustrating as well and I wish he'd address us directly. But I also understand the incentives that lead him to do what he does.