This is not very surprising, given his background in handwriting and image recognition.

Could you elaborate on the connections between image recognition / interpretation and prediction? For this reply, it's fine to be only roughly accurate. (In case an inability to be sufficiently rigorous is what prevented you from sketching the connection.)

...naively, I think of intelligence as, say, an ability to identify and solve problems. Is LeCun saying perhaps that this is equal to prediction, or not as important as prediction, or that he's more interested in working on the latter?