What is Yann LeCun's plan after leaving Meta?

Yann LeCun, the Turing Award winner and Meta's chief AI scientist, is planning to leave the company in the coming months to found his own AI startup.

How is Mark Zuckerberg reshaping Meta's AI operations?

Zuckerberg is pivoting away from the longer-term research work of Meta's Fundamental AI Research Lab (Fair), which LeCun has headed since 2013, to focus on more rapidly rolling out AI models and products. He has hired new AI leaders, including Alexandr Wang, to lead a "superintelligence" team and has formed an exclusive team called TBD Lab to develop the next iteration of Meta's large language models.

What are the key differences between LeCun and Zuckerberg's AI visions?

LeCun has argued that the large language models Zuckerberg has prioritized are "useful" but will never be able to reason and plan like humans. Instead, LeCun has focused on developing an entirely new generation of AI systems, known as "world models," that he hopes will power machines with human-level intelligence.

Home / Technology / Turing Award Winner Yann LeCun Quits Meta, Seeks Funding for New AI Venture

Turing Award Winner Yann LeCun Quits Meta, Seeks Funding for New AI Venture

11 Nov

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Summary

Yann LeCun, Meta's chief AI scientist, plans to leave the company
LeCun is in talks to raise funds for a new AI startup
Meta's CEO Mark Zuckerberg is overhauling the company's AI operations

Turing Award Winner Yann LeCun Quits Meta, Seeks Funding for New AI Venture

In a significant development, Yann LeCun, Meta's chief artificial intelligence scientist and a Turing Award winner, is planning to leave the social media giant in the coming months to found his own startup. This move comes as Meta's founder, Mark Zuckerberg, seeks to radically overhaul the company's AI operations.

LeCun, who has headed Meta's Fundamental AI Research Lab (Fair) since 2013, is now reporting to Alexandr Wang, the 28-year-old founder of data-labeling startup Scale AI, whom Zuckerberg hired to lead a new "superintelligence" team at Meta. This shift in leadership reflects Zuckerberg's pivot away from the longer-term research work of Fair to focus on more rapidly rolling out AI models and products, as he believes Meta has fallen behind the competition.