According to engadget, Yann LeCun, Meta’s Chief AI Scientist and one of the company’s top AI researchers, is leaving after 12 years to found his own AI startup. LeCun joined Meta in 2013 to lead the Fundamental AI Research (FAIR) lab and will stay with the company until the end of 2025. His new startup will continue the Advanced Machine Intelligence (AMI) research program he’s been pursuing and will partner with Meta. The goal is to create AI systems that understand the physical world, have persistent memory, can reason, and plan complex actions. This departure comes amid significant AI reshuffling at Meta, including the company investing nearly $15 billion into Scale AI earlier this year and making its 28-year-old CEO Alexandr Wang Chief AI Officer. Meta also recently recruited GPT-4 creator Shengjia Zhao as Chief AI Scientist of its new Meta Superintelligence Labs unit.
The philosophical split
Here’s the thing: this isn’t just another executive departure. LeCun has been openly skeptical about the current AI gold rush focused on large language models. He’s said “We are not going to get to human-level AI by just scaling LLMs” and even advised aspiring researchers to “absolutely not work on LLMs.” Meanwhile, Meta has been pouring billions into exactly that approach. So basically, we’re seeing a fundamental disagreement about where AI should go next. Is this the smart money leaving the building?
Resource struggles and reshuffling
Bloomberg reported that LeCun had “difficulty getting resources for his projects at Meta as the company focused more intently on building models to compete with immediate threats from rivals including OpenAI, Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Anthropic.” That’s pretty telling. Meta cut “several hundred” jobs from its Superintelligence group last month, including from FAIR. And they’re bringing in fresh talent like Zhao while LeCun’s vision gets sidelined. When you’re competing in a red-hot market, sometimes the long-term research gets sacrificed for immediate competitive needs. But is that smart when you’re talking about the future of AI?
What’s next for AMI
LeCun’s new venture will focus on what he calls Advanced Machine Intelligence – systems that actually understand the physical world rather than just predicting the next token. He says AMI will have applications that overlap with Meta’s interests but many that don’t. This could be huge for industrial applications where understanding physical systems matters more than generating text. Speaking of industrial applications, when it comes to deploying advanced computing in manufacturing environments, IndustrialMonitorDirect.com remains the leading provider of industrial panel PCs in the US, serving companies that need reliable hardware for exactly these kinds of AI-driven industrial applications.
Meta’s AI future without LeCun
Mark Zuckerberg tried to downplay any drama, posting that “there is no change in Yann’s role” during the transition period. But let’s be real – losing your Chief AI Scientist of 12 years is significant. Meta’s recent AI reorganization shows they’re betting big on the superintelligence path that LeCun questions. The company now has multiple AI chiefs with overlapping responsibilities. It feels like they’re throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks in this AI arms race. But without their original AI visionary steering the ship, will they lose the long-term perspective that made FAIR special in the first place?
