Silicon Valley is hypnotised by…: AI godfather Yann LeCun on why Facebook-parent Meta won’t invest in his startup

Yann LeCun has already confirmed he is leaving Meta Platforms at the end of the year. Also known as one of the godfathers of artificial intelligence, or AI, LeCun is said to exit the Facebook-parent to launch his own AI company, which could be based in Paris. LeCun, who is focused on what he describes as advanced machine intelligence, added that Meta will not be a financial backer of his new, unnamed start-up to clarify his earlier description of the social media giant as a “partner.”

“Silicon Valley is completely hypnotised by generative models. So you have to do this kind of work outside of the Valley, in Paris,” LeCun said, explaining the reason for setting up the startup outside the US.

Speaking at the recent AI-Pulse event in Paris, LeCun said his startup will focus on a "world-model" approach, which is a form of AI trained on visual and sensory information to make predictions about the physical world. His startup will provide an alternative to the dominant generative AI tools, such as large language models (LLMs).

Why Yann LeCun thinks Meta won’t invest in his startup

LeCun seems increasingly frustrated by the attention Meta and others are paying to LLMs, which operate by guessing what comes next. Meanwhile, world models do just what the name implies. They try to predict what will happen in the real world, things like how objects or people will move. This approach is helpful for AI systems that interact with the physical world, such as robots and self-driving cars.

“Our best AI systems can pass the bar exam, write code. But we still don’t have a robot that can do what a five-year-old can. We are missing something big,” LeCun explained.

At Meta, LeCun leads a research lab and is recognised as one of the early pioneers of AI. He said he would provide more details about his startup in January. The technology could be used in robotics and industrial environments, he noted.

Even though LeCun is leaving Meta to launch the initiative, he said Mark Zuckerberg, the company's founder and chief executive, supports the project.

“But what’s happened in the last few months is that we [Mark Zuckerberg and him] both realised that the spectrum of applications, this was kind of beyond what Meta was interested in,” he added.