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20VC: Yann LeCun on Why Artificial Intelligence Will Not Dominate Humanity, Why No Economists Believe All Jobs Will Be Replaced by AI, Why the Size of Models Matters Less and Less & Why Open Models Beat Closed Models

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May 15, 2023

Yann LeCun, VP & Chief AI Scientist at Meta and recipient of the 2018 ACM Turing Award, shares his journey through the world of AI. He dismisses fears of AI dominance, asserting that digital assistants will play a crucial role in the future. Yann discusses the shift from closed to open AI models, emphasizing collaboration for innovation. He reflects on humanity's fascination with job loss due to AI, arguing that new opportunities will arise. Ultimately, he sees a promising future where AI enhances human creativity and intelligence.

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ANECDOTE

Yann LeCun's AI Origin Story

Yann LeCun's interest in AI was sparked by a philosophy book debating nature versus nurture in language acquisition.
He then discovered the perceptron, an early machine learning system, and was fascinated by the concept of machines that could learn.

INSIGHT

Persistence in the Face of Disinterest

Despite years of disinterest in neural networks, LeCun, Hinton, and Bengio persisted.
They believed these methods would eventually become prominent, and they worked to revive the community's interest.

INSIGHT

Continuous Evolution vs. Splashy Events

Current AI progress appears as a continuous evolution to researchers.
Public perception is marked by splashy events like ChatGPT, but the underlying advancements are more gradual.

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Yann LeCun is VP & Chief AI Scientist at Meta and Silver Professor at NYU affiliated with the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences & the Center for Data Science. He was the founding Director of FAIR and of the NYU Center for Data Science. After a postdoc in Toronto he joined AT&T Bell Labs in 1988, and AT&T Labs in 1996 as Head of Image Processing Research. He joined NYU as a professor in 2003 and Meta/Facebook in 2013. He is the recipient of the 2018 ACM Turing Award for "conceptual and engineering breakthroughs that have made deep neural networks a critical component of computing". Huge thanks to David Marcus for helping to make this happen.

In Today's Episode with Yann LeCun:

1.) The Road to AI OG:

How did Yann first hear about machine learning and make his foray into the world of AI?
For 10 years plus, machine learning was in the shadows, how did Yan not get discouraged when the world did not appreciate the power of AI and ML?
What does Yann know now that he wishes he had known when he started his career in machine learning?

2.) The Next Five Years of AI: Hope or Horror:

Why does Yann believe it is nonsense that AI is dangerous?
Why does Yann think it is crazy to assume that AI will even want to dominate humans?
Why does Yann believe digital assistants will rule the world?
If digital assistants do rule the world, what interface wins? Search? Chat? What happens to Google when digital assistants rule the world?

3.) Will Anyone Have Jobs in a World of AI:

From speaking to many economists, why does Yann state "no economist thinks AI will replace jobs"?
What jobs does Yann expect to be created in the next generation of the AI economy?
What jobs does Yann believe are under more immediate threat/impact?
Why does Yann expect the speed of transition to be much slower than people anticipate?
Why does Yann believe Elon Musk is wrong to ask for the pausing of AI developments?

4.) Open or Closed: Who Wins:

Why does Yann know that the open model will beat the closed model?
Why is it superior for knowledge gathering and idea generation?
What are some core historical precedents that have proved this to be true?
What did Yann make of the leaked Google Memo last week?

5.) Startup vs Incumbent: Who Wins:

Who does Yann believe will win the next 5 years of AI; startups or incumbents?
How important are large models to winning in the next 12 months?
In what ways does regulation and legal stop incumbents? How has he seen this at Meta?
Has his role at Meta ever stopped him from being impartial? How does Yan deal with that?