Yann LeCun, vice president and chief AI scientist at Meta, appears before the US Senate Intelligence Committee in Washington, September 19, 2023. KEVIN DIETSCH / GETTY IMAGES / AFP
A pillar of artificial intelligence (AI) and of Meta is considering leaving the company: Yann LeCun, currently vice president and chief AI scientist, intends to depart to launch a start-up, according to a Financial Times report published Tuesday, November 11. He has discussed this project with potential recruits and investors, The Wall Street Journal reported, noting, however, that these plans could still change and that LeCun could remain at Meta. Contacted for comment, both LeCun and the company declined to respond. The 65-year-old Frenchman is considered one of the founders of modern AI and, along with Yoshua Bengio and Geoffrey Hinton, was awarded the prestigious Turing Award in 2019 for his contributions to machine learning. As early as 2013, Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg personally convinced LeCun to join his company, where LeCun created the internal AI research lab, FAIR. LeCun's departure would mark the end of an era, but would not be a complete surprise, given Zuckerberg's recent pivot regarding AI in recent months.
