Meta Chief Scientist LeCun Reportedly Planning Own Startup

The restructuring at Meta in the field of Artificial Intelligence is now said to have led to long-time Chief Scientist and Turing Award winner Yann LeCun leaving the company. This should surprise very few. LeCun has had a somewhat different strategy for some time than Mark Zuckerberg recently announced. Furthermore, he has recently had to report to a new supervisor.

The Financial Times reports on LeCun's plans, referring to people the AI expert has allegedly told about them. The departure is reportedly planned for the coming months. LeCun is said to want to found a startup focused on developing world models. Unlike current large language models, a world model would also be able to understand the physical world. According to LeCun, this is the only way to achieve superintelligence, as it is called at Meta, or artificial general intelligence (AGI), as it is more commonly called elsewhere. Language, LeCun says, cannot adequately represent the world.

No further information is available about the planned new venture. However, financing discussions are reportedly already underway. According to the Financial Times, neither LeCun nor Meta would comment on the rumors. On LinkedIn, where LeCun is very active, he recently shared an announcement from Meta's AI channel about a new automatic speech recognition (ASR) model that supports many languages. Previously, he had posted several updates showing him at a Financial Times event – alongside other prominent AI experts such as Geoffrey Hinton, Yoshua Bengio, Fei-Fei Li, and Jensen Huang.

Meta Restructures AI Department and Focus

Mark Zuckerberg recently made various structural changes in Meta's AI division. This included hiring numerous new employees. The focus has since been on AI applications, while LeCun is more involved in fundamental research. Among others, Alexandr Wang was brought in as the new head of AI. The 28-year-old previously led Scale AI, a US company that provides training data for AI. Meta has invested beyond 14 billion in Scale AI. LeCun has had to report to Wang since then.

In Silicon Valley, Meta is focused on achieving superintelligence using LLMs. LeCun, based in Paris, sees limitations in the technology. Furthermore, Meta's scientific direction, to offer models as openly as possible, comes from this area. This too is rumored to be changing.

Several months ago, Joëlle Pineau left the Paris Meta team. The reasons remain unclear. She only communicated that she wanted to make space for others who "want to continue this work." Pineau is now working at Cohere – a Canadian company that adapts AI applications for businesses.

(emw)