Only weeks after receiving an award from King Charles at St James’s Palace, Professor Yann LeCun — one of the three “godfathers of AI” — has announced he is leaving Meta after 12 years to launch a new company focused on what he calls “advanced machine intelligence.”
LeCun, celebrated for his pioneering work in deep learning and known for his signature bowties, has long been a central figure in the development of modern AI. During his time at Meta, he co-founded the company’s influential Fundamental AI Research (FAIR) lab, won the Turing Award, and witnessed multiple waves of AI hype — including the explosive rise of generative AI sparked by ChatGPT in 2022.
His departure comes as investors and tech leaders warn the booming AI sector may be approaching a bubble, with soaring valuations and spending that may not be sustainable.
What LeCun Thinks the AI World Is Getting Wrong
LeCun confirmed his exit on Wednesday after more than a week of speculation. In a series of Threads posts, he thanked Mark Zuckerberg and called FAIR his “proudest non-technical accomplishment.”
But behind the polite farewell lies a deeper disagreement.
While much of the tech world — including Meta — is pouring billions into large language models (LLMs), LeCun has repeatedly argued that LLMs cannot lead to human-level intelligence.
Instead, he wants to build AI that learns more like a child or an animal: through perception, observation, and trial-and-error, not by consuming huge amounts of text. This vision, which he calls “advanced machine intelligence,” relies mainly on visual learning, rather than data-heavy text prediction.
This philosophical split has reportedly grown wider inside Meta, even though LeCun says his new company will remain a partner to the platform.
An AI Godfather Who Rejects AI Doomsday Fears
LeCun also stands apart from fellow AI pioneers Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio on one major issue: existential risk.
While Hinton and Bengio warn that AI could one day pose a serious threat to humanity, LeCun dismisses the idea entirely.
In 2023, he told the BBC the concept was “preposterously ridiculous,” arguing that fears of AI domination are simply humans projecting their own nature onto machines.
Not Everyone Sees LeCun as a Visionary
Some experts say LeCun’s ideas are important — but also note that he has a history of dismissing competing work.
AI researcher Gary Marcus recently wrote that while LeCun has made “genuine contributions,” he has also “systematically dismissed and ignored the work of others,” including Marcus himself.
LeCun’s next chapter — building a new AI company from the ground up — will put his theories to the test. Whether “advanced machine intelligence” becomes the next frontier or just another branch in the AI family tree remains to be seen.
