Meta’s chief AI scientist, Yann LeCun, has announced that he will leave the company at the end of the year to start a new venture focused on Advanced Machine Intelligence (AMI), a research program he has been developing over the past several years.
“In planning to leave Meta after 12 years, I am creating a startup company to continue the Advanced Machine Intelligence research program,” LeCun said in a post on Facebook.
LeCun, who served five years as the founding director of FAIR (Facebook AI Research) and seven years as chief AI scientist, said the new company aims to build AI systems “that understand the physical world, have persistent memory, can reason, and can plan complex action sequences.”
He described the creation of FAIR as his “proudest non-technical accomplishment,” adding that its impact on Meta, the AI field and the broader tech ecosystem has been spectacular.
Meta will remain a partner in the new company. LeCun said he is extremely grateful to Mark Zuckerberg, Andrew Bosworth, Chris Cox and Mike Schroepfer for supporting FAIR and the AMI program. “Because of their continued interest and support, Meta will be a partner of the new company,” he said.
LeCun said the AMI initiative will have applications across multiple sectors, some intersecting with Meta’s business and others outside it. He noted that pursuing AMI independently would “maximise its broad impact.”
Further details about the startup will be announced later, he said, while confirming he will remain at Meta until the end of the year.
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