Meta’s Chief AI Scientist is leaving the company

Yann Lecun, Meta's Chief AI Scientist and founding director of its Fundamental AI Research unit (FAIR), is leaving the company after 12 years. His departure follows weeks of significant layoffs affecting FAIR, the unit he created to advance artificial intelligence (AI) research.

Lecun, who has publicly expressed skepticism about large language models (LLMs), described the creation of FAIR as "my proudest non-technical accomplishment." 

In a recent post on Threads, he said he plans to launch a startup to continue his work on Advanced Machine Intelligence (AMI), with Meta as a partner. The new venture aims to develop AI systems capable of understanding the physical world, reasoning, planning complex actions, and maintaining persistent memory.

"Because of their continued interest and support, Meta will be a partner of the new company," Lecun wrote, acknowledging support from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Andrew Bosworth, Chris Cox, and Mike Schroepfer. He added that the AMI research could have broad applications across sectors, some overlapping with Meta's commercial interests, but many extending beyond them.

Meta has not outlined how Lecun's departure will affect its broader AI strategy, which includes a $14 billion investment in Scale AI to pursue advanced artificial general intelligence. 

Lecun said he will remain at Meta until the end of the year while preparing his new venture.