Yann LeCun, the renowned artificial intelligence scientist who is leaving Meta Platforms (META) to start a new AI company, said the tech giant will not invest in his startup, Bloomberg reported.
The unnamed company may be based outside of Silicon Valley, given the Valley’s focus elsewhere, he added. “Silicon Valley is completely hypnotized by generative models,” LeCun said at the AI-Pulse event in Paris on Thursday, according to the news outlet. “So you have to do this kind of work outside of the Valley, in Paris.”
“Our best AI systems can pass the bar exam, write code,” LeCun continued, expressing his displeasure about the focus on language models. “But we still don’t have a robot that can do what a five-year-old can. We are missing something big.”
Last month, LeCun, who is Meta’s chief AI scientist and the founding director of the FAIR lab, said he would leave Meta at the end of the year. He also said Meta would partner with the AI startup and give it access to its innovations.
In a public post on LinkedIn announcing his departure, LeCun, who is sometimes referred to as “the godfather of AI,” said his new company will go beyond what’s been done already.
“The goal of the startup is to bring about the next big revolution in AI: systems that understand the physical world, have persistent memory, can reason, and can plan complex action sequences,” LeCun wrote.
LeCun added that he would have more to say about the new company in the new year.