India Has Important Role To Play In AI Research: 'Godfather Of AI' Yann LeCun
'AI is not going to dominate us or take over, but it's going to amplify human intelligence,' says LeCun.
(Yann LeCun, Meta's VP and Chief AI Scientist. Photo Source: company)
India has an important role to play in artificial-intelligence research along with technology and product development, according to Yann LeCun, chief AI scientist of Meta.
"There is a lot of talent in India. We see a lot of people from India making major contributions, technical and scientific contributions to AI," LeCun said at the Build with AI Summit in Bengaluru on Wednesday.
The AI expert pointed out that a European research lab significantly boosted the AI ecosystem in Paris a decade ago, making it the second most vibrant city for AI startups after some US locations.
Similarly, Bengaluru is also rapidly catching up. The presence of ambitious AI research fosters hope and motivation among young people to engage in the field, leading to practical advancements, according to LeCun.
LeCun also spoke about the importance of open-source models. He underscored that the commitment to open-source data is driven by the benefits of community feedback and innovation, highlighting that great ideas can come from anywhere. Open source is crucial now and will be increasingly important as AI evolves into a shared infrastructure for all, serving as a repository of human knowledge.
In September, Meta released its first open-source model with both image and text processing abilities, two months after the release of its last big AI model.
What I see as the future is that the big frontier AI systems will not be produced by big companies or developed countries like the US. I think the main ones will be trained in a distributed fashion all across the world.Yann LeCun, chief AI scientist at Meta
LeCun predicted that in the near future, the world would have AI systems that approach human intelligence perhaps from even beyond. Future AI advancements would lead to smart glasses that allow users to interact with highly intelligent AI assistants, he said.
While AI assistants might become smarter than humans, it is not to get threatened by and is rather empowering, he said. "AI is not going to dominate us or take over, but it's going to amplify human intelligence."
LeCun also said that AI will be used everywhere and even people in rural areas of India could ask questions to their AI assistants in their own language about multiple topics.
