Yann LeCun, the French American scientist and one of the godfathers of AI, advised youngsters in their twenties to concentrate on subjects which have a long shelf-life, e.g. physics, basics of computer science and applied mathematics. All these subjects contribute to help you understand the next generation technologies and AI systems.
His comments should be appreciated in the backdrop of computer coding such as Google’s Gemini Code Assist, Microsoft’s GitHub Copilot, Amazon’s Q Developer (formerly Code Whisperer) and AI software agents such as Devin (Cognition Labs).
A twenty-year old wonders whether it is worthless to learn computer science since AI systems are going to programme better than he can. LeCun is of the opinion that this is not true.
A mobile app course has a short shelf-life, say three years whereas quantum mechanics has a long shelf-life. While exercising your choice, opt for quantum mechanics.
LeCun now works as VP and AI Chief Scientist at Facebook.
To people in their thirties and forties, LeCun advises not to put all their eggs in one basket, thinking that it will be the next big thing. There is a change every 3-5 years.
Certain choices make you a prisoner of a hypothesis about the trend in technology. There could be a complete upheaval.
LeCun currently runs FAIR Lab — Fundamental AI Research. He works on next generation AI systems. They perhaps would not be based on LLMs. The new systems would understand the world. They have a persistent memory; they can plan and reason. It is a major challenge for the next five to ten years.
India should be a part of the research community. They then would be able to leverage AI systems.
Almost a decade back, they created a research lab in France. It influenced the local eco-system. Students who could have gone into finance diverted to PhD in AI. Some promising candidates have been hired at FAIR. Most of them are a part of the eco-system and have a set up startups.
India could replicate this model. Maybe some cities here, say Bangalore or Chennai can take the lead.
Unlike Hinton and Bengio, the other two godfathers of AI, LeCun is optimistic about the benefits of AI. He advocates open-source research. He was in Bangalore for Build with AI Summit.
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