- Yann LeCun critiques current LLMs (like ChatGPT) for lacking real-world understanding and physical reasoning, comparing them unfavorably to even animals like rats.
- He left Meta to found AMI Labs, aiming to develop AI beyond LLMs, focusing on flexible systems for complex real-world tasks such as robotics and household chores.
- AMI Labs raised over $1bn in seed funding, with backers including Nvidia and Jeff Bezos's fund, highlighting investor confidence in next-generation AI.
- LeCun's approach, Joint Embedding Predictive Architecture (JEPA), creates abstractions to filter useless information and predict outcomes without over-predicting, like not guessing a pen's fall direction.
- Other researchers, like Ingmar Posner at Oxford, are working on 'World Models' that simulate environments to enable causal reasoning and explainable AI, inspired by advances since 2018.
- Projects like Google's Dreamer, DeepMind's Genie, and Wayve's Gaia exemplify the shift towards AI that learns from mental simulations, with applications in gaming and robotics.
- LeCun predicts AMI Labs' model will be tested in industrial settings soon, with long-term goals for general intelligence requiring minimal training.
- Despite AI advancements, humans will remain crucial for asking questions, creativity, and leadership, with AI acting as smarter assistants.