Yann LeCun (real name Yann André LeCun), one of the four kings of AI, a professor at New York University and chief AI scientist at Meta, was selected as the ‘Most Influential Person in AI in 2024’ by Time, the world’s largest weekly magazine. was selected. In particular, Professor LeCun, who is of French descent, was selected as the winner this time in recognition of his research on AI with an open source approach. Meta, where he works, is the company that created Facebook and Instagram and launched the open source giant AI language model LLaMA2 in July 2023.
Along with Professor LeCun, TIME featured AI ethics expert Kay Firth-Butterfield, a professor and lawyer, and Karim Beguir, a deep learning influencer and founder and CEO of instadeepai, an AI company for enterprises. Karim Beguir), a Chinese female artist active in the United States, were also selected as winners of ‘The TIME100 Impact Awards’.
Starting from 2022, TIME has been implementing ‘The TIME100 Impact Awards’ every year to select and award people who have achieved great achievements in each industry. This year is the 3rd year. In particular, this year, the winners were selected focusing only on the AI field. The awards ceremony for these winners will be held in Dubai on the 12th. A gala party will be held the day before the event with the awardees in attendance.
Regarding this year’s awards, TIME Editor-in-Chief Dan Macsai said, “TIME’s ‘Impact Awards’ were created to honor individuals who have made impactful achievements and are shaping the future of their industries and the world,” adding, “The current rise of AI and the technologies that make it possible. “There is no power greater than people, and we are thrilled to have selected these extraordinary leaders who are moving the world forward.” Previously, Time introduced ChatGPT as a cover story in March 2023, and also announced a list of the 100 most influential people in the AI field and selected OpenAI CEO Sam Altman as ‘CEO of the Year’.
As for why it selected LeCun as the winner, Time said, “I have believed in the power of neural networks long before they were popular. In the late 1980s, he worked with colleagues at Bell Labs to create the first technology that could recognize handwritten digits with high accuracy. “I designed a neural network,” he explained. Professor LeCun won the Turing Award, known as the Nobel Prize in computing, along with Professors Jeffrey Hinton and Joshua Bengio in 2018. Together with these three, Andrew Ng, a venture investor who played a major role in popularizing AI, is called one of the four kings of the AI field.
Related articles
Professor LeCun also serves as Meta’s chief AI scientist. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced in January that the company’s new goal was to develop general artificial intelligence, and accordingly, LeCun and his team, which was mainly responsible for basic research, moved to the application division, which is responsible for developing new products. LeCun is also known for being outspoken on his Twitter and in public. He is also an ‘AI boomer’, which refers to an AI optimist. He has previously said, “AI will enable a new renaissance of humanity,” and called the idea that AI poses an existential risk to humanity “absurd.” “He also pointed out. He also responded by calling scholars who pointed out ethical issues with Meta’s AI products “the greedy Twitter crowd.”
Under his leadership, Meta’s AI division has open-sourced a capable AI model, most recently developing the open-source Lamar-2. Time told LeCun that Mehta’s relatively open approach is more than what Zuckerberg considers a business strategy, adding, “LeCun views it as a moral imperative.” “AI systems will essentially become the repository of all human knowledge,” LeCun said, adding, “We should not rely on proprietary and closed systems.” He also said, “People won’t do this for a proprietary system,” and added, “The future must be open source for cultural diversity, democracy, and diversity. We need diverse AI assistants for the same reason we need diverse media.” unfolded.
