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I’m on page “Yann LeCun Has Been Right About AI for 40 Years. Now He Thinks Everyone Is Wrong. – WSJ” with “Yann LeCun has become the odd man out at Meta. Justin J Wee for WSJNov. 14, 2025 9:00 pm ETAs a graduate student in the 1980s, Yann LeCun had trouble finding an adviser for his Ph.D. thesis on machine learning—because no one else was studying the topic, he recalled later. More recently, he’s become the odd man out at Meta. Despite worldwide renown as one of the godfathers of artificial intelligence, he has been increasingly sidelined as the company’s approach diverged from his views on the technology’s future. On Tuesday, news broke that he may soon be leaving Meta to pursue a startup focused on so-called world models, technology that LeCun thinks is more likely to advance the state of AI than Meta’s current language models. Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg has been pouring countless billions into the pursuit of what he calls “superintelligence,” hiring an army of top researchers tasked with developing its large language model, Llama, into something that can outperform ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini. LeCun, by his choice, has taken a different direction. He has been telling anyone who asks that he thinks large language models, or LLMs, are a dead end in the pursuit of computers that can truly outthink humans. He’s fond of comparing the current start-of-the-art models to the mind of a cat—and he believes the cat to be smarter. Several years ago, he stepped back from managing his AI division at Meta, called FAIR, in favor of a role as an individual contributor doing long-term research. “I’ve been not making friends in various corners of Silicon Valley, including at Meta, saying that within three to five years, this [world models, not LLMs] will be the dominant model for AI architectures, and nobody in their right mind would use LLMs of the type that we have today,” the 65-year-old said last month at a symposium at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. LeCun has been talking to associates about creating a startup focused on world models, recruiting colleagues and speaking to investors, The Wall Street Journal previously reported. A world model learns about the world around it by taking in visual information, much like a baby animal or young child does, versus LLMs, which are predictive models based on vast databases of text.LeCun didn’t respond to requests for comment, and Meta declined to comment.Early innovationsLeCun was born in Paris, raised in the city’s suburbs and attended what’s now known as the Sorbonne University in France in the 1980s. While getting his Ph.D., he married his wife, Isabelle, and they had the first of their three sons. A woodwind musician, he played traditional Breton music for a Renaissance dance troupe. Always ahead of the curve, LeCun studied machine learning before it was en vogue. He worked in Nobel Prize winner Geoffrey Hinton’s AI lab in Toronto before Hinton became an AI legend, and spent much of his early professional career in New Jersey at Bell Labs, the institute famous for the sheer number of inventions that came out of it. “The thing that excites me the most is working with people who are smarter than me, because it amplifies your own abilities,” LeCun told Wired magazine in 2023. LeCun has described himself as ‘a scientist, an atheist, a leftist (by American standards at least), a university professor, and a Frenchman.’At Bell, LeCun helped develop handwriting-recognition technology that became widely used by banks to read checks automatically. He also worked on a project to digitize and distribute paper documents over the internet. LeCun, who’s said he’s always been interested in physics, mostly worked with physicists at Bell and read a number of physics textbooks. “I learned a lot by reading things that are not apparently connected with AI or computer science (my undergraduate degree is in electrical engineering, and my formal CS training is pretty small),” he said during a Reddit ask-me-anything session 12 years ago.In 2003, LeCun started teaching computer science at New York University, and later he became the founding director of NYU’s Center for Data Science. When he’s in New York, he has been known to frequent the city’s jazz clubs.In 2013, Zuckerberg personally recruited him to head up a new AI division at what was then called Facebook. LeCun oversaw the lab for four years, stepping down in 2018 to become an individual contributor and Facebook’s chief AI scientist. He won the 2018 A.M. Turing Award, the highest prize in computer science, along with Hinton and Yoshua Bengio. The award honored their foundational work on neural networks, multilayered systems that underlie many powerful AI systems, from OpenAI’s chatbots to self-driving cars.Since then, LeCun, who speaks with a light French accent and is known for wearing black Ray-Ban glasses and collared shirts, has largely become a figurehead for the company. He wasn’t part of the team that helped create Meta’s first open-source large language model, called Llama, and he hasn’t been involved in the day-to-day operations of their development since. LeCun works on his own projects and travels to conferences, talking about Meta’s AI glasses and his own views on the path to AI advancement, among other things, people who have worked with him said. Léon Bottou, a longtime friend of LeCun’s, previously told The Wall Street Journal that he’s “stubborn in a good way,” meaning he is willing to listen to others’ views, but has strong convictions of his own.He also holds strong opinions on a variety of other topics. “I am everything the religious right despises,” he wrote on his website: “a scientist, an atheist, a leftist (by American standards at least), a university professor, and a Frenchman.”Breaking awayMost of his recent takes have been knocks on the LLMs at the center of Zuckerberg’s ambitions–and also of nearly every other major tech company’s. “We are not going to get to human-level AI just by scaling LLMs,” he said on Alex Kantrowitz’s Big Technology podcast this spring. “There’s no way, absolutely no way, and whatever you can hear from some of my more adventurous colleagues, it’s not going to happen within the next two years. There’s absolutely no way in hell to–pardon my French.”This summer, as part of a major restructuring, Zuckerberg named 28-year-old Alexandr Wang as Meta’s new chief AI officer–LeCun’s new boss–and ChatGPT co-creator Shengjia Zhao as Meta’s new chief scientist. Alexandr Wang is now Meta’s chief AI officer—and LeCun’s new boss.Employees inside Meta’s thousand-person-plus AI division started asking each other: What’s going to happen to Yann LeCun? Some viewed the announcements as LeCun being cast aside after not getting onboard with Zuckerberg’s AI vision. “There is no change in Yann’s role. He will continue to be Chief Scientist for FAIR!” the CEO posted on his social media app, Threads, in July, referring to the AI division that he hired LeCun to lead over a decade ago. FAIR is shorthand for the Fundamental AI Research group. “I’m looking forward to working with Shengjia,” LeCun replied in a comment.In recent months though, LeCun’s once burgeoning AI division has faced job cuts and fewer resources, and has become less prestigious internally, according to current and former employees.For a long time, the division, helmed by LeCun, was seen as a place to discuss lofty ideas about the future of artificial intelligence, conduct experiments that may or may not pan out, and not give too much thought to how their research breakthroughs might be turned into actual products someday. Now, Meta’s new AI research organization, full of fresh hires making millions of dollars, is being led by Wang, who is pushing the teams to make rapid breakthroughs and quickly turn those advancements into products. LeCun, meanwhile, has been tromping through Asia and Europe and speaking at conferences. In one such talk earlier this year, he doled out advice to aspiring researchers: “If you are a Ph.D. student in AI, you should absolutely not work on LLMs.”The Global AI Race Inside Microsoft’s New AI ‘Super Factory’ The AI Cold War That Will Redefine Everything Tesla’s Elon Musk Is Obsessed With AI What Happened When Small-Town America Became Data Center, U.S.A.Copyright ©2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8Appeared in the November 15, 2025, print edition as ‘An AI Pioneer Thinks Everyone Is Wrong—Again’.” selected.
Please summarize the selection using precise and concise language. Use headers and bulleted lists in the summary, to make it scannable. Maintain the meaning and factual accuracy.
Here is a summary of the selected text:
LeCun’s Divergence from Meta’s AI Strategy
Yann LeCun, a foundational figure in AI, has become the “odd man out” at Meta, reportedly being sidelined due to his views.
He strongly disagrees with the company’s focus on Large Language Models (LLMs), which CEO Mark Zuckerberg is investing billions in to compete with ChatGPT and Gemini.
LeCun calls LLMs a “dead end” in the pursuit of true superintelligence, and has compared them unfavorably to the mind of a cat.
LeCun’s Vision and Potential Next Steps
LeCun believes “world models”—which learn by observing visual information like a child—are the future of AI.
He predicts world models will become the dominant AI architecture within three to five years, making current LLMs obsolete.
It was recently reported that LeCun may be leaving Meta to launch a startup focused on this technology.
Key Career Milestones
LeCun studied machine learning in the 1980s when the field was not popular.
He worked at Bell Labs, where he developed handwriting-recognition technology used by banks.
He taught at NYU and became the founding director of its Center for Data Science.
In 2013, Mark Zuckerberg personally recruited him to lead Meta’s new AI division, FAIR.
He won the 2018 A.M. Turing Award, computer science’s highest prize, for his foundational work on neural networks.
Recent Reorganization at Meta
LeCun stepped back from managing FAIR several years ago to become an individual contributor.
A recent restructuring appointed 28-year-old Alexandr Wang as Meta’s new chief AI officer, making him LeCun’s new boss.
Zuckerberg has publicly stated that LeCun’s role as Chief Scientist for FAIR remains unchanged.
However, LeCun’s FAIR division has reportedly faced resource cuts and lost prestige as Meta’s new leadership prioritizes rapid product development over long-term research.
LeCun continues to speak at conferences, advising Ph.D. students not to work on LLMs.
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