Artificial Intelligence is not going to take over us, says Meta’s top official

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is not going to take over us, it is only going to amplify human intelligence, said Yann LeCun, vice president and chief AI scientist at Meta on Wednesday.

Social media giant Meta’s first Build with AI Summit in India was held here to discuss AI’s transformative role in shaping the future of humankind.

“AI assistants will eventually be smarter than us, but we should not feel threatened by that. We should feel empowered by it. It’s kind of like everybody would walk around with a staff of smart people working for them. There is nothing better than working with people smarter than you, right?” said LeCun in his keynote address.

According to him, everybody is going to be smarter because of that. “It’s not just people like us in the tech community or in academia. It’s going to be everyone. Everyone in India, even in rural areas, can ask questions to their AI assistants in their own language or for health issues, whatever. And it’s a very different future that will become possible,” he added.

He also talked about how open source is not just important today, it is also going to get more important in the future. “Because AI is going to become a common infrastructure that all of us can use in the future and share. We need AI systems in the future to become a kind of repository of all human knowledge,” said LeCun.

LeCun also said AI research also enables an entire ecosystem.

“It gives a career perspective for young people. Like 10 years ago, the AI research started in Paris had the effect of basically just completely jump-starting the ecosystem of AI in the country. Paris is now probably the second most vibrant place for AI startups in the world,” he added.

Bengaluru is also not far behind in the race to master AI technology and is progressing quickly, added LeCun.

“The effect has been psychological. And that, in turn, had a huge effect in practice. So, the first effect is that when you have an industry practicing ambitious research in AI in a country, it gives hope for young people to contribute to it,” he said.

According to him, India, going forward, has an important role to play, not just in technology development and product development, not just for local products or international products, but also for research.

“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,” he added.

The summit also saw Infosys Co-founder Nandan Nilekani contextualising AI for India. During the course of the day, a panel discussion on ‘culture of open science in democratising AI’, featuring both Nilekani and LeCun was held.

Top three winners of the AI Hackathon with Meta Llama, which was held on October 19 and 20 in Bengaluru, were also handed over the awards by LeCun during the event.