#416 – Yann Lecun: Meta AI, Open Source, Limits of LLMs, AGI & the Future of AI

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
The following is a conversation with Yann Le Cun, his third time on this podcast. He is the Chief AI Scientist at META, professor at NYU, Turing Award winner, and one of the seminal figures in the history of artificial intelligence. He and META AI have been big proponents of open sourcing AI development and have been walking the walk by open sourcing many of their biggest models, including Lama 2 and eventually Lama 3 Also, Yann has been an outspoken critic of those people in the AI community who warned about the looming danger and existential threat of AGI. He believes the AGI will be created one day, but it will be good. It will not escape human control, nor will it dominate and kill all humans. At this moment of rapid AI development, this happens to be somewhat a controversial position. And so it's been fun seeing Yann get into a lot of intense and fascinating discussions online, as we do in this very conversation. And now a quick few second mention to each sponsor. Check them out in the description. It's the best way to support this podcast. We've got Hidden Layer for securing your AI models, Element for electrolytes, Shopify for shopping, for stuff online, and AG1 for delicious health. Choose wisely, my friends. Also, if you want to get in touch with me for whatever reason, maybe to work with our amazing team, go to lexfridman.com/contact. And now on to the full ad reads, never any ads in the middle. I try to make these interesting. I don't know what I'm talking like this, but I am. There's a staccato nature to it. Speaking of staccato, I've been playing a bit of piano. Anyway, if you skip these ads, please do check out the sponsors. We love them. I love them. I enjoy their stuff. Maybe you will too. This episode is brought to you by a on theme in context. See what I did there? Sponsor, since this is Yann Le Cun. Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning. One of the seminal figures in the field. So of course you're gonna have a sponsor that's related to Artificial Intelligence. Hidden Lair. They provide a platform that keeps your machine learning models secure. The ways to attack machine learning models, large language models, all the stuff we talk about with Yann. There's a lot of really fascinating work. Not just large language models, but the same for video, video prediction, tokenization, where the tokens are in the space of concept versus the space of literally letters, symbols, JAPA, VJAPA, all of that stuff that they're open sourcing, all the stuff they're publishing on, just really incredible. But that said, all of those models have security holes in ways that we can't even anticipate or imagine at this time. And so you want good people to be trying to find those security holes, trying to be one step ahead of the people that are trying to attack. So if you're especially a company that's relying on these models, you need to have a person who's in charge of saying, yeah, this model that you got from this place has been tested, has been secured, whether that place is a hugging face or any other kind of stuff, or any other kind of repository or models who kind of place. I think the more and more we rely on larger language models or just AI systems in general, the more the security threats that are always going to be there become dangerous and impactful. So protect, protect your models. Visit hiddenlayer.com/lex to learn more about how hiddenlayer can accelerate your AI adoption in a secure way. This episode is also brought to you by Element. A thing I drink throughout the day. I'm drinking now. When I'm on a podcast, you'll sometimes see me with a mug and clear liquid in there that looks like water. In fact, it is not simply water. It is water mixed with element, watermelon salt, cold. What I do is I take one of them Powerade 28 fluid ounces bottles, fill it up with water, one packet of watermelon salt, shake it up, put it in the fridge, that's it. I reuse the bottles and drink from a mug or sometimes from the bottle. Either way, delicious, good for you, especially if you're doing fasting, especially if you're doing low carb, kinds of diets, which I do. You can get a sample pack for free with any purchase. Try to drink element.com/lex.
This episode is brought to you by Shopify as I take a drink of element. It is a platform designed for anyone, even me, to sell stuff anywhere on a great looking store. I use a basic one, like a really minimalist one. You can check it out if you go to lexfridman.com/store. There's a few shirts on there. If that's your thing, it was so easy to set up. I imagine there's like a million features that have that can make it look better, and all kinds of extra stuff you can do with the store. But I use the basic thing, and the basic thing is pretty damn good. I like basic. I like minimalism. And they integrate with a lot of third party apps, including what I use, which is on demand printing. So, like you buy the shirt on Shopify, but it gets printed and shipped by another company that I always keep forgetting, but I think it's called Printful, or Printify, or I think it's Printful. I'm not sure. It doesn't matter. I think there's several integrations. You can check it out yourself. For me, it works. I'm using the most popular one. Printful, I think it's called. Anyway, I look forward to your letters correcting me on my pronunciation. So, Shopify is great. I'm a big fan of the good side of the machinery of capitalism. Selling stuff on the internet, connecting people to the thing that they want, or rather the thing that would make their life better. Both in advertisement and e-commerce, just shopping in general, I'm a big believer when that's done well, your life legitimately in the long term becomes better. And so whatever system can connect one human to the thing that makes their life better is great. And I believe that Shopify is sort of a platform that enables that kind of system. You can sign up for a $1 per month trial period at shopify.com/lex. That's all lower case. Go to shopify.com/lex to take your business to the next level today. This episode is also brought to you by AG1, an all in one daily drink to support better health and peak performance. It is delicious. It is nutritious. And I ran out of words that rhyme with those two. Actually, let me use a large language model to figure out what rhymes with delicious. Words that rhyme with delicious include ambitious, auspicious, capricious, fictitious, suspicious. So there you have it. Anyway, I drink it twice a day. Also put it in the fridge. And sometimes in the freezer, like it gets a little bit frozen, just like a little bit, just a little bit frozen. You got that like slushy consistency. I'll do that too sometimes. And it's freaking delicious. It's delicious no matter what. It's delicious warm, it's delicious cold, it's delicious lightly frozen. All of it's just incredible. And of course it covers like the basic multivitamin foundation of what I think of as a good diet. So it's just a great multivitamin. That's the way I think about it. So all the crazy stuff I do, the physical challenges, the mental challenges, all of that, at least I got AG-1. They'll give you one month supply of fish oil when you sign up at drinkag1.com/lex.