Artificial intelligence is not yet as smart as a dog, Meta A.I. chief says
Chief AI Scientist at Meta Yann LeCun spoke at the Viva Tech conference in Paris and said that artificial intelligence does not currently have human-level intelligence but could do one day.
Chesnot | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Current artificial intelligence systems like ChatGPT do not have human-level intelligence and are barely smarter than a dog, Meta’s AI chief said, as the debate over the dangers of the fast-growing technology rages on.
ChatGPT, developed by OpenAI, is based on a so-called large language model. This means that the AI system was trained on huge amounts of language data that allows a user to prompt it with questions and requests, while the chatbot replies in language we understand.
The fast-paced development of AI has sparked concern from major technologists that, if unchecked, the technology could pose dangers to society. Tesla CEO Elon Musk said this year that AI is “one of the biggest risks to the future of civilization.”
At the Viva Tech conference on Wednesday, Jacques Attali, a French economic and social theorist who writes about technology, said whether AI is good or bad will depend on its use.
“If you use AI to develop more fossil fuels, it will be terrible. If you use AI [to] develop more terrible weapons, it will be terrible,” Attali said. “On the contrary, AI can be amazing for health, amazing for education, amazing for culture.”
At the same panel, Yann LeCun, chief AI scientist at Facebook parent Meta, was asked about the current limitations of AI. He focused on generative AI trained on large language models, saying they are not very intelligent, because they are solely coached on language.
“Those systems are still very limited, they don’t have any understanding of the underlying reality of the real world, because they are purely trained on text, massive amount of text,” LeCun said.
“Most of human knowledge has nothing to do with language … so that part of the human experience is not captured by AI.”
LeCun added that an AI system could now pass the Bar in the U.S., an examination required for someone to become an attorney. However, he said AI can’t load a dishwasher, which a 10-year old could “learn in 10 minutes.”
“What it tells you we are missing something really big … to reach not just human level intelligence, but even dog intelligence,” LeCun concluded.
Meta’s AI chief said the company is working on training AI on video, rather than just on language, which is a tougher task.
In another example of current AI limitations, he said a five-month-old baby would look at an object floating and not think too much of it. However, a nine-month year old baby would look at this item and be surprised, as it realizes that an object shouldn’t float.
LeCun said we have “no idea how to reproduce this capacity with machines today. Until we can do this, we are not going to have human-level intelligence, we are not going to have dog level or cat level [intelligence].”
Will robots take over?
Striking a pessimistic tone about the future, Attali said, “It is well known mankind is facing many dangers in the next three or four decades.”
He noted climate disasters and war among his top concerns, also noting he is worried that robots “will turn against us.”
During the conversation, Meta’s LeCun said that, in the future, there will be machines that are more intelligent than humans, which should not be seen as posing a danger.
“We should not see this as a threat, we should see this as something very beneficial. Every one of us will have an AI assistant … it will be like a staff to assist you in your daily life that is smarter than yourself,” LeCun said.
The scientist added that these AI systems need to be created as “controllable and basically subservient to humans.” He also dismissed the notion that robots would take over the world.
“A fear that has been popularized by science fictions [is], that if robots are smarter than us, they are going to want to take over the world … there is no correlation between being smart and wanting to take over,” LeCun said.
Ethics and regulation of A.I.
While looking at the dangers and opportunities of AI, Attali concluded that there need to be guardrails in place for the development of the technology. But he was unsure who would do that.
“Who is going to put the borders?,” he asked.
AI regulation has been a hot topic at Viva Tech. The European Union is pushing forward with its own AI legislation, while France’s top government ministers told CNBC this week that the country wants to see global regulation of the technology.
Technology
Cognition to buy AI startup Windsurf days after Google poached CEO in $2.4 billion licensing deal
In this photo illustration, a man seen holding a smartphone with the logo of US artificial intelligence company Cognition AI Inc. in front of website.
Timon Schneider | SOPA Images | Sipa USA | AP
Artificial intelligence startup Cognition announced it’s acquiring Windsurf, the AI coding company that lost its CEO and several other senior employees to Google just days earlier.
Cognition said on Monday that it will purchase Windsurf’s intellectual property, product, trademark, brand and talent, but didn’t disclose terms of the deal. It’s the latest development in an AI talent war, as companies like Meta, Google and OpenAI fiercely compete for top engineers and researchers.
OpenAI had been in talks to acquire Windsurf for about $3 billion in April, but the deal fell apart, and Google said on Friday that it hired Windsurf’s co-founder and CEO Varun Mohan. Google is paying $2.4 billion in licensing fees and for compensation, as CNBC previously reported.
“Every new employee of Cognition will be treated the same way as existing employees: with transparency, fairness, and deep respect for their abilities and value,” Cognition CEO Scott Wu wrote in a memo to employees on Monday. “After today, our efforts will be as a united and aligned team. There’s only one boat and we’re all in it together.”
Cognition didn’t immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment. Windsurf directed CNBC to Cognition.
Cognition is best known for its AI coding agent named Devin, which is designed to help engineers build software faster. As of March, the startup had raised hundreds of millions of dollars at a valuation of close to $4 billion, according to a report from Bloomberg.
Both companies are backed by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund. Other investors in Windsurf include Greenoaks, Kleiner Perkins and General Catalyst.
“I’m overwhelmed with excitement and optimism, but most of all, gratitude,” Jeff Wang, the interim CEO of Windsurf, wrote in a post on X on Monday. “Trying times reveal character, and I couldn’t be prouder of how every single person at Windsurf showed up these last three days for each other and for our users.”
Wu said that the acquisition ensures all Windsurf employees are “treated with respect and well taken care of in this transaction.” All employees will participate financially in the deal, have vesting cliffs waived for their work to date and receive fully accelerated vesting for their, according to the memo.
“There’s never been a more exciting time to build,” Wu wrote.
WATCH: Google snatches Windsurf CEO after OpenAI deal dissolves
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg looks on before the luncheon on the inauguration day of U.S. President Donald Trump’s second presidential term in Washington on Jan. 20, 2025.
Evelyn Hockstein | Reuters
Meta on Monday said it has removed about 10 million profiles for impersonating large content producers through the first half of 2025 as part of an effort by the company to combat “spammy content.”
The crackdown is part of Meta’s broader effort to make the Facebook feed more relevant and authentic by taking action against and removing accounts that engage in “spammy” behavior, such as content created using artificial intelligence tools.
As part of that initiative, Meta is also rolling out stricter measures to promote original posts from creators, the company said in a blog post.
Facebook also took action against approximately 500,000 accounts that it identified to be engaged in inauthentic behavior and spam. These actions included demoting comments and reducing distribution of content, which are intended to make it harder for these accounts to monetize their posts.
Meta said unoriginal content is when images or videos are reused without crediting the original creator. Meta said it now has technology that will detect duplicate videos and reduce the distribution of that content.
The action against spam and inauthentic content comes as Meta increases its investment in AI, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Monday announcing plans to spend “hundreds of billions of dollars” on AI compute infrastructure to bring the company’s first supercluster online next year.
This mandate comes at a time when AI is making it easier to mass-produce content across social media platforms. Other platforms are also taking action to combat the increase of spammy, low-quality content on social media, also known as “AI slop.”
Google’s YouTube announced a change in policy this month that prevents content that is mass-produced or repetitive from being eligible for being awarded revenue.
This announcement sparked confusion on social media, with many users believing this was a reversal on YouTube’s stance on AI content. However, YouTube clarified that the policy change is aimed at curbing unoriginal, spammy and repetitive videos.
“We welcome creators using AI tools to enhance their storytelling, and channels that use AI in their content remain eligible to monetize,” said a spokesperson for YouTube in a blog post to clarify the new policy.
YouTube’s new policy change will take effect on Tuesday.
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