Why Can't AI Make Its Own Discoveries? — With Yann LeCun

Big Technology Podcast

Alex Kantrowitz

Technology, Religion & Spirituality, Business News, Business, Religion, Science, Philosophy, Society & Culture, Entrepreneurship, Management, Marketing, Politics, News Commentary, Government, Investing, Tech News, Social Sciences, News

4.6 • 395 Ratings

🗓️ 19 March 2025

⏱️ 61 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Yann LeCun is the chief AI scientist at Meta. He joins Big Technology Podcast to discuss the strengths and limitations of current AI models, weighing in on why they've been unable to invent new things despite possessing almost all the world's written knowledge. LeCun digs deep into AI science, explaining why AI systems must build an abstract knowledge of the way the world operates to truly advance. We also cover whether AI research will hit a wall, whether investors in AI will be disappointed, and the value of open source after DeepSeek. Tune in for a fascinating conversation with one of the world's leading AI pioneers. --- Enjoying Big Technology Podcast? Please rate us five stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ in your podcast app of choice. For weekly updates on the show, sign up for the pod newsletter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/6901970121829801984/ Want a discount for Big Technology on Substack? Here’s 40% off for the first year: https://tinyurl.com/bigtechnology Questions? Feedback? Write to: [email protected]

Transcript

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0:00.0	Why has generative AI ingested all the world's knowledge, but not been able to come up with scientific discoveries of its own?
0:07.0	And is it finally starting to understand the physical world?
0:10.7	We'll discuss it with Meta Chief AI Scientist and Turing Award winner Jan Lacoon.
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0:34.7	From LinkedIn news, I'm Jesse Hempel, host of the Hello Monday podcast.
0:40.1	Start your week with the Hello Monday podcast.
0:43.1	We'll navigate career pivots.
0:45.0	We'll learn where happiness fits in.
0:46.9	Listen to Hello Monday with me, Jesse Hempel on the LinkedIn Podcast Network, or wherever you get your podcasts.
0:55.0	Welcome to Big Technology Podcast, a show for Cool-Headed, nuanced conversation of the tech world and beyond.
1:01.3	I'm Alex Cantorowitz, and I am thrilled to welcome Jan LeCoon, the Chief AI Scientist,
1:06.4	Turing Award winner, and a man known as the godfather of AI to Big Technology Podcasts.
1:11.9	Jan, great to see you again. Welcome to the show.
1:14.6	Pleasure to be here.
1:15.4	Let's start with a question about scientific discovery and why AI has not been able to come
1:20.8	up with it until this point. This is coming from Dwarkesh Patel. He asked it a couple of months
1:24.8	ago. Why do you make of the fact that AIs,
1:32.1	generative AI, basically have the entire corpus of human knowledge memorized, and they haven't been able to make a single new connection that has led to discovery. Whereas if even a
1:37.1	moderately intelligent person had this much stuff memorized, they would notice, oh, this thing
1:42.5	causes this symptom, this other thing causes this
1:44.9	symptom, there might be a medical cure here. So shouldn't we be expecting that type of stuff
	...

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