Yann LeCun

Yann LeCun is one of three AI godfathers and recipient of the Turing Award with godfathers Geoffery Hinton and Yoshua Bengio. The Vice President and Chief AI Scientist at Meta, Yann is a world-renowned expert in machine learning, computer vision, computational neuroscience, mobile robotics and AI. With decades of experience in the AI domain, Yann has made vast contributions, including inventing convolution nets and pioneering optical character recognition and computer vision. He is also a highly sought-after speaker known for his captivating presentations on deep learning, neural networks and the future of AI.

During his PhD in Computer Science at Sorbonne University, Yann developed an early back-propagation learning algorithm for neural networks. He moved to Canada in 1987 to begin his career as a Research Associate at the University of Toronto. A distinguished computer scientist, Yann joined AT&T Bell Laboratories as a Researcher in 1988 and was promoted to Department Head in 1996. He became a Fellow at the NEC Research Institute in 2002 before establishing YLC Consulting in 2008. Yann also co-founded and became the Chief Scientist at MuseAmi, a music technology company with innovative software able to detect, analyse and categorise visual and audio inputs in real-world environments using machine learning.

A highly entrepreneurial individual, Yann co-founded another company, Element Inc, which uses AI technology to create privacy-led and portable digital identity solutions. In 2013, he joined Facebook as Director of AI Research before being elevated to Vice President and Chief AI Scientist in 2018. He currently serves as the Vice President and Chief AI Scientist at Meta, alongside his role as Silver Professor of Computer Science and Neural Science at New York University’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences and the Center for Neural Science. With Yoshua Bengio, Yann co-founded the International Conference on Learning Representations and is Co-Director of the Learning in Machines and Brain program of CIFAR. He is also a member of the Science Advisory Board of the Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics at UCLA.

Throughout his illustrious career, Yann has developed several technologies now used as the basis for AI, such as the convolution neural networks, the optimal brain damage regularisation method and the graph transformer networks method. In recognition of his contributions to AI, Yann received multiple awards, including the IEEE Neural Network Pioneer Award in 2015, the Harold Pender Award in 2018 and the Princess of Asturias Award in 2022. Now available to hire as a speaker, Yann is a proponent of AI technology, regularly defending it against the notion that it is an existential threat. Book Yann LeCun now!