The ‘Godfather of AI’ came to see India’s AI prowess but found something lacking

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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Meta Platforms Inc.’s chief AI scientist, Yann LeCun, was in Davos for the annual World Economic Forum meeting in January when he met Nandan Nilekani—the Infosys co-founder at the vanguard of India’s many technological advances. That meeting, LeCun says, partly triggered his decision to visit India a third time.

Nilekani “introduced me to India’s dynamic ecosystem," he said in an interview with Mint on the sidelines of Meta’s first ‘Build with AI Summit’ held in Bengaluru on Wednesday. “I recently saw innovative ideas during our hackathon (a 30-hour ‘AI Hackathon with Meta Llama’ held in Bengaluru this month). AI tools like Meta AI, accessible through WhatsApp and Messenger, have gained massive traction, with India hosting the largest user community globally," LeCun said.

“We have also run experiments in rural India, introducing smart glasses like the Ray-Ban Meta, which people adopted immediately. This shows AI’s potential across sectors such as education, healthcare, agriculture, and business," said LeCun, donning the Ray-Ban Meta glasses. Also read | The coming of age of India’s AI-powered humanoids LeCun’s decision to visit India was also “reinforced by policy experts who urged me to explore the country’s scientific, developer, and governmental landscape, emphasizing that platforms like Llama could have a major impact here," he said.

Llama comprises large language models (LLMs) developed by Meta. But, he underscored, “what is missing in India is the absence of world-class research labs outside universities", which he said could motivate students to pursue AI careers within India. LeCun pointed to a similar transformation in France “when we opened the FAIR (Fundamental AI Research)