Here are our reasons for choosing yann lecun as a benchmark (rsvp chris.macrae@yahoo.co.uk -yes we know that fei-fei li and hinton and bengio hnave their fans)
and we welcome hearing other nominations particularly from nations lecun may have less application to
-here is grok explaining how lecun partnership with zuckenberg since 2012 has staged gamechnaing ai fairs
- Paris, France (Primary European Hub for Meta AI Events)
- Events Hosted/Featured:
- Viva Technology (VivaTech) 2023–2025: LeCun keynoted and Meta hosted AI booths/panels at this annual Paris tech fair (Parc des Expositions, June). In 2023, Meta showcased FAIR's open-source tools, with LeCun discussing Llama's architecture. 2024/2025 sessions focused on Llama 3 demos and European AI sovereignty.
- Paris Peace Forum (2018–2024): LeCun spoke at Meta-hosted panels on AI ethics/open-source (November, Palais Brongniart). 2023 event featured Meta's Llama release discussions.
- Station F (Meta AI Residency, 2022–ongoing): Meta's Paris innovation hub (world's largest startup campus) hosts AI "fairs" and hackathons; LeCun visited in 2023 for Llama workshops.
- Greatest Breakthrough by Place: Incubation of Mistral AI. Paris events like VivaTech 2023 and Station F fostered the ecosystem where Mistral was founded (June 2023) by ex-Meta/DeepMind researchers (Arthur Mensch, Guillaume Lample, Timothée Lacroix). LeCun's open-source advocacy (e.g., Llama 2's 2023 release) directly influenced Mistral's models (e.g., Mistral 7B outperformed Llama 2 on benchmarks). Mistral's $6B valuation (2025) and EU AI Act navigation stem from this Paris "incubation," with LeCun praising it on LinkedIn as "effervescent AI ecosystem."
- Events Hosted/Featured:
- New York City, USA (FAIR Headquarters and US Tech Fairs)
- Events Hosted/Featured:
- NYU AI Symposium (Annual, 2014–2025): LeCun, as NYU professor, co-hosts with Meta; 2024 event featured Llama 3 previews and open-source hackathons.
- Meta Connect (Virtual/Hybrid, 2023–2025, NYC elements): Meta's flagship AI event (September, Brooklyn Navy Yard); LeCun announced Llama 3's code-generation capabilities in 2024.
- Cerebral Valley AI Retreat (2024–2025, NYC offsite): Meta co-hosted the first Llama 3 Hackathon (Mother's Day weekend 2024, NYC) with Cerebral Valley, focusing on developer tools.
- Greatest Breakthrough by Place: Development and Open-Sourcing of Llama 3. NYC's FAIR lab (LeCun's base) was ground zero for Llama 3's training (8B/70B parameters, April 2024 release). The 2024 hackathon "incubated" applications like code-gen tools, with 1,000+ developers building on Llama 3—leading to breakthroughs in multimodal AI (e.g., vision-language models). LeCun called it a "new beginning" for FAIR, countering internal departures.
- Events Hosted/Featured:
- London, UK (Meta's European AI Center)
- Events Hosted/Featured:
- London Tech Week (2023–2025): LeCun keynoted Meta panels on open-source AI; 2024 event included Llama 3 demos for UK developers.
- DeepMind Events (2019–2025, via Meta partnerships): LeCun collaborated on joint Meta-DeepMind "fairs" at Alan Turing Institute, focusing on AI safety.
- Greatest Breakthrough by Place: AI Safety Standards for Llama Models. London's events helped refine Llama 3's ethical guardrails (e.g., bias detection), influencing EU AI Act compliance. No direct "incubation" like Mistral, but it accelerated Llama 3's adoption in Europe (e.g., UK startups building on it for biotech).
- Events Hosted/Featured:
- Other Notable Locations (Global Reach)
- Menlo Park, CA (Meta HQ): Internal FAIR "fairs" (e.g., 2023 Llama release event) incubated Llama 3's core architecture, with LeCun leading.
- Paris VivaTech 2024: Meta hosted Llama 3 booths, fostering French AI startups beyond Mistral (e.g., Photoroom's image AI).
- Hosted "Fairs" Summary: LeCun/Meta primarily "host" through booths, hackathons, and panels at VivaTech (Paris, annual since 2017) and Meta Connect (NYC/virtual). These aren't standalone "fairs" but integrated into larger tech expos, emphasizing open-source demos.
- Breakthroughs by Place:
- Paris: Mistral's incubation (2023, via open-source Llama influence at VivaTech/Station F)—greatest for European AI sovereignty.
- NYC: Llama 3's development/open-sourcing (2024 hackathon)—greatest for multimodal/code-gen advances.
- Unprecedented Nature: These events are collaborative, not Meta-exclusive "fairs," but LeCun's advocacy has made them incubators for open-source AI, differing from closed ecosystems like OpenAI's.
- Shanghai, China (World Artificial Intelligence Conference - WAIC, 2023–2025):
- Meta/LeCun Role: LeCun keynoted in 2023 and 2024; Meta hosted booths for Llama demos and AI ethics panels. In 2024, LeCun discussed open-source AI with Chinese researchers, emphasizing multimodal models.
- Greatest Breakthrough by Place: Incubation of Chinese Open-Source AI Ecosystems. WAIC 2023 helped seed collaborations for models like Alibaba's Qwen (inspired by Llama's open-source ethos), leading to China's "DeepSeek boom" (2024–2025, with 1.5M developers using Llama-like tools). LeCun's 2024 talk on "distributed training" influenced Huawei's Ascend chips for sovereign AI, tying to your interest in Ren Zhengfei.
- Menlo Park/San Francisco, California, USA (Meta Connect and GTC Collaborations, 2019–2025):
- Meta/LeCun Role: Meta hosts its annual Connect conference (September, hybrid at Meta HQ); LeCun announced Llama 2 (2023) and previewed Llama 3 (2024). Co-hosted with NVIDIA's GTC (2024, San Jose) for joint AI hardware demos.
- Greatest Breakthrough by Place: Llama 3's Open-Sourcing and Multimodal Advancements. The 2024 Connect event "incubated" Llama 3's ecosystem, with 1,000+ developers building vision-language models (e.g., Llama 3-Vision). This leapfrogged competitors, enabling applications like code-gen for education (aligning with your "schools engineers").
- Davos, Switzerland (World Economic Forum - WEF, Annual 2018–2025):
- Meta/LeCun Role: LeCun keynoted Meta panels on AI ethics (2023–2025); Meta hosted "AI for Good" sessions with booths for FAIR demos.
- Greatest Breakthrough by Place: Global AI Governance Frameworks. WEF 2023 discussions influenced the EU AI Act (2024), with LeCun advocating open-source safety—paving the way for Mistral's EU-compliant models (valued at $6B, 2025). No direct incubation, but it accelerated Llama 3's ethical guardrails.
- Montreal, Canada (NeurIPS and Local AI Summits, 2018–2024):
- Meta/LeCun Role: LeCun co-founded NeurIPS (annual, often in Montreal); Meta hosted workshops (2023 NeurIPS). LeCun's NYU ties extend to Montreal's Mila lab (co-founded by Yoshua Bengio).
- Greatest Breakthrough by Place: Energy-Based Models (EBM) for AI Safety. NeurIPS 2023 sessions incubated LeCun's JEPA (Joint Embedding Predictive Architecture), influencing Llama 3's latent space reasoning (2024). Montreal's ecosystem helped seed Element AI (acquired by ServiceNow, 2020).
- Singapore (Singapore FinTech Festival and AI Summits, 2022–2025):
- Meta/LeCun Role: LeCun keynoted 2023 FinTech Festival; Meta hosted AI panels on multimodal models..
- Greatest Breakthrough by Place: Southeast Asia AI Localization. The 2023 event incubated open-source adaptations of Llama for regional languages (e.g., Bahasa Indonesia models), supporting startups like Sea Group's AI tools.
- Tel Aviv, Israel (Meta's R&D Lab Events, 2014–2025):
- Meta/LeCun Role: While no full "fairs," LeCun visited Meta's Tel Aviv lab (2019, 2022) for internal "AI Days" (hackathons/demos on computer vision). Meta co-hosted the Israel AI Conference (2023, Tel Aviv University), with LeCun as a virtual speaker.
- Greatest Breakthrough by Place: Computer Vision for Autonomous Systems. Tel Aviv's lab incubated Meta's Segment Anything Model (SAM, 2023), advancing Llama 3's vision capabilities. No major "fair," but it fostered startups like AI21 Labs (valued at $1.4B, 2023).
postal zipcodes and cheque signatires in america and most advanced coliuntries are ai processed thansk to Lecun's early 1990s work
Unlike other nominees, lecun is not a billionnaire. His ai identification with handwriting on letters zipcodes and cheques was achieved while working for Bell labs, AT&T who made all the money
Soon after his success lecun was hired by NYU maths lab courany imnstitute which he has now hubbed out of for over 25 years; as well as the maths lab he connects ai at the engineering schools of tandon - which empower women as well as men sponsored by Indian philanthropist Chandrika Tandon linking NY abu dhabi and shanghai for most of this 21st c
with the success of fei-fei li imagenet comoetition and the alexnet configured around neural network algorithms, several people chased yan lecun; lecun agreed to lead zuckenberg's ai but only if he could stay at NYU
lecun is french so he now connects best for stiudent models from west to east coasts to paris and India which have been locatiosn 3 and 4 of the king charlest started ai world series; in effect lecun can be trusted by millennails and those seeking commonwealth progress to advice on intergenerational ai
lecun is part of the algorithm triad with canadia roots - connected by Hinton and Bengio; Hinton being 10 years older is largely retired and sadly he has backed bureaucratic regulation -so all three of tehse people know everything the algorithm group worked on to keep von neumann and net maths applied to tyhe ai world but practically speaking lecun has been in middle of local and open ai models like mistral and llam3 and all of Modi, Ambani, Tata, other India supporters of data sovereigntly and south asi ai s well as Jense Huang back AI as a nation who can help bring ai to the edge as eg companies like dell increasingly integarte ai as a full stack connector of computtion tools from pcs up.
While most of meta's focus appears to ne on non biotech ai sude, lecun is deeply expert at academics relevant to all types of AI; moreover there remains meta's leading edge in spectacles expected to be the next way ai augments peoples brains- there is research which suggests that schools adop-ting versions of spactacles available by 2030 can expect to raise all students iq by 50 points; this idea of ai aubgemnting braisns suggests that ai will not cause job losses except to people where education systems deliberately slow down ai as most vbital innovation 15 year old students and teachers have ever had the chnace to celebrate
One of the deepest reasons for valuing connections with Lecuv is he's best placed to connect Atlantic advances in AI; Hassabis actually connects london, (parentally greece, singapore), puropoe wise most ru=oyal societoes that have led dna coding eg crock watson and have also connected eg king charles interests in city design, arts and with Jpana Eapperor family envoronment tech and recursive research
If we reflect again on who linked in the 3 waves of 10**6 more tech, chips and deep learning computing was a pacific coast thing between west coast usa and the far east coast lines; Joan had taken a 7 year lead on this after death of the net as confirmed by this post of JF Kennedy and The Economist surveys of Asian pacifuc countries 1962-1977 borlaug had taught japan quialy engineering which becamse asian coastline sme just-in-time supply chians; each of japan korea taiwan hk singapore played a wi-win trading role; for taiwan study H li who set up gov entrepeirial chip intelligence hub, Guo of Foxcomm, Chang who was invited to build the word;s chip foundry in 1987 the yera taiwan celebrated end of military leadership ie full democracy/ By 1993 when two other million fold expenentials were born - paryners of jensen huang graviated one of these movements; technically satellite revolution of mobilise=ing not just phone but camera and dara clouds leapr firward 1G to 5g+ out of Geneva's ITu standard authority closely linked to UN purposes.