Yann LeCun, widely regarded as the ‘godfather of AI’ and Meta’s most famous former employee, has now shared a blunt message for students navigating the hype and fear surrounding artificial intelligence: don’t listen to CEOs, and don’t skip college. In an interview with Axios, LeCun cautioned that exaggerated claims about AI’s risks are already harming young people. He noted that some of the high school strands have become depressed after reading the predictions that AI could case mass unemployment or even human extinction. “They take that seriously and it has a profound effect on their psychology,” he said, calling extinction fears “extremely destructive and wrong.”
Yann LeCun advise not to listen to the CEOs
LeCun has also urged students to not to listen to and ignore the alarmist rhetoric from the AI company leaders. “Don’t listen to CEOs … they have a vested interest in propping up the power of the products they sell,” he said. He also believe that economists and not tech executives are better suited to assess the impact of AI on jobs. While AI tools are powerful, he stressed that they are “still not very good at reasoning” and are also far from achieving human-level intelligence.
Going to college still matters
Contrary to fears that AI will make higher education obsolete, LeCun emphasised that advanced degrees will become more valuable. He advised students to “study things with a long shelf life,” recommending fields like physics and electrical engineering. AI, he argued, will increase demand for educated, critical thinkers who can manage and direct intelligent systems.
Yann LeCun also believe that jobs will evolve and not disappear
LeCun has also shunned the predictions that AI will wipe out 20% of jobs as “ridiculously stupid.” He believes that new job roles will emerge just as they have in past technological revolutions. “Everyone is going to be a boss,” he said but instead of managing people, workers will manage AI agents, making strategic thinking more important than traditional supervisory skills.LeCun further stressed that the present AI wave is not fundamentally different from past tech revolutions. “There is nothing qualitatively different between the previous technological revolutions and this one,” he said. “It’s just another set of tools that makes us more efficient.”
