AI Innovation: India & Africa Lead, Says LeCun

New Delhi, Feb 19 (PTI) Countries in the Global South should invest more in education and youth as AI innovation in the long term will come from countries like India and Africa, that have favourable demographics, computer scientist and leading AI voice Yann LeCun said on Thursday.

Speaking at the AI Impact Summit 2026, LeCun, Executive Chairman of Advanced Machine Intelligence Labs, said that going forward, the relationship that human beings will have with intelligent AI systems will be similar to the relationship that a leader in business, politics, or academia, or some other domain, has with their staff.

"AI is going to be our staff. Everyone of us is gonna (going to) be a manager of a staff of intelligent machines. They will do our bidding. They might be smarter than us... that's the whole point. You need to attract people who are smarter than you, because that's what makes you more productive," he said.

The former Chief AI scientist at Meta further said that AI will act as an amplifier for human intelligence in ways that accelerate progress, and in the long-term the next big innovation in AI could be coming from countries that have favourable demographics, which means India, Africa.


"The youth is the most creative part of humanity, and there is sort of a deficit of that in the North largely. The top scientists of the future, and in fact, many of the present, are from India, and in the future, will be from mostly (from) Africa. So, what does that mean?

"It means having incentives for young people to study. The idea that 'we don't need to study anymore, because AI is gonna do it for us', that's completely false... For countries in the Global South, that means investing in education and youth," he said

LeCun said globally there is more demand for people with higher education, especially at the PhD level scientists because technological progress hinges on scientific progress and scientific progress is brought about by scientists. And so there is more demand for education, not less.

Stating that humans and machines will together define intelligence, LeCun said AI will have to deal with the messiness and unpredictability of the real world. PTI JD JD DR

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