Yann LeCun, Facebook, about the algorithms that determine what we see on Social Media

Facebook increasingly influences how we view the world. We see the opinions of our friends responding to news that may or may not be fake. But which messages we see first and which messages remain hidden is all controlled by algorithms. Algorithms based on Artificial Intelligence. And these algorithms are the work of a large research team led by Professor Yann LeCun.

LeCun, thereby is one of the leading technologists behind one of the largest companies in the world. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerburg recognized that his ideas could really boost Facebook, when LeCun was building a formidable reputation in the academic world with his convolutional neural networks, and when already almost all handwritten checks are processed by his algorithms, but when the link between social media and AI was still unexplored. Meanwhile, social media controlled by AI are influencing our lives every day.

Philips, Signify and the TU/e awarded Yann LeCun the prestigious Holst Memorial Medial 2018. Radio4Brainport’s Jean-Paul Linnartz spoke to him on his visit to Eindhoven.