New Delhi, February 19 Countries in the Global South should invest more in education and youth, as long-term AI innovation will come from countries like India and Africa, which have favorable 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 in the future, the relationship between humans and intelligent AI systems will be similar to the relationship between a leader in business, politics, or academia, or some other field, and their staff.
"AI will be our staff. We will all be managers of intelligent machines. They will carry out our instructions. They may be more intelligent than us… that’s the whole point. You need to attract people who are more intelligent than you, because that’s what will make you more productive," he said.
The former Chief AI scientist at Meta further said that AI will act as an amplifier for human intelligence, accelerating progress, and in the long term, the next major innovation in AI could come from countries with favorable demographics, which means India and Africa.
"The youth is the most creative part of humanity, and there is a deficit of this in the North. The top scientists of the future, and indeed many of the present, are from India, and in the future, will largely be from Africa. So, what does that mean?
"It means providing incentives for young people to study. The idea that 'we don't need to study anymore, because AI will do it for us,' is completely false… For countries in the Global South, that means investing in education and youth," he said.
LeCun said that globally, there is a greater demand for people with higher education, especially at the PhD level, because technological progress hinges on scientific progress, and scientific progress is driven by scientists. Therefore, there is greater demand for education, not less.
Stating that humans and machines will together define intelligence, LeCun said that AI will have to deal with the complexities and unpredictability of the real world.