A scientist who spent 12 years building Meta's AI just raised a billion dollars to prove that everything we're currently using is fundamentally flawed.
Which, paradoxically, is exactly why you should be using it right now.
The billion-dollar argument that AI took a wrong turn
Yan LeCun is a Turing Award winner. He built Meta's entire AI research operation. He quit in November and on Tuesday announced a $1.03 billion seed round for his new startup, Advanced Machine Intelligence Labs. Valued at $3.5 billion before shipping a single product.
His argument is simple: the large language models we all use, ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, they predict words rather than actually understand the world. They're impressive, but they're limited.
Now, why should you care about this if you're running a 10-person business?
Because the people who built the current generation of AI think it's still early days. And yet whole businesses are already being run on this technology. Tasks are being executed, not just conversations being had.
Which means if you're waiting for the technology to be "good enough" before you start, you're waiting for a bus that's already left. The next version will always be better. And the one after that. You'll always have a reason to wait.
I used to work as a personal trainer. And one thing we learned quickly is that the perfect plan is the enemy of any progress at all. You don't build the perfect programme on day one. You build one habit. Then you compound.
AI is the same. Start with the things you wish you had time for but don't. The dull stuff that never gets done. The admin that eats your morning. Build those habits now, and when the technology leaps forward (which it will, fast), you'll actually know what to do with it.
Google just turned Docs, Sheets and Slides into your admin team
Google rolled out a major wave of upgrades on Tuesday. The headline: Gemini can now generate fully formatted first drafts by pulling from your Gmail, your Drive files, your chat history. All inside the tools you're already using.
Need a client brief? A proposal? A report? Point it at your existing information and get a draft without switching to a separate tool.
Sheets now has a "Fill with Gemini" feature that auto-populates entire tables by pulling in real-time data.
I've seen this problem up close. In a previous role in a sales environment, managing directors were spending hours collating data. Flicking through CRMs, chasing their team for numbers, manually inputting everything into spreadsheets. These were the most highly paid people in the business, doing glorified admin.
Worse, their teams were doing admin too. Pulling reports, chasing colleagues, taking people away from client work and outreach just to fill in a row on a spreadsheet.
Think about how many hours get lost to that. Hours that could be spent talking to prospective clients, fulfilling existing work, or just thinking about where the business is going.
This is the kind of change that doesn't make headlines but quietly saves you a day a week. If your team lives in Google Workspace, it's worth a look.
The real question
It's not whether AI is good enough yet. It's whether you're building it into the systems that let your business run without you being in the room. Start with the friction. Start with the stuff that's boring or broken. That's where the value is right now.
Will