Francois Chollet: The 100 Most Influential People in Artificial Intelligence in 2024

FRançois Chollet, a 34-year-old Google software engineer and creator of deep learning application programming interface (API) Keras, is challenging the AI ​​status quo. While tech giants are betting on more advanced AIs by increasingly feeding more data and computational resources into large language models (LLMs), Chollet argues that this approach alone will not lead to artificial general intelligence (AGI).

Launched in June 2024 with Mike Knoop, Lab42, and Infinite Monkey, the $1.1 million ARC Prize challenges researchers to solve spatial reasoning problems that stump existing systems but are relatively simple for humans. The results of the competition appear to prove Chollet right. While the top of the leaderboard is still well below the human average of 84%, the top models are steadily improving—from 21% to 43% accuracy in 2020.

Surprisingly, it’s not traditional methods that are leading the way. The most promising are teams using alternatives like neurosymbolic AI, program search, and program synthesis. These approaches aim to move beyond the current deep learning hegemony and reason more like humans.

Chollet sees AGI as a combination of these new methods with deep learning and LLMs. For him, AGI is not a supercharged chatbot, but a tool for advancing human knowledge. “AGI will be a kind of super-skilled scientist,” he says.

With more than 800 teams competing, Chollet’s ARC Prize could spark an AI revolution from an unexpected direction.