April 30, 2025

6:00-8:00 PM

On April 30th, the Foundation was honored to host Yann LeCun, VP and Chief AI Scientist at Meta, and Vilas Dhar, President of the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation and Young Leader 2023, for a conversation on building AI with optimism, transparency, and collaboration. Our distinguished speakers offered complementary perspectives: Yann shared insights from his pioneering work in computer science, while Vilas brought his unique philanthropic lens as head of the world’s largest private AI investor. A central theme that emerged was the debate between open-source and closed models as competing approaches in the future of AI development. Our speakers made a compelling case for open-source foundation models as critical infrastructure that can accelerate innovation through global collaboration.