“I’m not interested in LLMs anymore.” — Yann LeCun, Chief AI Scientist at Meta

That line made me pause. Not because it dismisses large language models like ChatGPT or DeepSeek, but because it points to something deeper. These models are brilliant with language, but language isn’t intelligence. They can predict, summarize, and synthesize, but they don’t actually understand. They’re mirrors of how humans use words, not minds that grasp meaning.

True intelligence doesn’t just process text — it connects perception, memory, emotion, reasoning, and experience. That’s why the next wave of AI won’t come from scaling models. It’ll come from connecting fields that have, until now, lived in separate worlds.

Neuroscience will help us decode how thought and awareness emerge from the brain. Robotics will ground intelligence in movement, feedback, and adaptation. Mechanical and materials engineering will help us design systems that physically learn from their environments. Psychology and cognitive science will explain how intention, emotion, and meaning form. Biology will give us the ultimate blueprint, showing us shortcuts evolution already discovered through nature’s endless experiments.

AI will be the medium that ties all of this together. It’s the new microscope, telescope, and particle accelerator rolled into one. Through AI, we’ll simulate evolution, model cognition, and design systems that learn as life does. It won’t just accelerate discoveries across these disciplines. It will enable them.

Without this kind of integration, AI stays surface-level, powerful but hollow. With it, we start building systems that actually reason, feel, and evolve alongside us.

What excites me most at Future Forward is seeing this spark in the next generation. When I work with high school research scientists who question the limits of what’s possible, I’m reminded that progress has always come from those willing to challenge the status quo. These students are not just learning science. They’re reimagining it! They’re building the kind of interdisciplinary curiosity that will drive the breakthroughs of the next twenty years, and it’s a privilege to be part of that journey with them.

Gopi Prashanth

Co-founder, Future Forward