Meta’s AI research head Joelle Pineau to step down

Joelle Pineau, Vice President of AI Research at Meta, is set to leave the company after eight years. Pineau, who leads the firm’s Fundamental AI Research group, known as FAIR, announced her departure in a LinkedIn post on Tuesday.

“After nearly 8 years at Meta, time has come to say farewell. This has been the professional experience of a lifetime!  I arrived at Meta in May 2017, thrilled to be joining forces with some of the world’s best AI researchers, with the simple goal of solving AI and open-sourcing our research to accelerate innovation through the broader eco-system. Fast-forward to today, I am surrounded by the most inspiring and dedicated team, focused on our goal of achieving Advanced Machine Intelligence (AMI),” read Pineau’s post. 

Pineau’s exit comes at a time when the tech giant is scaling up its AI investments, with plans to spend $65 billion on AI infrastructure this year. According to a Meta spokesperson, the company is yet to name her replacement, but has begun the search for her successor, said a report by Bloomberg.  

According to the report, Pineau has led the FAIR team since early 2023, reporting to Chief Product Officer Chris Cox. During her tenure, she oversaw research in areas such as voice translation, image recognition, and Llama, Meta’s open-source large language model. In addition, she is a professor of computer science at McGill University in Montreal.

“I will be cheering from the sidelines, knowing that you have all the ingredients needed to build the best AI systems in the world, and to responsibly bring them into the lives of billions of people. My last day will be May 30. After that I will be taking some time to observe and to reflect, before jumping into a new adventure,” she added.