Joelle Pineau, who has been leading Meta’s artificial intelligence research division, has announced her decision to step down, leaving a prominent role at a time when competition in AI development is heating up.
Pineau, Meta’s vice president for AI research, revealed that she will be leaving the company at the end of May after dedicating eight years to the organization.
In a social media post, she shared, “As the world experiences significant change and the race for AI advancements intensifies, it feels like the right time to make space for others to carry forward this work as Meta enters its next chapter.”
Meta has not yet responded to inquiries about her departure, and no successor has been announced.
Based in Montreal, where she also serves as a computer science professor at McGill University, Pineau has been a prominent advocate for Meta’s open-source strategy in AI development. This includes leading efforts on projects like Llama, the company’s flagship large language model, which releases core components publicly for others to use or modify.
Joelle Pineau announced her decision to step down just ahead of Meta’s upcoming LlamaCon AI conference, scheduled for April 29.
In 2023, she took over as the head of Meta’s AI research division, previously known as Facebook AI Research. This division was established a decade ago by a team that included renowned AI researcher Yann LeCun. Although LeCun stepped down as the group’s director in 2018, he continues to serve as Meta’s chief AI scientist.