Meta Platforms continues to invest heavily in artificial intelligence (AI), but will due so without its head of AI research.
In a LinkedIn post, Joelle Pineau, the company’s vice president of AI research announced she was departing Meta, with her last day at the social media company slated for 30 May.
“After nearly 8 years at Meta, time has come to say farewell,” Pineau posted. “This has been the professional experience of a lifetime!”
Pineau departure
“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,” she noted.
“Fast-forward to today, I am surrounded by the most inspiring and dedicated team, focused on our goal of achieving Advanced Machine Intelligence (AMI),” she added.
“Today, as the world undergoes significant change, as the race for AI accelerates, and as Meta prepares for its next chapter, it is time to create space for others to pursue the work,” she wrote. “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 concluded.
“We thank Joelle for her leadership of FAIR,” a Meta spokesperson was quoted by CNBC as saying in a statement. “She’s been an important voice for Open Source and helped push breakthroughs to advance our products and the science behind them.”
Some of the projects Pineau helped oversee included Meta’s open-source Llama family of AI models and other technologies like the PyTorch software for AI developers.
Meta’s AI push
Her departure comes as Meta and CEO Mark Zuckerberg seeks to make AI a top priority, investing billions of dollars in its efforts.
Zuckerberg has also reportedly said that it is his goal for Meta to build an AI assistant with more than 1 billion users and artificial general intelligence, which is a term used to describe computers that can think and take actions comparable to humans.
In January Meta said it would increase its AI spending infrastructure to around $60 billion (£48bn) to $65bn in capital expenditures in 2025, the company said, as it faces intense competition from rival tech giants.
The company is building a large 2-gigawatt data centre that “would cover a significant part of Manhattan” to power its AI offerings.
