As Meta (Meta) prepares to invest tens of millions of dollars in races to develop artificial intelligence, the company is losing one of its most influential researchers. Joel Pineau, Meta’s AI Research Director, announced yesterday (April 1) that he would leave the company “to create space for others to pursue their work.” Her last day will be May 30th. Pineau later said, “I will take the time to observe and reflect before diving into a new adventure.”
Pineau has led the Meta Basic AI Research (FAIR) team since 2023. Her team focuses on overseeing AI efforts across the company and achieving advanced forms of AI that demonstrate capabilities comparable to human capabilities. It was founded over 10 years ago. Support from Meta Chief AI Scientist Yann Lecun has moved to a more research-focused role as Meta Chief AI Scientist.
In a statement to CNBC, Meta thanked Joel for helping us “push the breakthrough to advance our products and the science behind it.”
The fair team was behind the development of Lama, the family of Meta’s Open Source Large Language Model (LLMS), the only major open source alternative to proprietary models such as Openai’s GPT and Google’s Gemini. Meta is expected to share more updates on the open source AI strategy at Llamacon, the first developer conference dedicated to generator AI, scheduled for April 29th. The company aims to reach 1 billion users each month for its Lama-powered Meta AI Virtual Assistant this year.
Other team-led projects include Pytorch, a popular machine learning framework, and Audiobox, an audio-generating AI model.
In line with industry peers such as Google and Openai, Meta has rapidly increased its investment in AI development. The company is expected to spend between $600 billion and $65 billion this year alone. “It’s going to be intense,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in January.
The investment includes large infrastructure expansions, including Louisiana’s planned 4 million square-foot data center and plans to double the Meta Graphic Processing Units (GPUs) to 1.3 million.
Pineau’s departure concludes his eight-year tenure at Meta. She joined the company in 2017 to lead the AI Lab in Montreal, where she is a professor of computer science at McGill University and co-supervises the school’s reasoning and learning labs. She is also a member of the Mila Quebec AI Institute.
