Canadian researcher and McGill University professor Joëlle Pineau has announced that she will be stepping down as vice-president of artificial intelligence (AI) research at Meta, freeing up a key position at a time of intense competition in the technology’s development. The Montrealer said on Tuesday that her departure will take place at the end of May after eight years with the company. “As we say in Montreal, the time has come to hang up my skates,” she wrote on social media. “Today, as the world undergoes significant change, the AI race accelerates and Meta prepares for its next chapter, it’s time to create a space for others to continue this work.” Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, did not immediately respond to an email requesting comment on the decision. Pineau did not say who would replace her. A professor of computer science at McGill University, Pineau was the spokesperson for Meta’s “open source” approach to creating AI systems, such as its flagship language model, Llama, in which the core components are made public for others to use or modify. The announcement comes ahead of the launch of the new LlamaCon AI conference on April 29. In 2023, she took over as head of Meta’s AI research division, formerly Facebook AI Research, founded ten years earlier by a group including pioneering AI researcher Yann LeCun. LeCun stepped down in 2018 but remains Meta’s chief AI scientist. -- This report by The Canadian Press was first published in French on April 2, 2025.
