Meta (META.US) AI Research Director Resigns, Senior Vacancy or Impact on AI Ambitions

As Meta Platforms (META.US) seeks to make significant investments and compete in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), the company's AI research director, Joel Pino, plans to resign, leading to a senior position vacancy. Pino, the vice president leading Meta's foundational AI research group (FAIR), announced her departure on Tuesday. She has been with Meta for eight years, taking over the FAIR team at the beginning of 2023 and reporting to Chief Product Officer Chris Cox. Pino's team is responsible for Meta's AI research, focusing on areas such as speech translation, image recognition technology, and open-source large language models like Llama. The department is also exploring the development of what Meta calls "Advanced Machine Intelligence," or machine-level human intelligence. Pino is also a computer science professor at McGill University in Montreal. She stated that she will stay with Meta until May, then take some time to "observe and reflect." In a letter to her colleagues, she wrote, "As the world undergoes significant changes, the race for artificial intelligence accelerates, and Meta prepares for the next chapter, it is time to create space for others." Pino also made a statement on social media. Pino's departure may make it more difficult for Meta to compete with rivals such as OpenAI, Anthropic, and Elon Musk's xAI in terms of AI products and talent. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has prioritized artificial intelligence for Meta and announced in January that the company will invest up to $65 billion in related projects this year. Efforts by the company include making Llama a global industry standard. Zuckerberg stated that he believes Meta's AI chatbot Siasun Robot & Automation could have up to 1 billion users this year, as it has already been rolled out on Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. A spokesperson for Meta stated that there is currently no successor lined up for Pino, but they are in search of her replacement. Last year, the company restructured its AI team to bring Pino and FAIR closer to the product department, with the aim to accelerate the process of applying research findings to Meta's various products. The spokesperson added that Meta remains committed to AI research, and their plans have not changed despite Pino's departure.