The head of Meta’s artificial intelligence research division said she plans to step down, vacating a high-profile position at the parent company of Facebook and Instagram at a time of intense competition in the development of AI technology

MENLO PARK, Calif. — The head of Meta’s artificial intelligence research division said she plans to step down, vacating a high-profile position at a time of intense competition in the development of AI technology.

Joelle Pineau, Meta’s vice president for AI research, said Tuesday she is leaving at the end of May after eight years with the company.

“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 in a social media post.

Meta — the parent company of Facebook and Instagram — didn’t immediately respond to an emailed request for comment about the move. Pineau didn’t announce a replacement.

Based in Montreal, where she is also a computer science professor at McGill University, Pineau has been the face of Meta’s “open-source” approach to building AI systems, such as its flagship large language model called Llama, in which core components are publicly released for others to use or modify.

Her announcement comes ahead of the company’s debut of a new LlamaCon AI conference on April 29.

In 2023, she began directing Meta’s AI research division, formerly known as Facebook AI Research, which had been founded a decade earlier by a group that included pioneering AI researcher Yann LeCun. LeCun stepped down as the group’s director in 2018 but remains Meta’s chief AI scientist.

Elon Musk has sold social media site X to his own xAI artificial intelligence company in a $33 billion all-stock deal, the billionaire announced on Friday.

Both companies are privately held, which means they are not required to disclose their finances to the public.

Musk said in a post on X that the move will “unlock immense potential by blending xAI’s advanced AI capability and expertise with X’s massive reach.” He said the deal values xAI at $80 billion and X at $33 billion. Musk, who serves as CEO of Tesla and SpaceX as well as an advisor to President Donald Trump, bought the site then called Twitter for $44 billion in 2022, gutted its staff and changed its policies on hate speech, misinformation and user verification and renamed it X.

He launched xAI a year later.

“xAI and X’s futures are intertwined. Today, we officially take the step to combine the data, models, compute, distribution and talent. This combination will unlock immense potential by blending xAI’s advanced AI capability and expertise with X’s massive reach,” Musk wrote on X. “The combined company will deliver smarter, more meaningful experiences to billions of people while staying true to our core mission of seeking truth and advancing knowledge.”

It’s not clear if the move will change anything for X users — xAI already uses data from X user posts to train its artificial intelligence models and paying X users have access to its AI chatbot, Grok.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Elon Musk called Thursday to “delete entire agencies” from the United States’ federal government as part of his push under President Donald Trump to radically cut spending and restructure its priorities.

Musk offered a wide-ranging survey via a videocall to the World Governments Summit in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, of what he described as the priorities of the Trump administration interspersed with multiple references to “thermonuclear warfare” and the possible dangers of artificial intelligence.

“We really have here rule of the bureaucracy as opposed to rule of the people — democracy,” Musk said, wearing a black T-shirt that read: “Tech Support.” He also joked that he was the “White House’s tech support,” borrowing from his profile on the social platform X, which he owns.

“I think we do need to delete entire agencies as opposed to leave a lot of them behind,” Musk said. “If we don’t remove the roots of the weed, then it’s easy for the weed to grow back.”

While Musk has spoken to the summit in the past, his appearance Thursday comes as he has consolidated control over large swaths of the government with Trump’s blessing since assuming leadership of the Department of Government Efficiency. That’s included sidelining career officials, gaining access to sensitive databases and inviting a constitutional clash over the limits of presidential authority.

Musk’s new role imbued his comments with more weight beyond being the world’s wealthiest person through his investments in SpaceX and electric carmaker Tesla.

His remarks also offered a more-isolationist view of American power in the Middle East, where the U.S. has fought wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

“A lot of attention has been on USAID for example,” Musk said, referring to Trump’s dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development. “There’s like the National Endowment for Democracy. But I’m like, ‘Okay, well, how much democracy have they achieved lately?’”

He added that the U.S. under Trump is “less interested in interfering with the affairs of other countries.”

There are “times the United States has been kind of pushy in international affairs, which may resonate with some members of the audience,” Musk said, speaking to the crowd in the UAE, an autocratically ruled nation of seven sheikhdoms.

“Basically, America should mind its own business, rather than push for regime change all over the place,” he said.

He also noted the Trump administration’s focus on eliminating diversity, equity and inclusion work, at one point linking it to AI.

“If hypothetically, AI is designed for DEI, you know, diversity at all costs, it could decide that there’s too many men in power and execute them,” Musk said.

On AI, Musk said he believed X’s newly updated AI chatbot, Grok 3, would be ready in about two weeks, calling it at one point “kind of scary.” He criticized Sam Altman’s management of OpenAI, which Musk just led a $97.4 billion takeover bid for, describing it as akin to a nonprofit aimed at saving the Amazon rainforest becoming a “lumber company that chops down the trees.”

Musk also announced plans for a “Dubai Loop” project in line with his work in the Boring Company — which is digging tunnels in Las Vegas to speed transit. However, he and the Emirati government official speaking with him offered no immediate details of the plan.

“It’s going to be like a wormhole,” Musk promised. “You just wormhole from one part of the city — boom — and you’re out in another part of the city.”

PARIS — JD Vance is stepping onto the world stage for the first time as U.S. vice president this week, using a high-profile artificial intelligence summit in France and a gathering of national security leaders in Germany to showcase Donald Trump’s more assertive approach to diplomacy.

The 40-year-old vice president, who was just 18 months into his tenure as a senator before joining Trump’s ticket, is expected, while in Paris, to push back on European efforts to tighten AI oversight while advocating for a more open, innovation-driven approach.

The AI summit has drawn world leaders, top tech executives, and policymakers to discuss artificial intelligence’s impact on global security, economics, and governance. High-profile attendees also include Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Guoqing, signaling Beijing’s deep interest in shaping global AI standards. The event highlights a growing divide between the European Union and other players pushing for more regulations to make the fast-moving technology safer for the public, and the U.S., where the Trump administration has prioritized business-friendly policies and technological dominance.

Vance’s trip extends beyond Paris. Later this week, he will travel to Germany for the Munich Security Conference, where he has said he plans to push European allies to step up their commitments to NATO and Ukraine.

The summit will give some European leaders an introduction to Vance, who is making his first major overseas trip since taking office. He has signaled he will use the summit as a venue for candid discussions on AI policy and broader geopolitical issues.

“At the AI Summit, the main reason I’m going is actually to have some private conversations with the world leaders who are also going to be there,” Vance told Breitbart News. “I think there’s a lot that some of the leaders who are present at the AI summit could do to, frankly — bring the Russia-Ukraine conflict to a close, help us diplomatically there — and so we’re going to be focused on those meetings in France.”

Vance is expected to meet separately on Tuesday on the sidelines of the summit with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, according to a person familiar with planning who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the yet to be formally announced bilateral meetings.

Vance was joined by his wife Usha and their three children — Ewan, Vivek and Mirabel — for the trip to Europe. They were greeted in France on Monday morning by Manuel Valls, the minister for Overseas France, and the U.S. Embassy’s charge d’affaires, David McCawley.

On Tuesday, Vance will have a working lunch with French President Emmanuel Macron, with discussions on Ukraine and the Middle East on the agenda. Vance, like the U.S. president, has questioned U.S. spending on Ukraine and the broader approach to isolating Russian President Vladimir Putin. Trump promised to end the fighting within six months of taking office.

Vance also addressed what he views as a concerning trend in Europe regarding free speech, a topic he raised last year at the Munich Security Conference.

“Unfortunately, you’ve seen in Europe a really significant, and I think, frankly, an evil trend towards censorship,” he said. “And you hear a lot about America’s moral leadership. One of the things that America’s moral leadership is going to be about during President Trump’s term is free speech. We want people to be able to speak their minds, and we believe that free and open debate is actually a good thing. Unfortunately, a lot of our European friends have gone the wrong direction there.”

Vance is attending Munich again, where he may meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. He plans to revisit themes he raised last year, including “to hit on” the need for NATO allies to take on a greater share of responsibility.

Leaders in Europe have been carefully watching Trump’s recent statements on threats to impose tariffs on the European Union, take control of Greenland and his suggestion that Palestinians clear out of Gaza once the fighting in the Israel-Hamas conflict ends — an idea that’s been flatly rejected by Arab allies.

The summit, which gathers major players such as Google, Microsoft and OpenAI, aims at fostering AI advances in sectors like health, education, environment and culture.

A global public-private partnership named “Current AI” will be launched to support large-scale initiatives that serve the general interest.

The Paris summit “is the first time we’ll have had such a broad international discussion in one place on the future of AI,” said Linda Griffin, vice president of public policy at Mozilla. “I see it as a norm-setting moment.”

Nick Reiners, senior geotechnology analyst at Eurasia Group, noted an opportunity to shape AI governance in a new direction by “moving away from this concentration of power amongst a handful of private actors and building this public interest AI instead.”

However, it remains unclear if the United States will support such initiatives.

“There’s a lot of complicated questions to resolve” around issues like the ability to control AI systems, Nobel Prize winner Demis Hassabis, founder of Google’s DeepMind research lab, said. “But also I think even more complicated are maybe the geopolitical questions about things like regulation.”

French organizers are also looking for the summit to ignite major investment announcements in Europe, positioning the region as a viable contender in an industry increasingly shaped by a growing U.S.-China rivalry.

France plans to announce AI private investments worth a total of 109 billion euros ($113 billion) over the coming years, Macron said, presenting it as “the equivalent” of Trump’s Stargate AI data centers project.

On the eve of the AI Summit, Macron posted a series of ‘deepfake’ videos of himself on Instagram, using artificial intelligence to manipulate his voice and image in various parodies—an effort he said was meant to spark debate on AI’s potential and risks.

In Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun expressed opposition Monday to any moves to restrict access to AI tools. The release of DeepSeek has prompted calls in the U.S. Congress to limit its use for security reasons.

“We oppose drawing ideological lines and oppose overstretching national security concepts and politicizing economic and trade issues,” Guo said.

He said that China advocates for open-source AI technology and promotes the accessibility of AI services to share the benefits of artificial intelligence with all countries.

Modi is co-hosting the summit with Macron in an effort to involve more global actors in AI development and prevent the sector from becoming a U.S.-China battle.

India’s foreign secretary, Vikram Misri, stressed the need for equitable access to AI to avoid “perpetuating a digital divide that is already existing across the world.”

Macron will also travel on Wednesday with Modi to the southern French port city of Marseille to inaugurate an Indian Consulate there and visit the ITER nuclear research site.

France has become a key defense partner for India, with talks underway on New Delhi purchasing 26 Rafale fighter jets and three Scorpene submarines. Officials in India said that discussions are at the final phase and the deal could be inked in a few weeks.

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Kelvin Chan and Angela Charlton in Paris, Ken Moritsugu in Beijing, and Aijaz Hussain in New Delhi, contributed to this report.

ALBANY, N.Y. — New York state government agencies will have to conduct reviews and publish reports that detail how they’re using artificial intelligence software, under a new law signed by Gov. Kathy Hochul.

Hochul, a Democrat, signed the bill last week after it was passed by state lawmakers earlier this year.

The law requires state agencies to perform assessments of any software that uses algorithms, computational models or AI techniques, and then submit those reviews to the governor and top legislative leaders along with posting them online.

It also bars the use of AI in certain situations, such as an automated decision on whether someone receives unemployment benefits or child care assistance, unless the system is being consistently monitored by a human.

State workers would also be shielded from having their hours or job duties limited because of AI under the law.

State Sen. Kristen Gonzalez, a Democrat who sponsored the bill, called the law an important step in setting up some guardrails in how the emerging technology is used in state government.