The OpenAI logo. [Getty Images]
The OpenAI logo. [Getty Images]

OpenAI's head of AI ethics, Chloe Bakalar, left the company less than a year after joining, the Financial Times reported Monday.

An OpenAI spokesperson confirmed Bakalar's departure, saying "AI ethics at OpenAI is not the work of any one individual or single team" and that "ethical considerations are deeply embedded in the model-building process led by multiple teams."

Bakalar spent six years as Meta Platforms' ethics lead, where she worked to incorporate ethical principles into products including Instagram and Facebook. She joined OpenAI as its AI ethics chief in August last year.

Her exit comes amid a string of recent senior departures. Johannes Heidecker, head of safety systems, and Joshua Achiam, mission alignment lead and futurist, also left the company within the past few weeks.

At a recent AI conference, Bakalar described the pace of AI development as "building the plane while flying it."

At OpenAI, she focused primarily on ethical approaches to model development, human-AI interaction, and debates over whether machines can be conscious.

Bakalar was the only ethicist at OpenAI dedicated solely to ethics issues, and no replacement has been named.


sjy@heraldcorp.com