Elon Musk’s Tesla has lost its top artificial intelligence expert. Director of AI and leader of the Autopilot vision team Andrej Karpathy is leaving the embattled company after five years at the same time the NHTSA is ramping up its investigation of more than 200 accidents involving Tesla Autopilot.
TechCrunch reports that Andrej Karpathy, the deep learning and computer vision expert who was hired by Tesla five years ago to lead the company’s Autopilot vision team and operate as the company’s AI director, is leaving the company.
A Tesla car in autopilot mode smashed into a parked police vehicle in California (Laguna Beach Police Department)
Elon Musk examines smashed Cybertruck windows (Ringo H.W. Chiu/AP)
Karpathy was already taking a four-month leave of absence which led many to believe he may not return to the company. In a recent tweet, Karpathy wrote: “It’s been a great pleasure to help Tesla towards its goals over the last 5 years and a difficult decision to part ways. In that time, Autopilot graduated from lane keeping to city streets and I look forward to seeing the exceptionally strong Autopilot team continue that momentum.”
Karpathy stated that he has no plans for what he might do next but is looking to spend more time “revisiting my long-term passions around technical work in AI, open source and education.” Sources previously said Karpathy was considering venture investing.
Karpathy’s announcement comes shortly after Tesla announced job cuts, laying off more than 200 employees. Musk has previously stated that he has a “bad feeling” about the state of the global economy. He clarified in interviews that around 10 percent of salaried employees at Telsa would lose their jobs over the next three months, but that the overall headcount would be higher in a year.
The job cuts at Tesla primarily impact its offices in San Mateo, California, where Tesla has decided to shut down the office employing 229 workers. The majority of the workers focused on developing Tesla’s Autopilot system, which is currently under investigation by the NHTSA in relation to 200 crashes. Tesla has suffered massive drops in its stock price since its high in November 2021.
Read more at TechCrunch here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan
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