OpenAI loses its AI ethics lead

Computerworld · yesterday · 2 views

OpenAI has lost its AI ethics lead Chloé Bakalar just a year after she joined the company, the Financial Times reported. Bakalar has maintained a silence and has yet to update her LinkedIn profile, but if her departure is confirmed then it will add to the list of OpenAI executives who have quit in recent months. Other departures include robotics chief Caitlin Kalinowski, who left the company over its deal with the US Department of Defense; researcher Zoe Hitzig, who quit in a very public way by writing an article in the New York Times; and Johannes Heidecke, head of safety systems. OpenAI’s ethical stance has been called into question following an attack by OpenAI models on Hugging Face. The departure of its sole ethicist will add to the pressure on the company. In her year at OpenAI Bakalar focused on ethical approaches to model development, looking at how humans interact with AI and examining machine consciousness, according to the FT report. Bakalar had considerable expertise in the area. She was previously at Meta, where she developed the company’s ethics programs, but has also held several positions at prestigious universities on both sides of the Atlantic. Her departure will cause some anxiety at OpenAI as it continues to prepare the ground for its IPO.