OpenAI's Only Dedicated Ethicist Has Left With No Replacement: FT

In brief

• Chloé Bakalar, OpenAI's AI ethics lead, left the company last month without a public announcement, the Financial Times reported.
• She was OpenAI's only dedicated ethicist and has not been replaced, according to a person familiar with her role.
• Her exit follows departures by OpenAI's head of safety systems and its chief futurist.

OpenAI's head of ethics has left less than a year after joining, and the company has not replaced her, the Financial Times reported on Monday.

Chloé Bakalar joined as AI ethics lead last August and departed in July with no public announcement, according to the paper. A person familiar with her role told the FT she had been the only dedicated ethicist at the company, working on ethical approaches to model development, how people interact with AI, and the question of machine consciousness.

Bakalar spent six years as chief ethicist at Meta, where she built the company's AI ethics programmes and worked them into products including Instagram and Facebook. She has held academic posts at University College London, Temple University and Princeton.

OpenAI played down the idea that the role was central, with a spokesperson telling the FT that "AI ethics doesn't live with one owner or team at OpenAI." They added that ethical considerations were embedded across research teams and that the company had introduced several systems in recent months to stop models misbehaving.