OpenAI's Head of Ethics, Chloé Bakalar, Departs Less Than a Year After Joining

Ethics Head Departs OpenAI

Chloé Bakalar, who served as OpenAI's Head of Ethics, left the company last month. This departure occurred less than a year after she joined the AI firm. Her role focused on ethical approaches to model development, human-AI interaction, and machine consciousness debates.

Context of Departures and Reorganization

Bakalar's exit follows other recent departures, including Johannes Heidecke, Head of OpenAI's Safety Systems team, and Chief Futurist Joshua Achiam. Business Insider reported that OpenAI has undergone multiple reorganizations of its safety, product, and research teams since ChatGPT's 2022 launch, a period during which the company experienced rapid growth.

Company Stance on Ethics

A person familiar with Bakalar's role indicated she was the only dedicated ethicist at OpenAI and has not been replaced. An OpenAI spokesperson stated that "AI ethics doesn’t live with one owner or team at OpenAI and ethical considerations are deeply embedded into the model-building process driven by a number of teams across research."

Bakalar's Previous Experience and Views

Before OpenAI, Bakalar was Chief Ethicist at Meta. She also holds academic positions at Princeton Center for Technology Policy and University College London. In March, she commented on the rapid growth of AI, stating, "Everybody needs to be part of the conversations; it shouldn’t simply be one person who has a multi-billion-dollar company that gets to dictate that this is what’s right for all people."