Tesla's AI chief is on sabbatical and people are worried

Elon Musk announced that Tesla’s head of AI, Lady Karpathy, is on a four-month sabbatical, and people are worried as other Tesla executives have left after going on sabbatical.

It comes as Tesla expanded its full self-driving (FSD) beta in Canada.

While Tesla has built a strong AI team, Carpathy is still seen as a vital part of the automaker’s effort to achieve full self-driving.

That’s why many were worried not to hear from him, and now CEO Elon Musk revealed on Twitter that the AI ​​specialist is on a four-month sabbatical.

After Musk made the announcement on Twitter, Karpathy himself took to social media to comment on his relaxation:

Taking some time off to relax and travel after almost 5 years at Tesla. Especially excited to focus on re-sharpening my technical edge and training some neural nets! However I already miss all the robots and GPU/dojo clusters and am looking forward to having them at my fingertips again.

It’s nonetheless worried some Tesla fans and investors because of how it began for other Tesla executives in the past.

For example, Doug Field, Tesla’s former senior vice president of engineering, took Leave of absence to “recharge and spend time with your family” back in 2018, At the time, Tesla reassured everyone that Fields had not left the company.

A few months later, it was revealed that Field would not return from his leave of absence.

It was revealed that after about five years at Tesla, Fields returned to Apple. Recently, he joined Ford.

Electrek’s Tech

While there’s always the risk of a similar situation with Karpathy leading Tesla’s core AI programs, I think things are looking better for him at Tesla.

I think it’s a good sign that Musk announced it and Karpathy himself decided to expand on Twitter.

However, the timing isn’t great because Musk is talking about Tesla, which aims to make FSDs safer than human drivers by the end of the year. This is a colossal task and possibly difficult to do without the head of your AI.

But health comes first, and if Karpathy needed it, I’m glad he got a chance to take some time off.

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