OpenAI's Only Ethicist Reportedly Left Last Month
OpenAI's sole dedicated ethicist, Chloé Bakalar, has reportedly left the company, leaving the organization without a specific role focused on AI ethics. This departure coincides with CEO Sam Altman's increasingly bold rhetoric regarding the technological singularity.
Why it matters
The removal of dedicated ethics oversight at a leading AI firm raises concerns about the company's commitment to responsible development as it pursues advanced AGI.
OpenAI’s head ethicist, Chloé Bakalar, quietly left the company at some point in July after having been hired the previous August. Before working at OpenAI, she was Meta’s chief ethicist, and established AI ethics policies for Instagram and Facebook, according to a story by the Financial Times .
The FT’s anonymous source apparently told that paper that Bakalar specialized in “ethical approaches to model development, how humans interact with AI and debate over machine consciousness.” Whoever that source is, they apparently also said Bakalar hadn’t been replaced, and that she had been the sole dedicated ethicist at OpenAI. OpenAI is, in other words, reportedly now ethicist-free.
In the present context, it’s remarkable to hear part of Bakalar’s relatively down-to-earth message to the 2023 Forbes Healthcare Summit during a panel on trust, given when she was still working at Meta:
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