Tesla’s leadership keeps moving. As it became known on Wednesday evening, the electric car manufacturer will soon lose its top manager for the development of its driver assistance technology: Andrej Karpathy (35), head of the artificial intelligence (AI) department, is leaving the company after a four-month break.
“It was my great pleasure Tesla to help him achieve his goals for the last five years and it is a difficult decision to leave,” Karpathy wrote on the short message service on Wednesday Twitter. He doesn’t have any concrete plans for the future yet, but wants to devote more time to his passion for technical developments in the areas of AI, open source and education.
Tesla boss Elon Musk (51) replied in a tweet: “Thank you for everything you have done for Tesla! It was an honor to work with you.”
Karpathy joined Tesla in 2017 and was responsible for the development of the driver assistance system, called “Autopilot”. He should ensure that the software can better recognize its environment. In addition, Karpathy had authority over other software topics in the company, reports Bloomberg.
Tesla is currently trying to adapt the “Autopilot” system from relatively simple tasks like keeping lane and distance to operate in the city with traffic lights, intersections and priority rules. As videos from beta testers show, the software still makes some glaring errors that have to be corrected by the person behind the wheel. Training the “autopilot” system also involves people first naming objects in the picture.
At the end of June it was also announced that Tesla was making significant savings in the area of driving assistants. The company has now confirmed this information in a statement.
Accordingly, the world’s largest electric car manufacturer is closing its office in San Mateo, California, which is working on the development and improvement of the “autopilot”. The 229 employees would be laid off, the company said in a statement. Tesla boss Musk had already informed internally about the plans for job cuts at the beginning of June. In an email available to the Reuters news agency, Musk justified this with a “super bad feeling” about economic development.