Andrey Karpathythe genius and person in charge of the development of the total autonomous driving based on artificial intelligence through the training of neural networks, has announced his departure from Tesla. The manager had planned to return in July after four months off. But in a series of tweet He has explained that he has made the decision to leave the company without being clear about what his next professional step will be.
Karpathy joined Tesla in June 2017 as director of artificial intelligence after a stint as a researcher at Open AI. Under his direction, Tesla Autopilot went from being a driving assistance system that kept the car in a lane and worked only on highways, to an autonomous driving system within the city that uses artificial vision and artificial intelligence to take decisions.
Software development and artificial intelligence within Tesla are two of the main differentiators with the rest of the automotive industry. Elon Musk has even accepted that these will be the pillars of the company’s future, once they go beyond cars.
Last year they announced that they would employ all the development of artificial intelligence for cars in a robot nicknamed Optimus, which has not yet been presented. It is unclear how the departure of Andrej Karpathy, who is primarily responsible for everything that Elon Musk considers “the future of Tesla”, will affect the company.
The CEO answered in line with tweet of Karpathy saying that “it has been an honor to work with him” and thanking him for all his work within Tesla.
Andrej Karpathy tries to calm the waters
After the announcement, the alarms have jumped. It is normal. After the dozens of scandals and mini-scandals caused by Elon Musk, a part of public opinion considers that the CEO of Tesla should spend more time running his companies, and less time trying to buy —and then regret— social networks.
Furthermore, the resignation of Andrej Karpathy is one more blow to a series of bad news that has surrounded Tesla in recent months. Increase in car prices, layoffs, difficulties in the production line due to the lack of components, raw materials or stoppages in the Shanghai factory due to the increase in COVID infections in the region.
Is Andrej Karpathy’s departure the result of distractions from the CEO, who seems unable to retain his best talent? The former manager has made it clear on his Twitter account that “the Autopilot team is made up of hundreds of talented engineers who know what they’re doing.” In addition, he argued that he was just one more piece in a great team and that his work is often blown out of proportion by his public exposure.
Elon Musk promised that full autonomous driving would finally arrive at the end of 2022. Although we are pretty sure that date will not be met, we will see how the departure of Andrej Karpathy affects the operations of the team, of Tesla in general and the way in which the market responds to the news.