Tesla just fired around 200 people from its Autopilot department, shutting an office down in San Mateo, California, and now Tesla's head of AI has left the company.
Andrej Karpathy, Tesla's head of AI, and one of the key people behind the development of Tesla's industry-leading Autopilot software, announced over Twitter that he is leaving Tesla. Karpathy tweeted: "It's been a great pleasure to help Tesla towards its goals over the last 5 years and a difficult decision to part ways. In that time, Autopilot graduated from lane keeping to city streets and I look forward to seeing the exceptionally strong Autopilot team continue that momentum".
He continued: "I have no concrete plans for what's next but look to spend more time revisiting my long-term passions around technical work in AI, open source and education".
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SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk replied, tweeting: "Thanks for everything you have done for Tesla! It has been an honor working with you".