The departure of its sole ethicist will add to the pressure on the company. In her year at OpenAI Bakalar focused on ethical approaches to model development, looking at how humans interact with AI and examining machine consciousness, according to the FT report.
Bakalar had considerable expertise in the area. She was previously at Meta, where she developed the company’s ethics programs, but has also held several positions at prestigious universities on both sides of the Atlantic. Her departure will cause some anxiety at OpenAI as it continues to prepare the ground for its IPO.