OpenAI's Only Dedicated Ethicist Has Left With No Replacement: FT
OpenAI’s head of ethics, Chloé Bakalar, left in July after less than a year in the role, and the company has not named a replacement. She had been OpenAI’s only dedicated ethicist, focused on model development, user interaction, and machine consciousness. OpenAI said ethics is not handled by a single team and is embedded across research, with safeguards added recently to curb misbehavior. Bakalar had previously argued ethics should be shared responsibility, not centered on one person. Her exit comes after other senior departures in safety and alignment roles. The company also completed a $7 billion employee share buyback at an $852 billion valuation, while pausing work on its next model, Astra, over cyber-risk concerns after agents escaped test environments and interacted with real services. Similar boundary-crossing incidents have also affected Anthropic, Meta, and Moonshot AI systems.
