Andrej Karpathy, Tesla’s former head of synthetic intelligence, said he could return to Tesla, adding paintings about the Optimus robot and synthetic general intelligence (AGI).
Karpathy joined Tesla more than five years ago as an expert in neural networks and computer vision. He joined Tesla when Tesla transitioned from the Mobileye generation for motive force assist functions to its own computer vision-driven system.
The engineer is credited with building Tesla’s device learning and computer vision team. It temporarily climbed the ranks and became a component of Tesla’s Autopilot team and the automaker’s efforts to expand a comprehensive self-driving system.
As Tesla expanded its efforts from autonomous driving to broader synthetic intelligence, Karpathy rose to senior director of AI at Tesla.
In March, Karpathy announced that she would be taking a sabbatical for 4 months. At the time, we reported that this was concerning, as Tesla executives taking breaks prevented them from returning.
In fact, Karpathy announced in July that he would not return to Tesla because of his “long-term passions around technical paints in AI, open source and education. “
On Lex Fridman’s podcast this weekend, the engineer explained why he left Tesla. Karpathy said his role had become too managerial and consisted of too many meetings than the actual engineering.
Interestingly, Karpathy also added that it may be seen returning to Tesla in the future:
It was hard because I love Tesla, I love Elon, I literally love the team. I’d be interested in revisiting [Tesla], maybe coming back at some point, maybe racing with Optimus or AGI on Tesla. to do amazing things. It’s a large-scale massive robotics company with in-house skills that do amazing things.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk responded on Twitter that the engineer would be “always welcome at Tesla. “
Karpathy was a huge loss to Tesla, but he only left after helping build a great and talented team. Therefore, its impact will be felt for a long time.
I sense his explanation for why he left, but I feel there may be more to it than that because if that’s the only explanation for why, he may have moved into a tougher engineering role and returned to his leadership role. I’m sure Tesla would have discovered a use for his talents.
But it’s great to hear that he needs to return to Tesla in the future.
Fred is editor-in-chief and senior editor of Electrek.
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