{"id":135867,"date":"2026-08-11T10:03:07","date_gmt":"2026-08-11T10:03:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/135867\/"},"modified":"2026-08-11T10:03:07","modified_gmt":"2026-08-11T10:03:07","slug":"openais-only-ethicist-reportedly-left-last-month-she-wasnt-replaced","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/135867\/","title":{"rendered":"OpenAI’s Only Ethicist Reportedly Left Last Month. She Wasn\u2019t Replaced"},"content":{"rendered":"

OpenAI\u2019s head ethicist, Chlo\u00e9 Bakalar, quietly left the company at some point in July after having been hired the previous August. Before working at OpenAI, she was Meta\u2019s chief ethicist, and established AI ethics policies for Instagram and Facebook, according to a story by the Financial Times<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The FT\u2019s anonymous source apparently told that paper that Bakalar specialized in \u201cethical approaches to model development, how humans interact with AI and debate over machine consciousness.\u201d Whoever that source is, they apparently also said Bakalar hadn\u2019t been replaced, and that she had been the sole dedicated ethicist at OpenAI. OpenAI is, in other words, reportedly now ethicist-free.<\/p>\n

In the present context, it\u2019s remarkable to hear part of Bakalar\u2019s relatively down-to-earth message to the 2023 Forbes Healthcare Summit during a panel on trust, given when she was still working at Meta:<\/p>\n

“The ability to make people feel heard and understood and seen, that’s immensely important, especially in the healthcare field.”<\/p>\n

Chlo\u00e9 Bakalar, Ph.D., Chief Ethicist, Responsible AI (RAI) at @Meta<\/a>, discussed generative AI and healthcare. #ForbesHealth<\/a> pic.twitter.com\/S8gmvOnwKl<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Forbes (@Forbes) December 5, 2023<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Publicly available LLMs were still pretty new at the time, and Bakalar was eager to point out that they were \u201cstill prediction machines,\u201d and not \u201cemotive, feeling, entities.\u201d Sentience and feeling, she opined, were absolutely not happening at the time. \u201cWe are so far away from that,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman\u2019s tone with regard to the technological \u201csingularity\u201d has shifted a bit recently. He had previously suggested humanity was on the approach\u2014writing a blog post called \u201cThe Gentle Singularity<\/a>\u201d for instance, roughly two months before Bakalar was hired. But at the end of last month, in an appearance on a podcast called Relentless, Altman sounded more confident and forceful<\/a>. \u201cWe are now, like, in the singularity,\u201d he said, and added, \u201cI\u2019ve been waiting for this my whole life, and I think it\u2019s going to be incredible, hugely positive, awesome for the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

To be absolutely clear, statements that humanity is in the singularity wouldn\u2019t necessarily conflict with statements to the effect that LLMs aren\u2019t sentient. Definitions of the singularity vary wildly.<\/p>\n

In recent weeks, OpenAI has been front-and-center in a cascade of overlapping and bewildering news stories about AI safety and the government\u2019s role in regulating it. Multiple OpenAI models famously \u201cbroke containment<\/a>\u201d and hacked Hugging Face servers in pursuit of answers to an evaluation exercise. The Trump Administration announced, but did not detail<\/a>, a rubric for the voluntary vetting of AI models. Perhaps relatedly, OpenAI reportedly plans to delay<\/a> the release of a powerful new model, Astra, and according to the Information, Sam Altman personally traveled to Washington, D.C.<\/a> to put Astra on display for policymakers.<\/p>\n

Bakalar is far from the only safety-adjacent OpenAI departure in the past few weeks. Head of Safety Systems Johannes Heidecke and Joshua Achiam, who has worn many hats as an OpenAI safety specialist, also left this summer<\/a>. But as I\u2019ve written before, safety at OpenAI involves a lot of churn.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n

Last month, OpenAI\u2019s Chief Research Officer Mark Chen gave a statement to Wired<\/a> about an apparent new approach to safety in which such considerations sound like they\u2019re sprinkled in throughout development. \u201cIt\u2019s important that our safety work is integrated with frontier-model development, with an earlier and more direct role in shaping key model, product, and launch decisions.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Gizmodo reached out to OpenAI with questions about Bakalar\u2019s departure\u2014including a request for confirmation that there is now no ethicist at OpenAI\u2014a representative provided a statement that had previously been given to FT after its article was initially published: \u201cWe\u2019re thankful for Chloe\u2019s contributions. AI ethics doesn\u2019t live with one owner or team at OpenAI, and ethical considerations are deeply embedded into the model building process driven by a number of teams across research.\u201d<\/p>\n