Tesla is leaving another top manager and one of the most prominent specialists in the field of machine learning and computer vision – Andrey Karpaty , who until recently held the position of director of Tesla Autopilot, unexpectedly announced on his Twitter that he was leaving his position and would completely leave the company he worked for last 5 years.
Andriy Karpaty himself did not say why exactly he decided to leave, calling his work in the company “great pleasure”, and ending his career at Tesla “ difficult decision”. The engineer has “no concrete plans for the next projects” yet, but wants to revisit “his long-term passions for technical work in AI, open source, and education.”
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.
— Andrej Karpathy (@karpathy) July 13, 2022
Who will replace Karpaty and become the new director of Tesla Autopilot is still unknown. But it seems that this time there will be no scandal, as Tesla Elon Musk kindly responded to the ex-engineer on Twitter – the co-founder and CEO thanked him for his contribution to the development of the company and separately noted that he was honored to work with such a specialist as Carpathians. Karpaty took a leave of absence in March to “relax and travel” but said he plans to return to Tesla this month, according to Bloomberg. Previously, Tesla laid off about 200 employees who worked on Autopilot.
Thanks for everything you have done for Tesla! It has been an honor working with you.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 13, 2022
Andriy Karpaty joined Tesla in 2017, replacing Swift programming language developer and former Apple executive Chris Lattner, who didn’t last even six months as the head of Tesla Autopilot development. Over these five years, under the leadership of Karpata, the Tesla Autopilot development team has done a lot and made the proprietary driver assistance system one of the best on the market. At the same time, despite Elon Musk’s many promises regarding a full-fledged autopilot, now Tesla Autopilot is not one, and the company’s cars are still not able to move independently without the control and assistance of the driver, although the progress over the past few years is undoubtedly impressive. In January, Elon Musk, during a report, expressed confidence that this year the FSD system would drive safer than a person, and called the new approximate launch dates for the sensational Tesla Network robot service – until the end of 2022 (if you remember, its launch was originally planned for 2020). And in early May, during the Tesla Cyber Rodeo, Musk announced a futuristic self-driving taxi that Tesla plans to reveal in 2023 and begin mass production in 2024.
Tesla is currently under scrutiny by U.S. regulators and is involved in a number of investigations, in particular due to numerous parked emergency vehicle accidents involving Autopilot .
Tesla’s next big AI Day presentation is scheduled for Sept. 30, with a pre-scheduled showing of a working prototype of the Optimus humanoid robot. How the dismissal of Andrey Karpaty will affect the pace of development of Tesla Autopilot and the timing of the implementation of other related projects is still an unanswered question.
Elon Musk said that by the end of September Tesla will probably have a working prototype of the humanoid robot Optimus
