Tesla CEO Elon Musk has announced that the electric vehicle company’s head of AI, Andrej Karpathy, is on a four-month sabbatical. People are worried since other Tesla executives have left after going on sabbatical.
The news comes as Tesla expands its Full Self-Driving (FSD) Beta to Canada, reports the auto-tech website Electrek.
While Tesla has built a strong AI team, Karpathy is still seen as a critical part of the automaker’s effort to achieve full self-driving. That is why many were worried to have not heard from him, and now the CEO revealed on Twitter that the AI expert is on a four-month sabbatical.
Taking some time off to rest and travel after almost 5 years at Tesla. Especially excited to get focused on time to re-sharpen my technical edge and train some neural nets! Though I already miss all the robots and GPU/Dojo clusters and looking forward to having them at my fingertips again, – Karpathy wrote on Twitter after Musk made the announcement.
The report said this is nonetheless getting some Tesla fans and investors worried because that’s how it started for other Tesla executives in the past.
For example, Doug Field, Tesla’s former senior VP of engineering, took a leave of absence to “recharge and spend time with his family” back in 2018. At the time, Tesla reassured everyone that Field had not left the company.
A few months later, it was revealed that Field would not be returning from his leave of absence. It was revealed that after almost five years at Tesla, Field returned to Apple. More recently, he joined Ford.
