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Tesla's Head of AI, Andrej Karpathy, Departs
There is recent news of the departure of Andrej Karpathy, now former head of artificial intelligence at Tesla. Will this affect Tesla's ability to deliver on FSD? Let's find out.
Andrej Karpathy leaving Tesla is a big loss for Tesla. This is the nature of things, however. He was there for 5 years and made a difficult decision to leave. He probably has quite a bit of money now with Tesla stock and can now decide to do whatever he wants. He is looking forward to the auto pilot team and their future.
One minute later, Elon Musk Tweeted to Andrej Karpathy that it was an honor to work with him. Andrej doesn't have any current plans, but plans to move forward with AI, open source, and education. He also feels that the auto pilot team has strong engineers and won't need him to succeed.
Andrej Karpathy is leaving Tesla after 5 years and this is a very noticeable departure. Andrej Karpathy was one of the few people allowed to speak at Tesla conference and to represent Tesla. Will there be an problems with his departure?
The Future of Tesla AI
It's important to know that Andrej was only over Tesla vision and not the entire FSD program. Tesla's vision software is trying to solve the ability to perceive the world and do so accurately. Andrej's team was just a small part of the overall FSD solution, but he and his team were still very important.
Andrej helped pioneer the "Karpathy Data Engine" - which is cars in shadow mode that are able to search for unique data and objects upon request. Andrej was a great ambassador for Tesla AI - he was a great communicator and very popular. He also was a great recruiter for new talent.
Andrej also had a very important technical role with Tesla vision and dealt with many things including perception, the data engine, the neural net architecture, and experimenting with the latest approaches. He was very adept and flexible.
Other people will be able to take up the reigns left behind by Andrej. But, he left right when Tesla was starting some of their most ambitious AI projects, such as the humanoid robot - Tesla Bot. So, why did he leave now? Some speculation is that after 5 years, he feels good about what he's done, he knows many talented people will take his place, and he is likely financially free. It's also possible he was just stressed from working so hard.
Elon Musk is likely driving the FSD program and the Tesla Bot program. These are the most important programs for Tesla's future, along with getting manufacturing up to 20 million vehicles per year. Tesla needs to solve AI perception and vision.
It will be interesting to see who will lead Tesla's AI and talk at AI day this coming September 30, 2022. I also think that Tesla will be just fine without him. Elon Musk's response was very cool and calm and appreciative to him. Tesla will continue to attract great talent.
Do you think Tesla will be ok without Andrej Karpathy? Will Tesla still be able to solve FSD without him?
For more information, watch this video by Dave Lee:
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Jeremy Johnson is a Tesla investor and supporter. He first invested in Tesla in 2017 after years of following Elon Musk and admiring his work ethic and intelligence. Since then, he's become a Tesla bull, covering anything about Tesla he can find, while also dabbling in other electric vehicle companies. Jeremy covers Tesla developments at Torque News. You can follow him on Twitter or LinkedIn to stay in touch and follow his Tesla news coverage on Torque News.
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