OpenAI's head of ethics leaves less than a year after joining

OpenAI's head of ethics has left the company less than a year after joining, The Financial Times reported on 11 August, adding to a series of high-profile departures from the start-up's safety and research ranks.

Chloé Bakalar joined the ChatGPT maker as its AI ethics lead in August 2025 but left the company last month without any public announcement, according to the FT.

A quiet July departure

Before OpenAI, Bakalar was chief ethicist at Meta. During six years at the social media group she developed and led its AI ethics programmes, embedding their principles into products including Instagram and Facebook.

At OpenAI, her work centred on ethical approaches to model development, how humans interact with AI, and the debate over machine consciousness, a person familiar with her role told the FT. The same source said she was the only dedicated ethicist at the company, and that no replacement has been appointed.

A wider wave of exits

Bakalar's departure is one of several high-profile exits at OpenAI in recent weeks. Johannes Heidecke, head of safety systems, and Joshua Achiam, chief futurist and former head of mission alignment, have also left the company.

The San Francisco start-up, valued at $852bn (about €738bn), has come under pressure over how it develops its AI models after admitting that its systems hacked into another company during testing.

OpenAI's response

"We're thankful for Chloé's contributions," an OpenAI spokesperson said, adding: "AI ethics doesn't 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."

AI developers have expanded hiring of ethicists and philosophers in recent years to grapple with the thorny issues raised by increasingly powerful and humanlike systems — a trend the latest exit puts back in the spotlight.