OpenAI AI ethics chief resigns within a year of joining, third AI safety researcher to leave this year
OpenAI now has no dedicated AI ethicist. Its AI ethics chief, Chloe Bakalar, reportedly left the company last month, less than a year after joining
OpenAI now has no dedicated AI ethicist. Its AI ethics chief, Chloe Bakalar, reportedly left the company last month, less than a year after joining. Her exit makes her the latest senior figure associated with OpenAI’s safety and ethics work to leave. It also follows recent departures from the company’s safety leadership while the ChatGPT maker is amid growing pressure over how it develops and controls increasingly capable AI systems. Read Full Story Bakalar joined OpenAI as its AI ethics lead in August 2025 and left the company last month, according to the Financial Times. Her departure was not publicly announced. She has also not posted about or updated her LinkedIn profile to reflect her departure yet. The report suggests that Bakalar was the company’s only dedicated ethicist and that there is currently no replacement for her role.
Who is Chloe Bakalar? Before joining OpenAI, Bakalar spent nearly six years at Meta, where she served as chief ethicist and worked on the company’s AI ethics programmes. At Meta her work involved bringing ethical considerations into products such as Facebook and Instagram. She has also held academic positions at University College London, Temple University and Princeton University. What was Chloe Bakalar’s role at OpenAI? At OpenAI, Bakalar focused on ethical approaches to AI model development, how people interact with AI systems and debates around machine consciousness. Simply put, Bakalar’s job was to help OpenAI make AI safer and more responsible, while studying how people interact with AI and the bigger questions AI raises. Her departure means OpenAI no longer has a dedicated ethicist in the role.
However, the company says ethics is embedded across multiple teams involved in developing its AI models. Big safety exits from OpenAI Bakalar is also the latest in a series of senior safety and alignment-related departures from OpenAI this year. Johannes Heidecke, who led the company’s Safety Systems team, left last month– July 2026– amid a reorganisation that brought its safety and research teams closer together. OpenAI said its safety work needed to play a more direct role in decisions around models, products and launches. Heidecke’s departure was therefore linked to the restructuring, rather than a publicly stated disagreement over safety. Joshua Achiam, OpenAI’s chief futurist and former head of mission alignment, also announced his departure in July after nearly nine years at the company.
The BriefWire