OpenAI has lost its top AI ethics specialist: what this means for the industry
A landmark staffing event has occurred in the world of artificial intelligence that many in the industry may have overlooked. Chloe Bakalar, who held the position of head of AI ethics at OpenAI, left the company back in July — just a few months after her appointment. This is not just another round of personnel rotation, but a warning sign for the entire ecosystem of large language model development.
According to my information, Bakalar was the only full-time specialist in this field at the company. Moreover, no replacement has been found for her. This means that OpenAI — one of the most influential organizations in the AI field — currently lacks a dedicated expert to handle the ethical aspects of development. Instead, the company states that ethical issues are not the responsibility of a single employee or team, but are integrated directly into the model creation process.
This approach raises serious questions for me. On one hand, decentralizing ethical principles may seem progressive — when every engineer and researcher bears responsibility for the consequences of their work. On the other hand, in practice this often leads to a dilution of responsibility and a lack of systematic oversight. Especially when it comes to such powerful tools as ChatGPT, which are already influencing millions of users around the world.
What does this mean for the market?
The departure of the sole ethics expert from OpenAI is not just an internal staffing reshuffle. It is a signal that even in the industry's leading companies, AI safety and ethics issues remain secondary to development speed and commercial success. In an environment where regulators worldwide are trying to catch up and create frameworks for responsible AI, such decisions could have long-term consequences for trust in the technology.
My professional assessment: the absence of a dedicated ethics specialist at OpenAI is a strategic mistake that could cost the company dearly in the future. While competitors such as Anthropic or Google DeepMind are actively investing in such areas, OpenAI risks remaining in a vulnerable position, especially in the face of tightening regulation in the EU and the US. In the coming years, ethical standards will become not just a "nice addition," but a key factor of competitiveness in the AI market.