Head of Tesla's Self-Driving Abruptly Leaves Company as Efforts Sputter

The head of the company's Artificial Intelligence department has left the company in a high profile departure.

Last month, Musk announced mass layoffs at the company's self-driving division because he had a bad feeling about the economy.

Karpathy said it was a pleasure to help the company towards its goals over the last five years. In that time, Autopilot graduated from lane keeping to city streets and I'm looking forward to seeing the strong team continue that.

The exit sounds sudden.

"I have no concrete plans for what's next but look to spend more time revisiting my long term passions around technical work in artificial intelligence, open source and education," Karpathy wrote in a follow up.

Restructuring

Musk thanked Karpathy for his work.

The billionaire thanked the person for all they had done for the company. Working with you has been an honor.

Over 200 people were let go from the company's office in San Mateo, California. According to CNBC, the employees were tasked with training the company's autopilot system by labeling videos taken byTesla cameras on the road

The company's progress toward self-driving tech, especially the misleadingly named "Full Self-Driving" add-on, has gotten increasingly skeptical attention from regulators.

The NHTSA revealed in May that it is investigating at least 35 crashes involving cars with autopilot on.

We don't know why Karpathy was let go, but it's possible that he was let go because of the restructuring going on at the company.

It's possible that it's an indication that the company's efforts to bring its self-driving technologies to public roads are not going well.

The leader of the company has left.

200 people were fired byTesla for working on its incomplete self- driving software.