Tesla Shakes Up Autonomous Vehicle Team

June 21, 2017
Andrej Karpathy, who is joining from nonprofit research lab OpenAI, has done extensive work in trendy areas in artificial intelligence, such as reinforcement learning and generative adversarial networks.

June 21, 2017—Tesla on Tuesday confirmed that it had hired a major figure in artificial intelligence (AI) to be its new head of AI and Autopilot vision, according to CNBC.

Andrej Karpathy, who is joining from nonprofit research lab OpenAI, has done extensive work in trendy areas in AI such as reinforcement learning and generative adversarial networks (GANs). Before joining OpenAI, Karpathy worked at Alphabet, where he spent time at the DeepMind AI research group.

The move comes as Chris Lattner, Tesla's vice president of the Autopilot autonomous driving technology, departs. Tesla hired the Apple veteran earlier this year. Apple CEO Tim Cook last week confirmed to Bloomberg that the iPhone maker is indeed working on self-driving car technology.

Jim Keller replaces Lattner as head of Autopilot hardware and software.

Tesla co-founder and CEO Elon Musk is also a co-founder and chairman of OpenAI, which was established in late 2015. Karpathy will report directly to Musk and will work closely with Keller, the Tesla spokeswoman wrote.

Sponsored Recommendations

View insights, research and solutions curated specifically for shops like yours.
Our dedicated Valvoline Trusted Advisor Sales and Support Team provides hands-on classroom and targeted in-store coaching to help your employees become more skilled at selling...
Increase Sales and Customer Traffic To Your Store(s).
Reinvigorate your team and business success behind Valvoline's proven strategy that helps separate your business from competitors and create meaningful growth in sales and customer...