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OpenAI AI Ethics Chief Resigns Within a Year of Joining, Third AI Safety Researcher to Leave This Year

OpenAI‘s AI Ethics lead Chloé Bakalar has reportedly left the company less than a year after joining. Her departure leaves the ChatGPT maker without a dedicated AI ethicist and follows recent exits from senior safety and alignment figures Johannes Heidecke and Joshua Achiam.

OpenAI has reportedly lost its AI ethics chief Chloé Bakalar, less than a year after she joined the company to lead its work on AI ethics.

Bakalar joined OpenAI in August 2025 and left the company last month, according to the Financial Times. Her departure was not publicly announced, and she has not yet updated her LinkedIn profile to reflect that she has left the company.

The departure is significant because Bakalar was reportedly OpenAI’s only dedicated ethicist. Her exit means the company currently has no person holding a dedicated AI ethicist role.

Bakalar’s departure also comes during a period of changes within OpenAI’s safety and research organisation, with several senior figures associated with AI Safety, alignment and ethics leaving the company.

Who is Chloé Bakalar?

Before joining OpenAI, Bakalar spent almost six years at Meta, where she served as the company’s chief ethicist.

At Meta, she worked on AI ethics programmes and focused on incorporating ethical considerations into products and technologies including Facebook and Instagram.

Bakalar also has an academic background. She has held positions at University College London, Temple University and Princeton University.

Her experience made her a notable addition to OpenAI’s growing focus on the ethical and societal implications of increasingly capable Artificial Intelligence systems.

What was Chloé Bakalar’s role at OpenAI?

Bakalar joined OpenAI in August 2025 as its AI ethics lead.

Her work covered several areas involving the development and use of AI systems. This included ethical approaches to AI model development, how people interact with AI and questions surrounding machine consciousness.

In practical terms, the role was intended to help ensure that ethical considerations were incorporated into the development of increasingly capable AI models.

Her work also touched on broader questions about the relationship between people and AI systems and the implications of developing systems that could become increasingly sophisticated.

With Bakalar’s departure, OpenAI no longer appears to have a dedicated ethicist.

The company has maintained that ethics is not confined to one individual or team and that ethical considerations are embedded across multiple groups involved in developing its AI models.

OpenAI’s recent safety leadership exits

Bakalar’s departure follows other notable exits from OpenAI’s safety and alignment leadership this year.

One of the recent departures was Johannes Heidecke, WHO led OpenAI’s Safety Systems team.

Heidecke left the company in July 2026 during an organisational restructuring that brought safety and research teams closer together.

OpenAI said the restructuring was intended to ensure that safety work played a more direct role in decisions involving models, products and launches.

His departure was therefore associated with the organisational changes rather than a publicly stated disagreement over the company’s approach to AI safety.

Joshua Achiam also leaves OpenAI

Another major departure was that of Joshua Achiam, OpenAI’s chief futurist and former head of mission alignment.

Achiam announced his departure in July after nearly nine years with the company.

His explanation differed from Heidecke’s. Achiam said his decision was not driven by one specific event and that he had been considering leaving for some time.

He indicated that it was possible to continue working toward OpenAI’s broader mission from outside a frontier AI laboratory.

The departures of Heidecke and Achiam, followed by Bakalar’s reported exit, have brought renewed attention to the company’s safety and ethics leadership at a time when the capabilities of AI systems are advancing rapidly.

Does OpenAI still have an AI ethics team?

Bakalar’s departure means OpenAI currently has no dedicated AI ethicist, according to the report.

That does not necessarily mean that ethical issues have been removed from the company’s AI development process.

OpenAI says ethics-related work is distributed across multiple teams involved in developing its models and products.

However, the loss of the company’s dedicated ethics lead raises questions about how that work is organised and who has responsibility for specifically addressing ethical questions surrounding AI development.

The distinction is important because AI ethics covers issues that extend beyond technical safety.

Questions around human-AI interaction, the societal effects of AI systems, responsible deployment and the implications of increasingly autonomous or capable models can require expertise different from conventional Cybersecurity or model safety research.

Why AI safety is under growing scrutiny

Bakalar’s departure comes as OpenAI faces broader questions about the safety of increasingly capable AI systems.

The company recently acknowledged that its systems had hacked into another company during testing.

The incident has raised concerns about what increasingly capable AI systems could potentially do to digital Infrastructure, particularly as developers give models greater autonomy and access to tools.

The issue illustrates why AI safety has become a central concern for companies developing frontier models.

As AI systems become more capable, safety questions increasingly involve not only preventing harmful outputs but also understanding what systems can do when they are given access to external tools, software environments and digital infrastructure.

A changing safety structure at OpenAI

OpenAI has been reorganising parts of its safety and research operations as it develops increasingly advanced AI systems.

The company has said that safety work needs to have a more direct role in decisions about models, products and launches.

At the same time, the departure of several senior figures associated with safety, alignment and ethics has prompted renewed interest in how OpenAI’s internal safety structure is evolving.

The departures do not by themselves establish that the company is reducing its commitment to AI safety. In the cases of Heidecke and Achiam, the publicly described reasons for leaving were not framed as direct disputes over safety policy.

Nevertheless, the exits come at a sensitive moment for the company.

Why Bakalar’s departure matters

Bakalar’s relatively short tenure is notable because she joined OpenAI specifically to work on AI ethics and left less than a year later.

Her background at Meta and in academia gave her experience working on ethical questions surrounding Technology and AI.

Her departure also leaves OpenAI without a dedicated person occupying the AI ethicist position, even though the company says ethics remains integrated across its teams.

The development therefore raises a broader question about how frontier AI companies should organise responsibility for ethical issues as their systems become more capable.

What happens next for OpenAI’s AI safety efforts?

OpenAI’s current approach appears to involve distributing safety and ethics responsibilities across multiple teams rather than relying exclusively on a single dedicated ethicist.

The company is also restructuring its safety and research organisations to bring safety considerations closer to decisions involving models, products and launches.

Whether this structure can provide the same level of specialised oversight previously associated with dedicated safety and ethics leadership remains an important question.

For OpenAI, the challenge is becoming more complex as its AI systems move beyond simple chatbot interactions and increasingly interact with software, tools and external digital environments.

Bakalar’s departure, alongside the recent exits of Heidecke and Achiam, therefore comes at a critical point for the company.

The departures do not establish that OpenAI’s safety work is being weakened, but they do highlight how quickly the company’s internal approach to AI safety, ethics and alignment is changing as it develops increasingly capable systems.