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Andrej Karpathy was Tesla’s AI lead well before AI was everywhere all the time. At the very early part of the AI hype cycle, he was the only AI guy many people knew. He led Tesla’s efforts toward Full Self Driving (FSD) for years, and it’s still not exactly clear why he left “right before” that was supposed to be achieved, but the obvious challenges of actually getting paid robotaxis on the road still seem like the most plausible explanation to me. I mean, honestly, why would you stop working on something you’d spent years on if you saw the light at the end of the tunnel coming around the corner?
Of course, Karpathy left Tesla in July 2022, four years ago! He claimed he was confident the approach they had been pursuing would lead to full self-driving capability, and Tesla fans lapped it up, agreeing it was a clear endorsement that things were on the right track. If someone said back then that it would take four years to get to where Tesla is today, and that people who bought FSD still wouldn’t be able to use it without paying attention all the time, you’d be roasted for being a Tesla/Elon Musk hater and an idiot. It was actually a year and a half or so before Karpathy’s exit that Elon Musk stopped following us (and frequently reposting or liking our content) on Twitter/X — presumably because we published some articles skeptical about their approach and I didn’t take them down or fire the author when Elon Musk messaged me about them. And how many times has Tesla started over in its software approach to FSD since then?
