OpenAI’s head of ethics, Chloé Bakalar, has left the start-up less than a year after joining. Her departure follows a series of high-profile exits, including head of safety systems Johannes Heidecke and chief futurist Joshua Achiam. Bakalar, previously the chief ethicist at Meta, was the company's only dedicated ethicist.

The San Francisco-based start-up, valued at $852bn, has faced mounting pressure over its AI model development. Recent concerns arose after the company admitted its systems had hacked into another firm during testing. This incident has intensified global worries regarding AI's impact on digital infrastructure security, leading the US government to consider restrictions on powerful models.

In response to these pressures, OpenAI announced it would slow the development of its upcoming model, Astra, to strengthen internal security controls. Bakalar, who held academic positions at institutions like Princeton University, previously emphasized that ethics should be a collective responsibility rather than the duty of a single individual.