August 11, 2026
Ethics.exe has stopped working
OpenAI's Only Ethicist Reportedly Left Last Month
OpenAI’s last ethics watchdog is gone, and the internet says the mask is fully off
TLDR: OpenAI’s only reported ethicist quietly left, and she apparently hasn’t been replaced. Online reactions were savage, with many arguing that ethics jobs at giant tech companies are mostly for show — and joking that OpenAI has now simply made it official.
OpenAI reportedly lost its only dedicated ethicist, Chloé Bakalar, in July — and online commenters reacted less with shock than with a giant, collective “well… yeah”. Bakalar, who previously held the same kind of role at Meta, was said to focus on questions like how people interact with artificial intelligence and whether these systems are anything like conscious beings. OpenAI says ethics isn’t owned by one person or team, but the comment section was absolutely not in a trusting mood.
The strongest reaction? A brutal wave of cynicism. One commenter basically dismissed the whole job as “pseudo-philosophical mumbo jumbo,” while another went even shorter and sharper: “Capitalism has not concept of ethics.” Ouch. The mood was clear: many readers think an “ethicist” at a giant tech company is less moral guardian, more corporate window dressing. That sparked the hottest take of the thread — that these roles are performative, designed to make powerful companies look responsible while business rolls on as usual.
And then came the jokes. The biggest laugh line was the dark little zinger: “No ethics left at OpenAI huh? Lolol.” Another commenter needed only one sentence to roast the whole résumé: “Before working at OpenAI, she was Meta’s chief ethicist.” With OpenAI also facing safety departures, government scrutiny, and big claims from Sam Altman about the future of AI, the community has turned this exit into a much bigger drama: not just who left, but whether anyone serious was ever steering the moral wheel in the first place.
Key Points
- •Chloé Bakalar, OpenAI’s head ethicist, reportedly left the company in July after less than a year in the role.
- •According to the cited report, Bakalar was OpenAI’s only dedicated ethicist and had not been replaced.
- •Bakalar previously served as Meta’s chief ethicist and publicly argued in 2023 that LLMs were prediction machines, not sentient entities.
- •The article contrasts Bakalar’s stance with Sam Altman’s recent comments that humanity is already ‘in the singularity.’
- •Bakalar’s exit comes amid broader safety-related turnover at OpenAI and ongoing scrutiny around AI safety, regulation, and the possible delay of the Astra model.