Tesla AI Head Returns To Bay Area Temporarily, Says His Sabbatical Isn't Over

Tesla Inc’s TSLA head of artificial intelligence, Andrej Karpathy, revealed on Monday he has returned to San Francisco temporarily amid a four-month-long sabbatical that CEO Elon Musk had announced in March.

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What Happened: Karpathy tweeted to say he is physically back home in the Bay Area and that he had started to really miss sitting uninterrupted at a computer in one spot for a long duration.

The 35-year-old director of AI and Autopilot Vision at Tesla said he aimed to use the break to reach the very tip of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. 

Maslow's hierarchy is a theory that states five categories of human needs dictate an individual's behavior: physiological, safety, love and belonging, esteem, and self-actualization.

Karpathy clarified that he is only about "halfway through my sabbatical,” and has not rejoined Tesla yet.

Yes exactly. As tweet says I am back physically home and in the bay area from some travels. Should clarify I am not back at Tesla yet, only ~halfway through my sabbatical.

— Andrej Karpathy (@karpathy) May 9, 2022

See Also: Elon Musk Says Tesla Now Has Over 100,000 FSD Beta Testers, Up Nearly 67% Since January

Why It Matters: Karpathy is a key part of Tesla’s effort toward achieving full self-driving. His four-month sabbatical was announced by Musk and then later confirmed by him on Twitter.

The executive had then said he was taking some time off to rest and travel after almost five years at Tesla and that he planned to use the time to re-sharpen his “technical edge and train some neural nets!”

Musk recently said he believes the EV maker is likely to actualize the FSD Level-4 system this year.

Price Action: Tesla closed 9.07% lower at $787.11 on Monday.

Photo: Courtesy of Tesla