Tesla hires AI expert to help lead team in charge of self-driving software

Tesla Inc. has hired a Stanford University computer scientist specializing in artificial intelligence and deep learning to lead its efforts around driverless cars. Andrej Karpathy, previously a research scientist at OpenAI, was named director of AI and Autopilot Vision, reporting directly to Chief Executive Elon Musk, a Tesla spokesperson said. Karpathy is "one of the world's leading experts in computer vision and deep learning," the spokesperson said. He will work closely with Jim Keller, who is responsible for Autopilot hardware and software. Autopilot is Tesla's suite of advanced driver assistance systems, which relies on an onboard Nvidia Corp NVDA, 1.52% "supercomputer" to make sense of data from numerous sensors in and around Tesla vehicles and the company's software.