One of the key experts behind Tesla's Autopilot driver assistance system is leaving the electric car manufacturer.

Andrej Karpathy announced on Thursday night that he wanted to spend more time on technical work related to the development of artificial intelligence.

Karpathy has worked for Tesla since 2017 and was responsible, among other things, for the autopilot to be able to recognize its surroundings.

Tesla is currently trying to adapt the autopilot system from relatively simple tasks such as keeping lane and distance to operate in cities with traffic lights, intersections and priority rules.

As videos from beta testers show, the software still makes some glaring errors that have to be corrected by the person behind the wheel.

Training the autopilot system also includes people naming objects in the picture for them.

Tesla recently fired some of its employees as a result of job cuts.

American authorities are currently investigating the autopilot software after a series of accidents.