Uber's AI labs head Gary Marcus leaves the position for an 'advisor' role

Maintaining the string of departures, Gary Marcus, the head of Uber's artificial intelligence research arm, has decided to step down from his role and take up a more flexible role of 'Special Advisor for AI'.

Marcus confirmed his exodus in a Facebook post, "Great news - I am headed back to my family in New York! I've negotiated a new role with Uber as Special Advisor for AI that gives me more flexibility. So proud of the Geometric team - it has been great working with them."

Uber acquired Marcus' AI and machine learning startup Geometric Intelligence in 2016, where as a part of the deal, Marcus became head of Uber's AI team.

The rest of the Geometric Intelligence' team will continue working with Uber under the leadership of co-founder Zoubin Ghahramani.

Marcus, who left the team within four months of joining, is the latest to join the bandwagon of top engineering executives that have recently departed the company.

In December 2016, Danny Lange announced that he was leaving the company to join Unity Technologies, which was followed by three more departures from Uber’s self-driving arm, the Advanced Technology Group.

In February, the former director of the ATG Raffi Krikorian made the announcement of leaving the company. Recently, Security engineer Charlie Miller left Uber and joined Didi’s self-driving efforts.