OpenAI's former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever has revealed his next major project after leaving the AI research company he co-founded in May.
The three, along with fellow OpenAI alumnus Daniel Levy and former Apple AI lead Daniel Gross, founded Safe Superintelligence Inc. (SSI), a startup focused on building safe superintelligent systems.
The formation of SSI follows the brief dismissal of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in November 2023, a situation in which Sutskever played a central role and later expressed regret.
In a message on the SSI website, the founders said:
“We are approaching safety and capacity in parallel as technical problems to be solved through innovative engineering and scientific advances. We plan to increase capacity as quickly as possible, while always keeping safety first, so we can scale with peace of mind.”
We are focused on a business model that is unencumbered by administrative overhead and product cycles; where safety, security and progress are all insulated from short-term commercial pressures.”
Sutskever's work at SSI is an extension of his work at OpenAI, where he was part of the Superalignment team, charged with designing control methods for powerful new AI systems, but that group disbanded following Sutskever's high-profile departure.
SSI says it will pursue safe superintelligence “straightforward with one focus, one goal, and one product.” This single focus contrasts with the diversification seen in recent years at major AI labs like OpenAI, DeepMind, and Anthropic.
Time will tell whether Sutskever's team can make any real progress toward the lofty goal of a safe superintelligent AI. Critics argue that the challenge is as much a philosophical as an engineering problem. But given the backgrounds of SSI's founders, their efforts will be followed with great interest.
In the meantime, we can expect the “What did Ilya see?” meme to become popular again.
What did Elijah see? pic.twitter.com/2Vhn2OXBMt
— Matthew Zeitz (@MatthewZ73671) June 13, 2024
reference: Meta Launches Five AI Models for Multimodal Processing, Music Generation, and More
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