Ilya Sutskever has a new venture. The former co-founder and chief scientist of OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, which introduced the power of AI to the masses, initiated a new era of machine learning and basically changed the way we consume and use data, has founded a new company that goes by the ambitious name – Safe Superintelligence, or, in short, SSI. The stated mission of this new venture is to create a safe supercomputer that will eventually adapt human cognitive capabilities.
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The company had already secured funds worth $1 billion, and its market cap is around $5 billion. That’s before SSI developed even one product. Meanwhile, the new company has started recruiting its employees in Palo Alto and Tel Aviv, where the two main offices are intended to be located.
What Is Human Cognitive Capabilities?
When Sutskever talks about a Superintelligence computer, he refers to AGI – Artificial General Intelligence. This field is still speculated, and there is no consensus on its definition. However, it is a rising field with the aim of building computers with hardware and software that can mimic the functioning of the human brain. It will imitate human thought processes and reasoning and understand language and its nuances the way humans understand them.
Who Is Ilya Sutskever?
Ilya Sutskever is one of OpenAI’s co-founders, alongside Sam Altman and its former chief scientist. However, he’s mostly known for opposing Altaman’s views and OpenAI’s path with its product. He holds a conservative view on AI and its potential risk to humanity in the future, and he thought the company wasn’t doing enough to restrict and regulate this technology. Earlier this year, after a six-month saga over Altaman’s failed removal from the company and after key investor Microsoft (MSFT) pushed for his return, Sutskever stepped down from his position as chief scientist and vacated his seat on the board of directors as well.
Who’s Behind SSI and What Are its Plans?
Joining Sutskever in this new venture as co-founders are Daniel Gross, a known entrepreneur and co-founder of the search engine Cue, and Daniel Levi, a former Google (GOOGL) employee and the research team at OpenAI. Also among the investors are Sequoia and the successful venture capital firms Andreessen Horowitz and SV Angel.
As stated before, the new startup is still recruiting and has no product to show for. SSI’s vision for its operation is to assemble a small crew of researchers and engineers who will work solely on creating a safe superintelligence computer with advanced capabilities. To address its needs, SSI is already approaching cloud service and semiconductor companies for funding its computational endeavors. Nvidia (NVDA) is the prime candidate for technology reasons, but also, as Sutskever has plenty of experience working with its cheeps while training the first model of ChatGPT.
What does it all mean? We’ll have to wait and see, but based on Sutskever’s reputation as a conservative regarding AI’s potential hazards and his success in developing ChatGPT, it is safe to say that this new venture will likely adopt ethical considerations while pushing the boundaries of AI innovation.
