Ilya Sutskever, co-founder of OpenAI, has launched a new company, Safe Superintelligence Inc. (SSI), just one month after officially leaving OpenAI.
Sutskever, who has been OpenAI’s longtime chief scientist, founded SSI with former Y Combinator partner Daniel Gross and former OpenAI engineer Daniel Levy.
At OpenAI, Sutskever was integral to the company’s efforts to improve AI safety with the emergence of “super-intelligent” AI systems, an area in which he worked alongside Jan Lek, who co-led the Superalignment team at OpenAI. However, both Sutskever and then Likee largely left the company in May after a disagreement with leadership at OpenAI over how to handle AI safety. Leike now heads a team at rival AI store Anthropic.
Sutskever has long highlighted the thorny aspects of AI safety. in Blog post Published in 2023, Sutskever, writing with Leike, predicts that AI with intelligence beyond that of humans could arrive within a decade — and when it does, it won’t necessarily be good, necessitating a search for ways to control and constrain it.
It is clear that he is more committed than ever to the cause today. On Wednesday afternoon, a tweet was posted announcing the formation of Sutskever’s new company that reads: “SSI is our mission, our name, and our entire product roadmap, because it is our sole focus. Our team, investors, and business model are all aligned to achieve SSI. Safety and capability go hand in hand, as technical problems to be solved through revolutionary engineering and scientific discoveries.
“We plan to enhance capabilities as quickly as possible while ensuring that our safety always remains at the forefront. This way, we can scale safely. Our single focus means we are not distracted by administrative overhead or product cycles, and our business model means that safety, security and progress are all Insulated from short-term commercial pressures.
Sutskiver I spoke with Bloomberg About the new company in more detail, though he declined to discuss its financing status or its valuation.
What’s most telling is that unlike OpenAI — which originally launched as a nonprofit in 2015, then restructured itself when the massive amounts of money needed for its computing capabilities became clearer — SSI was designed from the ground up as a for-profit organization. entity. Judging by the interest in AI and the team’s credentials specifically, it could be inundated with capital very soon as well. “Of all the problems we face, raising capital is not going to be one of them,” Gross tells Bloomberg.
SSI has offices in Palo Alto and Tel Aviv, where it is currently recruiting technology talent.