Ilya Sutskeverone of the OpenAI’s The co-founders have started a new company, SAFE Superintelligence Inc(SSI) took the step just a month after formally leaving OpenAI.
Sutskever, 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 rise of “super intelligent” AI systems, an area he worked on with Jan Leakey, who co-led OpenAI’s SuperAlignment team. Yet both Sutskever And then Leic left the company after a dramatic incident in May falling out Along with leading AI safety at OpenAI, Leakey now leads a team at rival AI shop Anthropic.
Sutskever has long been highlighting the tricky aspects of AI safety. blog post In their report published in 2023, Sutskever, together with Leakey, predicts that AI with intelligence superior to humans could arrive within this decade – and when it does, it won’t necessarily be benevolent, so it will be essential to research ways to control and restrict it.
Today, he remains as dedicated to that cause as ever. In a tweet announcing the formation of the new company on Wednesday afternoon, Sutskever said: “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 united in achieving SSI. We view security and capabilities together as technical problems to be solved through revolutionary engineering and scientific breakthroughs.”
“We plan to advance our capabilities as rapidly as possible, while also ensuring that our security is always at the forefront. This way, we can expand in peace. Our sole focus is not to be distracted by management overhead or product cycles, and our business model means that security, protection and progress are all insulated from short-term commercial pressures.”
Sutskever spoke to bloomberg He spoke at length about the new company, though he declined to discuss its funding status or valuation.
More tellingly, unlike OpenAI — which originally launched as a nonprofit in 2015, then restructured itself when its need for large amounts of money for computing power became more apparent — SSI is being designed from the start as a for-profit entity. Given the interest in AI and the team’s credentials in particular, it could be drowning in capital very soon. “Of all the problems we face, raising capital is not one of them,” Gross told Bloomberg.
SSI has offices in Palo Alto and Tel Aviv, where it is currently recruiting technical talent.
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